St. Jerome received with great kindness the little offerings of his spiritual daughter, and thanked her for them in a letter full of affection, mingled with the grave counsels which ever flowed from his pen.
The time was approaching for the departure of Paula for the East. It was in the autumn of 384 A.D., when Blesilla suddenly fell ill of the same fever which had once before laid her so low. The news of her illness filled her friends with consternation, for Blesilla was tenderly loved by them. She sank so rapidly that there was soon no hope left of her recovery. This was but four months after her conversion, and God already judged her ready for a better life, and called her to himself.
She was but twenty, and was going to die. Her mother, her sisters, her relations, her friends, Marcella and St. Jerome, all gathered around her death-bed in tears. Blesilla alone did not weep. Though the fever was consuming her, a ray of celestial light illuminated her countenance with a beauty not of earth, and transfigured her. Her only regret was, that her repentance had been so short. She turned to those who were around her: "Oh! pray for me," she cried, "to our Lord Jesus Christ, to have mercy on my soul, since I die before I have been able to accomplish what I had in my heart to do for him." These were her last words; every one present was moved to tears by them. Jerome eagerly offered consolation. "Trust in the Lord, dear Blesilla," said he; "your soul is as pure as the white robes you have worn since your consecration to God, which though but recent was so generous and complete that it came not too late." These words filled her soul with peace. And shortly afterward, to use the words of St. Jerome, "freeing herself from the pains of the body, this white dove flew off to heaven!"
Her obsequies were magnificent, followed by all the Roman nobles. Such was the custom of the patricians. A peculiar interest and sympathy were felt in the fate of this brilliant young woman, as well as universal compassion for the sorrow of her venerable mother. The long procession walked through the streets, followed by the coffin covered with a veil of gold. St. Jerome, though not approving of this display, dared not interfere to prevent it, as it seemed a sad consolation to Paula to see the honors paid to the child so tenderly loved. She undertook to accompany Blesilla to her last resting-place; but her strength failed, and, having taken but a few steps, she fainted away and was brought back to her house insensible.
The days that followed the funeral only increased her grief. She was crushed by it. In vain did she try to submit to the divine will, her heart failed her, and Jerome felt that he must make an effort to give her strength, or else she would succumb to the pressure. The effort was great on his part, for Blesilla was his beloved pupil, and this death annihilated all his own cherished hopes of her. He never found the courage to conclude a commentary, begun expressly for her, on Ecclesiastes. But feeling it a duty to help Paula, he wrote to her a letter filled with true delicacy of feeling and Christian faith. He commenced by weeping with her over the lost Blesilla, for he said: "While wishing to dry her mother's tears, am I not weeping myself?" He continued this noble letter in these words, alike reproachful and sympathizing: "When I reflect that you are a mother, I do not blame you for weeping; but when I reflect also that you are a Christian, then, O Paula! I wish that the Christian would console the mother a little."
He reminded her of the children she had left, and with all the authority of his holy office bid her take care lest, "in loving her children so much, she did not love God enough." "Listen," he says, "to Jesus, and trust in him: 'Your daughter is not dead, but sleepeth.'"
Then Jerome would picture to Paula her daughter in all her celestial glory. He would suppose Blesilla calling upon her mother in these words: "If you have ever loved me, O my mother! if you have ever nourished me from your bosom, and trained my soul with your words of wisdom and virtue, oh! I conjure you, do not lament that I have such glory and happiness as is mine here! What prayers does Blesilla not now offer up for you to God!" And St. Jerome adds, "She is praying for me also, for you know, O Paula! how devoted I was to her soul, and what I did not fear to brave, that she might be saved."
St. Jerome's letter awoke new Christian strength and resignation in the broken spirit of Paula. The tears ceased to flow, but the wound bled inwardly and never healed. The void left by Blesilla in her mother's heart must ever make it desolate. Rome became insupportable to her, and the pilgrimage to the East, so long thought of, seemed now the only thing that could interest her. About this time Pope Damasus died. He was a great loss to St. Jerome, for his successor had not the same moral courage, and dared not sustain the old monk in advocating monastic life, which so enraged the patricians.
Finally, worn out by persecution, and perhaps longing to return to that solitude he had never ceased to regret, Jerome determined to leave Rome. This was in the year 385 A.D. His friends were only waiting for his signal to accompany him in numbers, and many were the tears shed by his gentle pupils in Rome at his departure. His farewell letter to them all was addressed to the venerable Asella, through whom he sent his last greetings to Paula, Eustochium, Albina, Marcella, Marcellina, and Felicity, "his sisters in Jesus Christ." Many of these he was destined to see no more. But the decision of Paula was irrevocable. She had no longer any earthly tie to detain her. Her son, moved by the example of his mother and sisters, had received Christian baptism, and was soon to marry a young Christian maiden, the cousin of Marcella. Rufina was to remain during her mother's absence with her sister Paulina and Pammachius, and also with Marcella, her second mother.
Eustochium was to accompany her mother, as well as a large number of the pious community of the Aventine. They left Rome in the autumn of 385 A.D. Paula courageously bid farewell to her children, and the friends who had followed in troops to see her embark. Leaning on the arm of Eustochium, she was seen on the deck of the vessel, her eyes averted, that her strength might not fail her as she witnessed the sorrow of her loved ones whom she was leaving. For St. Jerome tells us, "Paula loved her children more than any other woman."