St. Monica
Born: 331
Died: 387
Feast Day: August 27
Patron of: mothers
If you’ve ever thought your mother was coming on just a little strong, you’d find a kindred spirit in one of the great saints of the Western world, St. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine, whose praises for his mother abound in his framed Confessions, once was so desperate to get away from her that he lied to her about the time his ship was set to sail and fled the country, leaving her behind.
St. Monica, born in 332, had a history of putting up with exasperating men. Her husband, not known for his good temper, was unfaithful and often verbally abused her. Monica responded by killing him with kindness, which evidently won the day. Augustine writes that Monica was largely responsible for her husband’s conversion to Christianity shortly before his death, when Monica was 40.
She found her son a much tougher case. At 17 he left his North African home for the fast-paced seaport of Carthage, where he was to continue his education. He fell headlong into lust and dissipation, became a disciple of Manichaeism, took a mistress, and conceived a son, much to the consternation of his mother. Augustine wrote that she “shed more tears for my spiritual death than other mothers mshead for their bodily death of a son.”
When her son returned home to teach and to live with his concubine and son, Adeodatus, under his mother’s roof Monica continued her tears and prayers. She implored a local bishop to have a word with her wild son; when he advised her to wait it out, she persisted and got this answer: “Leave me and go in peace. It cannot be that the son of so many tears should be lost.”
Then Augustine left for Rome, giving his mother the slip at the harbor. Monica followed some time later, joining him in Milan, where she found he had forsaken Manichaeism but not his mistress. Monica continued storming heaven with her prayers.
Her answer at least, at last, was not far off. Augustine had become a follower of St. Ambrose, Milan’s bishop, who became his model, father figure, and teacher in Christianity. The crowning day of Monica’s life came in 386, when her son converted to Christianity. From that day on, they searched for truth together. Augustine defended his unusual habit of talking philosophy with his mother, calling her a true lover of wisdom.
On a journey back home to Africa, Augustine and his mother spent an evening talking of the spiritual life, which culminated in a shared mystical vision. Afterward, Monica turned to her now-converted son and said, “What I am still to do or why I am here in this world, I do not know, for I have no more to hope for on this earth. God has granted my wish and more besides…” She died nine days later.
In The Restless Heart, Michael Marshall writes, “Surely we could be forgiven in a post-Freudian age for seeing some destructive aspects in such destructive aspects in such an overbearing mother figure who frankly pursued Augustine, not unlike the Hound of Heatine, not unlike the Hound of Heaven, down the corridors of the first 33 years of his life.” But Augustine’s own words about his mother are only positive: “In the flesh she brought me to birth in this world; in her heart she brought me to birth in your eternal light.”
Image: Wikimedia Commons
