Before we begin

Observe the instructions below as you enter through the door

  • ·Laptop closed, every device off
  • ·Phones away, screens dark, headphones out
  • ·Let the room be quiet for the next few minutes

The work will still be here. Let us start somewhere else.

Who she was

Marcella of Rome

Rome · c. 325 – 410

Marcella of Rome
Engraving of the scene Jerome describes: Rome has fallen, the soldiers are in her house, and she is on her knees — not for herself, but asking them to spare her student Principia.
  • A Roman noblewoman of a consular family, widowed seven months into her marriage.
  • A rich old consul proposed. She said she would look for a husband, not an inheritance — and when he argued that old men sometimes outlive young ones, she replied that “a young man may indeed die early, but an old man cannot live long.”
  • She was the first highborn woman in Rome to publicly profess the monastic life, when the word was still a term of reproach.
  • Her house on the Aventine became a school. Paula and Eustochium were formed there.
  • After Jerome left Rome, disputed questions about Scripture were referred to her to settle.
  • In the sack of Rome in 410 soldiers beat her for gold she did not have. She begged them only to spare her student Principia, and died a few days later.

Today she is the one who would not take an answer on authority alone.

The practice

Teachability

hands on your lap · feet on the floor · a slow breath

Marcella disputed Jerome’s answers — not to win, but to learn.

  • ·Think of something you believe because of who told you
  • ·Ask honestly whether you have ever tested it
  • ·Ask for the nerve to keep asking questions
  • ·And for the humility to be corrected

Spiritual Disciplines Handbook · Adele Ahlberg Calhoun · Part 2 · Open Myself to God

breathe

“She never came to see me that she did not ask me some question …
nor would she at once acquiesce in my explanations, but would dispute them;
not for argument’s sake, but to learn.”

Jerome, Letter 127 · his memoir of Marcella, 412

Amen.

Open your laptops. Let’s begin.