St. Monica - a Mother's Love

What’s a Christian mother to do when her son lives a profligate life, has children out of wedlock, is lazy, and holds heretical religious views. Pray, pray, and pray some more.

Monica’s two younger children entered the religious life, but her oldest son Augustine was a problem. His book Confessions describes in detail how he misspent his youth and how he resisted his mother’s urgings to repent and convert. Convert he did and became one of the great leaders of the early Church. This in part must be because his mother stormed the gates of Heaven with her prayers and pleas. She was nothing if not persistent and patient.

Monica was born in what is now Algeria in 332 A.D. and at a young age was married to a pagan named Patricius who was a Roman official in her hometown. Monica was a Christian from birth and her piety and good works annoyed Patricius and his mother who lived with them. However, violent as his temper was, he respected Monica and did not physically abuse her. He did often commit adultery and this caused Monica great pain. They had three children who survived infancy. Patricius refused to let Monica have them baptized. He finally agreed when Augustine fell ill, but then changed his mind when the boy recovered. Augustine was 17 and studying rhetoric in Carthage when his father died. Fortunately, with her patience and prayers, Monica had convinced Patricius and her cantankerous mother-in-law to convert a year before he died.

When Augustine returned home his relationship with his mother was strained because he had taken up Manichaeism (a heresy that all flesh is evil). However, she had a vision that he would live to return to the faith and thus she reconciled with him and prayed and fasted for him. At age 29 Augustine decided to go to Rome to teach rhetoric. Monica wanted to go, but Augustine eluded her and took off without her. She followed but by the time she reached Rome, she discovered he had departed for Milan. She caught up with him there. 

In Milan Augustine met the bishop Ambrose. He began to take instruction from him and at Easter 387 Augustine was finally baptized. As he and Monica were travelling to Africa, she became ill and died. She was buried at Ostia, but in 1430 Pope Martin V ordered that her relics be brought to Rome and deposited in a chapel at the Basilica di Sant’Agostino (Saint Augustine). 

St. Monica’s feast day is August 27, with her son’s feast day the next day. Not surprisingly, St. Monica is the patron saint of conversion, wives and mothers. Her prayers for her son brought us one of the Church’s greatest saints, proving once again that God listens and can bring the best out of terrible situations. St. Monica, pray for us.