The Tears That Made Two Saints

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - August 24, 2007

Even though God created marriage and family to be an earthly image of the loving communion of persons who is the Blessed Trinity, many families do not bear even the slightest resemblance to this divine template.

Last Sunday, Jesus even went so far as to say that because of him, families would be divided straight down the middle, three against two, fathers against sons, daughters against mothers and in-laws against everyone (Lk 12:50-53). This is not because Jesus is divisive but because sin divides; once someone in a family puts Jesus first, others who wish to be first get jealous and angry.

This sad truth is one of Jesus' most often fulfilled prophecies — but the fact that Jesus told us in advance that it would happen is scant consolation to those whose families are torn apart. Moreover, faithful in such divided houses often are tormented by a concern that goes beyond their daily lack of harmony: what may become of their wayward family members who reject the faith altogether or who choose not to live by it. Few are the parents and grandparents whose hearts are not eventually pierced by the prodigals in their own direct line.

To all those in these circumstances, the saint we celebrate on Monday is perhaps the greatest example of hagiographical hope.

Saint Monica was born in Tagaste (modern day Algeria) in 332. She was baptized as a young woman shortly before her parents gave her in marriage to a violent and dissolute pagan named Patricius. Though he was rich, he could not take Monica's generosity to the poor. Though she was as faithful and loving to him as she sought to be toward God, he constantly chastised her piety. If all of that was not hard enough to bear, her cantankerous mother-in-law lived with them and daily multiplied the insults.

All of this could have driven Monica to divorce and despair, but instead it propelled her to even greater devotion to God and them. For 17 years, she joined her sufferings to prayers for their conversion. Eventually, the power of God's grace and the example of her Christian virtues penetrated their hardened hearts and they both received baptism. For her husband it was just in time — he died a holy death less than a year later.

But all of that suffering was just a warm up.

The oldest of her three children, Augustine, was then a brilliant teenage rhetoric student living away from home in Carthage. She hoped that he would follow the example of his father's conversion, but, instead, he went full-steam in the opposite direction. He joined the Manichean heretics. He invited a woman to cohabitate with him and fathered a child out-of-wedlock. When he would come home, he would intentionally blaspheme so much that Monica prevented him from eating or sleeping at home until the budding rhetorician learned to discipline his tongue.

Monica prayed unceasingly for her son's conversion. She fasted. She got friends to pray. She arranged for priests to argue with him. She flooded her bed and various churches with her tears. When Augustine decided he was going to Rome, Monica, fearing lest he never convert, decided to go with him. While waiting in port before their departure across the Mediterranean, however, Augustine lied to his mother about the departure time and left without her, caring so little about her as to leave his own mother helpless in a busy metropolis, without any word as to his whereabouts.

But she didn't give up. A bishop, seeing her weeping, assured her on behalf of God, "It is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish."

So she boarded a ship to Rome to look for Augustine there. She eventually received word that he was among the rhetoricians in Milan, and that's where she and the Good Shepherd at last found their lost sheep.

Thanks to the help of the bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose, who captivated Augustine first by his oratory and then by his faith and charity, Augustine renounced Manicheanism, accepted the Christian faith, made a promise of celibacy and received the gift of baptism at the age of 32.

Mother and son decided to return home to Africa, but Monica would not make it. She took ill in Ostia and was soon on her deathbed. Augustine was now the one full of tears, but Monica replied, "Son, my hopes in this world are now fulfilled. All I wished to live for was that I might see you a Catholic and a child of heaven. God has granted me more than this in making you despise earthly felicity and consecrate yourself to his service."

It was because of Monica's ceaseless prayers and tears that not only did her son "not perish" but became the great Saint Augustine about whom we will hear more next week.

But it was also because of her persevering prayers and tears for both her son and her husband that she became the great Saint Monica.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.