St. Monica

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Soon afterward he went into a city called Naim, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.

“A large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then he came and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, arise” (Luke 7:11-14).

Today is the feast of St. Monica. She was born to a Christian family in Tagaste, northern Africa, in the year 331. At a very young age, she was given in marriage to a pagan gentleman named Patrick.

She bore him several children, including Augustine, whose conversion she won through constant prayer and abundant tears. St. Monica is a great example of Christian motherhood. She died in Ostia, Italy in the year 387.

She's one of history's most famous praying women. She gives a perfect example of consistent and confident prayer.

Augustine was a brilliant student with a promising future among the intellectuals of the Roman Empire.

She had tried to bring him up in the Christian faith. But when Augustine came of age, he informed his mother that he had become a Manichean. This was one of the pagan philosophical religions that were anti-Christian.

The news devastated her. It seemed that her oldest son was a spiritual lost cause. But she didn't give up on him yet.

She spared no effort to save him, taking him to meet with eminent theologians, arguing with him herself, disciplining him by taking away family privileges, and always, day after day, year after year, praying for him.

Many times she spent entire nights in prayer. And when she did allow herself a few hours of rest, she cried herself to sleep. But nothing seemed to help.

Only after ten years of darkness, frustration, and unceasing prayer was her prayer answered. Her son came back to the Church and became one of history's holiest and most influential saints.

Every one of her prayers before then had been answered, but God was saying, “Not yet.” This experience taught Augustine confidence and constancy in prayer.

He summarizes this lesson later while writing about leaving home. He said he left in secret so that his mother wouldn't go with him. She didn't want him to go for fear of the pagan influences that he might encounter.

Reflecting on that incident, he wrote, “One night I stole away without her. She remained praying and weeping. And what was she praying for, O my God, with all those tears, but that you should not allow me to sail! But you saw deeper and granted the essential part of her prayer. You did not do what it was at that moment she was asking, that you might one day do the thing for which she was always asking.”

St. Monica teaches us to have great faith, trust, and abandonment in prayer. She teaches us how to accept the will of God in the various ways that it comes to us. She teaches us to have a great optimism.

Our Lord said to the young man, the son of the widow of Naim, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” Our Lord works this miracle in souls again and again. Many who are dead to God have been restored to life.

For many years, Augustine, the son of St. Monica, lived outside of God's favor. He was dead to grace through sin.

The saint whose feast we celebrate today is the irreproachable mother, who, with her example, her tears, and her prayers, obtained from the Lord the spiritual resurrection of one who would later become one of the greatest saints and doctors of the Church.

Her daily fidelity to God and to prayer also won her the conversion of her husband Patrick, who was a pagan. She exerted in this way a profound influence on all who formed part of her family circle.

She's a great example of Christian motherhood today, an example for all mothers to pray for their children, to offer up the daily habits or contradictions or crosses or ups and downs of family life or the daily fulfillment of their ordinary duties for the spiritual well-being of their children.

About her, St. Augustine said, “She looks after everyone as if she truly were the mother of all. She also serves everyone, as if she were the daughter of all” (St. Augustine, Confessions, IX, 9, 22).

St. Monica constantly kept the conversion of her son in mind. She wept a lot. She begged God insistently, and never stopped asking good and wise people to speak to her son and to try to convince him to abandon his errors.

One day St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, whom she had already visited several times, took his leave from her words that have been the consolation of so many mothers and fathers throughout the centuries.

He said, “Go away from me now. As you live, it is impossible that the son of such tears should perish” (Ibid., III, 12, 21).

The example of St. Monica remained engraved on the soul of St. Augustine, so that years later, perhaps recalling his mother, he exhorted people: “Do everything in your power to obtain the salvation of those in your family” (St. Augustine, Sermon 94).

Mothers and fathers have to continually remind themselves that their job is to get the souls of their children to heaven.

This is the primary goal of the family, and therefore the ongoing formation of the family, and the exposure of the parents to a regular reception of the sacraments and to other ideas that build up their family life, is of prime importance.

The family is truly the appropriate place for children to receive, develop, and often recover their faith. Don't be fooled into thinking that all the education takes place in the school.

For the last fifty years, the Church has been echoing in different ways that the family is the primary educator; the importance of the formation in the home. The school only puts the icing on the cake.

It's very good for parents to think and pray and discuss long and hard about how to lift up the formative atmosphere of their home.

It's very pleasing to Our Lord to see a Christian family as a truly domestic Church. This is the phrase the Second Vatican Council liked to use to talk about the family. The domestic Church nourishes the souls.

“It's a place of prayer and of the transmission of faith, of learning through the example of parents and the older ones, and of solid Christian attitudes preserved through life as a most sacred legacy” (John Paul II, Address, 10 March 1989).

Try and make your children aware or celebrate Christian feast days in your home, feast days of Our Lady. Make a big fuss about Christmas or Easter so that the message comes through in all sorts of material ways.

“People said of St. Monica that she was ‘twice the mother of Augustine’ since she not only gave him birth, but also won for him the Catholic faith and a Christian life.”

John Paul II has said, “All Christian parents are called to be procreators of their children twice over—as far as their natural life is concerned, and with respect to their spiritual vitality in Christ” (Ibid.).

They will receive a double reward from the Lord and twice the joy of heaven.

So this role of parents never ends. The procreative role of parents may end at a certain moment, but the educative role never ends.

Even when they're elderly, as grandparents and great-grandparents, they still give examples to their children. They still can have a great spiritual input into the lives of those who come after them.

First and foremost, they have to try and transmit the faith in the family, through family piety: an image of Our Lady around the house, a visit to a shrine of Our Lady, a visit to the poor, saying of the Rosary, the example of parents who practice their faith in heroic ways, who truly trust in God. These are the greatest legacies you can leave to your children.

Prayer for your children should never slacken. What a great petition that God must be happy with if each day of your life, each week of your life, you bring to the altar, to the Offertory and the Mass, at the moment of your Communion, the intention of the spiritual well-being of your children.

That prayer for your children is always effective, even if at times, as in the case of St. Augustine and St. Monica, you don't see the fruits, or the fruits are slow in coming.

It may be that the prayer that you say for your child today will produce its fruits twenty years from now, and suddenly some penny will drop, or maybe your children have children of their own.

All prayer for the family is very pleasing to Our Lord, particularly when accompanied by our diligent efforts to lead an exemplary life. We have to back up our piety with virtue, with deeds. Children have to see that we're serious.

Of his mother, St. Augustine said, “She strove to win him to you, speaking to him about you through her conduct, by which you made her beautiful, an object of reverent love and a source of admiration to her husband” (St. Augustine, Confessions, IX, 9, 19).

If we want to lead those around us to God, our example and joy need to come first.

They need to find that something hidden in our family life, faith put into practice, the warmth of the home, affection, truth, loyalty, the carrying of the cross, the cheerful embracing of the hours of ups or downs. Complaints, bad moods, bitter zeal achieve little or nothing.

We can do an awful lot with our words. Our words can encourage our children and our spouses, but we do even more with our actions.

Constancy, peace, cheerfulness, and humble and persevering prayer to Our Lord gain all things. Our Lord makes use of the prayer, example, and words of parents to forge the souls of their children.

They see how you carry the cross, how you smile when you don't feel like doing so, how you give your time and energy to those in need, even when you don't feel like it.

Together with an exemplary life, this being a continuous education in itself, parents have to teach their children practical ways of dealing with God, especially during the first years of childhood, when they're barely beginning to utter their first words, to say their night prayers with them, to say their morning prayers with them.

You’re already forming a future family that they will found. They will remember these things much later.

Children should become accustomed to simple vocal prayers passed on from generation to generation, short, clearly comprehensible phrases, capable of planting in their hearts the first seeds of what will one day be solid piety.

Little children can become familiar with their aspirations, words of affection for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and the invocation of the guardian angels.

Little by little, over the years, they should learn to greet the images of the Lord and of Our Lady with piety, to bless and give thanks at meals, to pray before going to bed.

My father was a great enthusiast of lighting a candle, and so every time we paid a visit to some parish church, we always had to light a candle. Each one of us had to light a candle. He did this also, not just with his children, but also with his grandchildren.

Now, forty years later, those grandchildren are saying, ‘Oh, I remember, we used to go to that particular church with Granddad to light a candle.’ And of course, children love fire. But through these little details of piety, something remains.

Parents should never forget that above all, their sons and daughters are children of God. They need to teach them how to behave like that: in moments of anxiety before an exam, in moments of discouragement because somebody treated them the wrong way or said something strong to them, or they got afraid about something, or they're learning the lessons of life.

From this climate of joy, piety, and the practice of many human virtues—industriousness, sobriety, and effective concern for those who suffer need—vocations will spring up naturally, these being the greatest reward and honor parents can receive on earth.

Pray for the vocation of your children. They might have a vocation to marriage, they might have a vocation to the celibate life, they have a professional vocation, they have a vocation perhaps to bring many children into the world.

By your prayer, your sacrifice, your carrying of the cross, your holy life, you help them to fulfill this mission that God may have given to them.

Pope St. John Paul II encourages parents to create a human and supernatural tone for the encouragement of vocations. He says, “Though the time is coming when you as fathers and mothers will think your children could become enthralled by the fascinations of the present age, do not despair.

“They will always look to you, to see whether you yourselves consider the call of Jesus Christ a restriction or as an enriching encounter in your lifetime, as a joy and source of strength in everyday affairs. More than anything, don't stop praying” (John Paul II, Address, May 4, 1987).

Our Lord may come to knock on the hearts of your children when they're young or He may come to knock on the doors of their hearts when they're much older.

“Think of St. Monica, whose worries and prayers intensified when her son, Augustine, later to become a bishop and a saint, strayed from the path of Christ in the belief that he had found freedom” (Ibid.).

I heard of a son in the family who had gone a bit wayward. The other children in the family were still on the straight and narrow, and the father was complaining to his wife about the son who was simply turning out the opposite of what they had wanted. The reply of the holy wife was, ‘Give him plenty of space.’

St. Josemaría was a great believer in respecting the freedom of your children. You demand responsibility but you also give them plenty of space. And in the meantime, you double your prayer.

“There are many mothers all over the world today in the same situation as St. Monica.” St. John Paul says, “Nobody can thank them enough for what they have done through prayer and sacrifice for the Church and the Kingdom of God. May God reward them for it.

“If the desired renewal of the Church depends for the most part on its priests, then it also depends to a large extent on the families, and in particular, on women and mothers” (Ibid.).

It may be that in society in general in the 21st century, mothers are not nearly appreciated as much as they should, nor the work of the home and the work of the education of the future citizens of society.

But it's interesting to see how our Church gives a great lead here. Mothers can do a great deal in the sight of God and for the family. The greatest service they can give to the whole of society is to be available to and to bring up their children well.

If the prayer of St. Monica as a mother was so pleasing to God, how much more will that of the entire family praying for the same ends be?

St. Josemaría encouraged to always give your children plenty of freedom, but encourage family prayer, even if it's just three Hail Mary’s before going to bed or at some other moment, and the grace before meals.

“Family prayer,” says St. John Paul, “has its own characteristics. It is done in common, husband and wife together, parents and children united. … The words of the Lord promising his presence among us can be applied to the members of the Christian family in a special way: ‘I say to you, further, if two of you shall agree on earth about anything at all for which they ask, it shall be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together for my sake, there am I in the midst of them’” (Matt. 18:19-20, John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris consortio, November 22, 1981).

Through common prayer, the members of the family are brought together with greater strength, among themselves, and with God.

“The gist of family prayer is family life itself: joys and sorrows, hopes and disappointments, births and birthday celebrations, the wedding anniversary of the parents, departures, separations, homecomings, important and far-reaching decisions, the death of loved ones.”

St. John Paul says, “These moments mark God's loving intervention in the family's history. It should also be seen as a suitable moment for thanksgiving, for petition, for trusting abandonment of the family into the hands of their common Father in heaven.

“The dignity and responsibility of the Christian family as the domestic Church can be achieved only with God's unceasing aid, which will surely be granted if it is humbly and trustingly petitioned for in prayer” (Ibid.).

The center of the Christian family should be the Lord. Small little children, even before they come to speak, can learn these lessons.

A father told me recently his one or two-year-old son sleeps with him and his mother, and each night they kneel in front of the image of Our Lady to pray three Hail Mary’s. If ever he forgets, the two-year-old points to the image of Our Lady in the room and reminds the father that they haven't prayed to Our Lady. This little kid picks up these messages like an alarm clock.

Whatever circumstance may be incomprehensible through a strictly earthbound outlook, it's understood to be permitted by God for the greater good of all.

We know that these difficult moments pass, difficult winds will blow, and if God permits these difficult situations, possibly He wants to show us or help us to learn what real faith is, what real hope is, and what real love is.

All these family difficulties should not lead us to discouragement or bitterness, but to an increased trust in Our Lord and to abandonment in the hands of the Father of all.

Today we can ask St. Monica for the constancy that she had in prayer, for her perseverance, her fortitude, her optimism.

May she help all families to preserve the treasure of family piety, though the habits now prevalent in many places may not be conducive to it.

We have all the strengths in the family. We have all the answers. Such a situation can lead us to greater resolve that God can be truly the center of every home, beginning with our own.

In that way, our family life will be a foretaste of heaven. The joys that our children experience and see in our own loving family home will help them to have an appreciation of the eternal happiness, the eternal wedding feast, to which we are called.

We can ask Our Lady, Queen of the Family: Help us to have a special antenna in the whole course of our life, to build up our family life, to take care of details, to be very sensitive to all the wonderful things that the Church teaches us about the family.

Perhaps we can go and read again some of the great documents of the last twenty, thirty years: John Paul II’s Familiaris consortio, the Charter of the Rights of the Family, and so many other wonderful ideas that the Church has to give to us with the influence of the Holy Spirit.

Mary, Queen of the Family, pray for us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

KI