St. Paulinus of Nola is the most consequential, accomplished and well-connected saint many Catholics have never heard of.<\/p>\n
He was friends with St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Martin of Tours, St. Melania, and St. Augustine \u2014 it is even said that Augustine wrote his Confesi\u00f3n <\/em>because of a suggestion from St. Paulinus. He is a poet and a bishop, and he wrote the earliest existing wedding song.<\/p>\n He was also known to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, who mentioned how he inspired the spirituality of the co-founder of her religious order. His own story and work illuminate the hardest things she faced.<\/p>\n St. Paulinus was born in southeastern France into a family of wealth and position.<\/strong><\/p>\n Born in 324 to a noble Roman family that appears to have been at least nominally Catholic, Paulinus followed in his father\u2019s footsteps, pursuing a career in Roman government. Even then, his faith influenced his work.<\/p>\n At some point in his childhood, he became a devotee of St. Felix, a martyr who would not be widely known if St. Paulinus hadn\u2019t spent his own life celebrating him. As a Roman official, Paulinus directed a road project to make travel to St. Felix\u2019s shrine easier for pilgrims, and had a hospice home built for guests at the shrine. Later, he wrote annual poems about the saint.<\/p>\n Paulinus married a woman from Barcelona and together they had a child who died eight days after birth. This event changed the trajectory of their lives, and both husband and wife dedicated themselves to a more serious religious life after that. St. Paulinus was ordained a priest \u2014 unexpectedly, on orders of his bishop \u2014 and later became a bishop himself, after his wife died. He served for 20 years as bishop in Nola, near Naples.<\/p>\n Pope Benedict XVI retold the same story about St. Paulinus that inspired Elizabeth Seton.<\/strong><\/p>\n St. Gregory the Great shared the story about how a poor widow came to St. Paulinus saying that the Vandals had taken her son captive. She hoped that he could ransom her son as he had done so many others.<\/p>\n Paulinus couldn\u2019t afford more ransoms, but he said, \u201cSuch as I have, I will give,\u201d and ransomed the child by offering himself in his place. He went to Africa in place of the widow\u2019s son. When the Vandals\u2019 king discovered what happened, he freed Paulinus and every other person from Nola. \u201cThe historical truth of this episode is disputed,\u201d said Pope Benedict, \u201cbut the figure of a Bishop with a great heart\u201d lives on.<\/p>\n In describing the rule of her own religious congregation\u2019s spirituality, Elizabeth Ann Seton said that St. Vincent de Paul, co-founder of the Daughters of Charity, \u201cexposed his life for saving his neighbors … pushed by the zeal of St. Paulinus.\u201d<\/p>\n But her life mirrored Paulinus in other uncanny ways. St. Paulinus could have been describing Elizabeth Ann Seton\u2019s widowhood, or the loss of his own spouse, when he wrote of what happened when St. Melania the Elder lost her husband: \u201cThrough the loss of her human love, she conceived a love of God. She was made wretched to become blessed; she was afflicted to be healed.\u201d<\/p>\n St. Paulinus also had great compassion for the sick.<\/strong><\/p>\n Elizabeth had to confront illness throughout her entire life\u2014her own and the sickness that plagued those around her, victims of the tuberculosis that claimed the lives of many Americans, including her husband and, eventually, Elizabeth herself.<\/p>\n St. Paulinus composed a poetic prayer about sickness. \u201cOpen a path to bear me aloft, so that I may leave behind the bonds of my sick body,\u201d he prayed. \u201cThe milky way sits above the moon and the clouds. The prophets of old passed that way, Elijah in his chariot and Enoch in his flesh. Carry me in their path.\u201d<\/p>\n That prayer is reminiscent of Mother Seton\u2019s words about the illness of her youngest daughter, Rebecca Mary Seton. Elizabeth Ann Seton records her daughter saying, \u201cI do wish so his will should be done, my Mother,\u201d and adding \u201cout of my prison I will soon be delivered … I shall soon go.\u201d<\/p>\n Both St. Paulinus and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton had inspiring experiences of friendship.<\/strong><\/p>\n St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s extensive correspondence with friends has given us a wealth of information and insights into her biography and her interior life.<\/p>\n We know that St. Paulinus was also a great letter writer, based on St. Augustine\u2019s own testimonial to him. The two knew each other exclusively through letters throughout much of their adult lives, with Paulinus helping to get his friend\u2019s works published in Europe while Augustine was in Africa.<\/p>\n From his letters, Augustine described \u201cthat devout seriousness of spirit that so eminently distinguishes you,\u201d and said, \u201cI have come to know you as my brother and friend, and as one so eminent as a Christian, so noble as a man.\u201d<\/p>\n Elizabeth Seton had a lifelong friend in Julia Scott, and in 1808, she expressed to her what their friendship meant:<\/p>\n \u201cMy Friend \u2013 my dear, dear Julia,\u201d Elizabeth wrote. \u201cCan it be your letter is so long unanswered though my heart made so warm a reply on its first reception?\u201d She wrote of how greatly she appreciated \u201cyour unremitted and precious friendship,\u201d and said that, \u201cYou have a friend who would fly to you from any part of the world, leave children and everything, on the smallest intimation she could be useful to You. I would think the distance between us but a speck if I might hold your dear head when it ached or banish one hour of sorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n One achievement of St. Paulinus had a direct effect on Elizabeth Ann Seton\u2019s faith.<\/strong><\/p>\n For years, the use of bells at Mass was attributed to St. Paulinus. Now it appears that St. Paulinus doesn\u2019tdeserve exclusive credit for that. Nor was he the only bishop who promoted using Christian art in churches. Nonetheless, St. Paulinus, a great patron of the arts, was a very important \u201cearly adopter\u201d of using paintings in churches for catechesis.<\/p>\n \u201cI now want you to contemplate the paintings that unfold in a long series on the walls of the painted porticos,\u201d he wrote, describing his Shrine to St. Felix. \u201cIt seemed to us useful to portray sacred themes in painting throughout the house of Felix, in the hope that when the peasants see the painted figures, these images will awaken interest in their astonished minds.\u201d<\/p>\n That strategy worked in the 300s, and it worked 1500 years later when Elizabeth Ann Seton was profoundly moved by the Catholic art she encountered during her time in Italy, after her husband\u2019s death there.<\/p>\n She told her hosts, the Filicchi family, how moved she was by a picture of the descent from the cross. In the painting, she said Mary\u2019s \u201cagonized countenance so strongly contrasted the heavenly peace of the dear Redeemer\u2019s that it seems as if his pains had fallen on her \u2014 How hard it was to leave that picture and how often even in the few hours interval since I have seen it, I shut my eyes and recall it in imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n St. Elizabeth Ann Seton came from a comfortable background and offered everything for her faith. So did St. Paulinus.<\/p>\n \u201cLet the rich enjoy their riches, let the kings enjoy their kingdoms,\u201d he said. \u201cYou, O Christ, are my treasure and my kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n TOM HOOPES<\/strong>, autor m\u00e1s reciente de El Rosario de San Juan Pablo II, es escritor residente en el Benedictine College de Kansas, donde imparte clases. Es anfitri\u00f3n de La extraordinaria Stor<\/a>y podcast sobre la vida de Cristo. Su libro Lo que dijo realmente el Papa Francisco<\/a> ya est\u00e1 disponible en Audible<\/a>. Antiguo reportero en la zona de Washington, D.C., fue secretario de prensa del Presidente del Comit\u00e9 de Medios y Arbitrios de la C\u00e1mara de Representantes de los Estados Unidos y pas\u00f3 10 a\u00f1os como editor del peri\u00f3dico National Catholic Register y de la revista Faith & Family. Su trabajo aparece con frecuencia en el Register, Aleteia y Catholic Digest. Vive en Atchison, Kansas, con su esposa, April, y tiene nueve hijos.<\/em><\/p>\n