St. Monica (August 27th)

 

Of the three Saints recalled this week,

Aug 27 - Saint Monica

Aug 28 – Saint Augustine

Aug 29 – St. John the Baptist (passion of)

I’ve decided to write about St. Monica, who was St. Augustine’s mother.

She’s a reminder to us that everyone, including people like St. Augustine about whom entire library shelves of books have been written over the centuries, had a mother.

And indeed, as a mother, St. Monica did not disappoint.  Born in the 300s in North Africa, by tradition she was thought to be a Berber, a Saharan ethnicity that has existed from Roman times until today.  Her biography on an Augustinian website says that she was born into an already Christian family of some means.  For reasons unclear, she was married then to a local Roman landowner named Patricius.

St. Monica came to be revered as an exemplary Christian woman in both her devotion and almsgiving even if she lived in somewhat challenging domestic circumstances.

Her husband is remembered as having been abusive though apparently he did respect her charitable almsgiving.

Her oldest son, the future St. Augustine, lived first a somewhat dissolute life, fathering a child out of wedlock, then became somewhat of a cultist as a Manichean who tried to reject all of the world.  But through her tears and her prayers, the future St. Monica brought him back to the Catholic faith.  And as a result, the Western (Catholic) Church gained its greatest theologian of the Patristic Era.

Concern for her son brought her all the way to see the future St. Ambrose of Milan, who apparently told her that she had nothing to worry about, that certainly God would hear her prayers for him.

Finally, the Office of Readings for St. Monica’s Feast Day (Aug 27th) leaves a glimpse into her life and that of her son the future St. Augustine.  It gives the recollections of St. Augustine about the last days of her life, when he and his bothers were with her death bed at the closing days of her life.  The episode reads like that of any loving family today, though it took place some 1700 years ago. 

So please do not lose heart even if one’s personal and family life hasn’t been what one would have hoped it would be. St. Monica (and St. Augustine) will pray for you!

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