But amidst the stings of pain which she endured with wondrous patience, she said as if she saw the heavens opened to her: "who will give me wings to fly like a dove so I may rest?". ![]() How often when she was troubled by the weakness of her little body which she had strained with incredible abstinence and doubled fasts, she repeated: "I punish my body and enslave it, so that after preaching to others I should not find myself reproached" and "it is good not to eat meat or drink wine" and "I have afflicted my soul with fasting" and "you have turned my whole bed in sickness" and "I have revolved in misery as thorns pierced me". Whence she often said "I am a stranger and a wanderer like my fathers" and again "my desire is to depart and be with Christ". And is it any wonder that she wept to be in darkness - for so Kedar is interpreted - when the world has turned to evil? "And its light is like its darkness, and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not grasp it". As long as she was in the body she was in exile from the lord and sought him always with a tearful voice saying: "alas for me, that my exile is prolonged, that I have dwelled with the inhabitants of Kedar, my soul has long wandered". ![]() We do not grieve that we have lost such a one, but give thanks that we had her, or rather have her for all things live in God and whatever returns to the lord is counted in family her loss is a dwelling in the heavenly home. Noble by birth, but much more noble in sanctity, once powerful by wealth, but now more noteworthy for the poverty of Christ, family of the Gracchi, offshoot of the Scipios, heir of Paul, whose name she bears, of Maecia Papiria, mother of Africanus, true and direct descendant, she preferred Bethlehem to Rome and changed her rooves gleaming with gold for the baseness of formless mud. If all the members of my body were turned to tongues and all my limbs resounded with the human voice, I could say nothing worthy of the virtues of the holy and venerable Paula.
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