Saint Monica

posted in: Homilies, Saints | 0

Today’s readings.

The kind of persistent prayer for those who were important to Saint Paul, as he speaks about in today’s first reading from his second letter to the Thessalonians, was something that Saint Monica practiced every day of her life.  This was a woman in love with God and the Church, and her family, although the latter was pretty difficult for her.  But her persistent prayer won them for Christ and the Church.

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’s oldest son was Augustine.  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.  From that time on she stayed close to her son, praying and fasting for him.  In fact, she often stayed much closer than Augustine would have liked!

Augustine, followed by his mother, eventually traveled to Rome and then Milan, where he came under the influence of the bishop, St. Ambrose, who also became Monica’s spiritual director.  There 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, in the year 387, St. Ambrose baptized Augustine and several of his friends.  Soon after, his party left for Africa.  Although no one else was aware of it, Monica knew her life was near the end.  She told Augustine, “Son, nothing in this world now affords me delight.  I do not know what there is now left for me to do or why I am still here, all my hopes in this world being now fulfilled.”  She became ill shortly after and suffered severely for nine days before her death.

Monica was a woman who accomplished much by her persistent prayer.  It might be well for us today to ask for a portion of her spirit of prayer that we might accomplish God’s glory in our own time and place.