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Remembered today in Our Church

August 27, 2005
St. Monica
(mother of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo,
one of the greatest saints of the Church)
(322?-387)

The circumstances of St. Monica’s life could have made her a nagging wife, a bitter daughter-in-law and a despairing parent, yet she did not give way to any of these temptations. Although she was a Christian, her parents gave her in marriage to a pagan, Patricius, who lived in her hometown of Tagaste in North Africa. Patricius had some redeeming features, but he had a violent temper and was licentious. Monica also had to bear with a cantankerous mother-in-law who lived in her home. Patricius criticized his wife because of her charity and piety, but always respected her.

Monica’s prayers and example finally won her husband and mother-in-law to Christianity. Her husband died in 371, one year after his Baptism.
Monica had at least three children who survived infancy. The oldest, Augustine, is the most famous.

At the time of his father’s death, Augustine was 17 and a rhetoric student in Carthage. Monica was distressed to learn that her son had accepted the Manichean heresy and was living an immoral life. For a while, she refused to let him eat or sleep in her house. Then one night she had a vision that assured her Augustine would return to the faith (see below). From that time on she stayed close to her son, praying and fasting for him. In fact, she often stayed much closer than Augustine wanted.

When he was 29, Augustine decided to go to Rome to teach rhetoric. Monica was determined to go along . . . Although travel was difficult, Monica pursued him.

In Milan Augustine came under the influence of the bishop, St. Ambrose, who also became Monica’s spiritual director. She accepted his advice in everything and had the humility to give up some practices that had become second nature to her (see Quote, below). Monica became a leader of the devout women in Milan as she had been in Tagaste.

She continued her prayers for Augustine during his years of instruction. At Easter, 387, St. Ambrose baptized Augustine and several of his friends. Soon after, his party left for Africa.

Almost all we know about St. Monica is in the writings of St. Augustine, especially his Confessions.

Comment:

Today, with Internet searches, e-mail shopping and instant credit, we have little patience for things that take time. Likewise, we want instant answers to our prayers. Monica is a model of patience. Her long years of prayer, coupled with a strong, well-disciplined character, finally led to the conversion of her hot-tempered husband, her cantankerous mother-in-law and her brilliant but wayward son, Augustine.

Quote:
When Monica moved from North Africa to Milan, she found religious practices new to her and also that some of her former customs, such as a Saturday fast, were not common there. She asked St. Ambrose which customs she should follow.

His classic reply was: "When I am here, I do not fast on Saturday, but I fast when I am in Rome; do the same and always follow the custom and discipline of the Church as it is observed in the particular locality in which you find yourself."

www.americancatholic.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Those prophetic and immortal words, "it is impossible that a child of such tears should perish", spoken by a holy bishop exasperated by St Monica’s importuning on behalf of her sinful son, Augustine, provide an insight into her sanctity. For her single-minded determination to rescue that son from the vices to which he had become enslaved and the heresies to which he had become attached was the very hallmark of her sanctity, and his enduring gratitude to her for that rescue was the motivation for him to manifest to the world her sanctity in his Confessions , that monumental prayer addressed throughout to God Himself.

Some of Augustine's words about his mother:
"Night and day my mother poured out her tears to Thee and offered her heart-blood in sacrifice for me"; "Thou […] didst rescue my soul from the depths of this darkness [Manicheeism] because my mother, Thy faithful servant, wept to Thee for me, shedding more tears for my spiritual death than other mothers shed for the bodily death of a son."

"She dreamed that she was standing on a wooden rule, and coming towards her in a halo of splendour she saw a young man who smiled at her in joy, although she herself was sad and quite consumed with grief. He asked her the reason for her sorrow and her daily tears, not because he did not know, but because he had something to tell her, for this is what happens in visions. When she replied that her tears were for the soul I had lost, he told her to take heart for, if she looked carefully, she would see that where she was, there also was I. And when she looked, she saw me standing beside her on the same rule."

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