A mother's influence bore fruit
Perpetual virginity's history tied with Middle Eastern saint
By Tony Staley
There is no doubt that our parents have a great deal of influence on what we become in life. But at some point we need to decide for ourselves what course to follow.
For St. Eustochium Julia, that meant following her mother, St. Paula, in a life of prayer, austerity and service to the poor, after the death of Toxotius, Paula's husband, a Roman senator and nobleman.
It should not be thought that the choice Eustochium made was obvious. Three of her siblings - Toxotius, Blesilla and Paulina - opted for marriage and the youngest, Rufina, died.
About three years after Paula's husband died, she and Eustochium met St. Jerome while he was visiting Rome and asked him to be their spiritual director. Despite pleas from her aunt and uncle to choose the pleasures of Rome over a life that was as austere as the desert fathers in Egypt, Eustochium made vows as a perpetual virgin. That led Jerome in 384 to write "Concerning the Keeping of Virginity" for her.
The next year, Paula and Eustochium joined Jerome in Palestine. Soon, they went with him to Egypt to study the life of the hermits of the Nitrian Desert. After returning to Palestine they settled in Bethlehem, where they started a hospice and four monasteries - one for men under the leadership of Jerome and three for women, which Paula supervised - near where Jesus was born.
The nuns gathered several times a day to pray and chant the psalms. When they were not praying, Paula and Eustochium did menial tasks and studied the scripture under Jerome's direction. Both women were fluent in Greek and Latin and could read the Bible in Hebrew. They even helped Jerome translate the Bible into Latin after his eyesight failed.
Jerome was so impressed by Eustochium's skills and scholarship and her help in writing his biblical commentaries that he dedicated his commentaries on the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel to her.
After Paula's death in 404, Eustochium took over as director of the three convents, a task complicated by the financial bind they were in because of her mother's generosity in helping the poor. Jerome continued to encourage her and give her advice.
Then, in 417, thugs attacked and pillaged the three convents, even burning down one, and killing and harming some of the nuns. It is believed that the attack was ordered by John, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Pelagians (followers of a 5th century heresy that denied Original Sin and Christian grace) as a way to get back at Jerome, who spoke out loudly against them.
After Jerome and Eustochium wrote to Pope Innocent I, he reprimanded John. But Eustochium never fully recovered from the incident and died a couple years later. She was succeeded by her niece, Paula, the daughter of her brother, Toxotius.
Sources: Catholic Encyclopedia, Dictionary of Saints and Lives of the Saints
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