NOVENA TO SAINTS MONICA AND AUGUSTINE – DAY 5 (FOR THOSE WHO TAKE ISSUES WITH THE CHURCH TEACHINGS)

OPENING PRAYER TO SAINTS MONICA AND AUGUSTINE

(For the conversion and sanctification of ourselves and our loved ones)

Lord our God, ever merciful to all who hope in you, you adorned your servant Monica with the priceless gift of reconciling her husband and children to you; you listened to her fervent and continuous prayers calling Saint Augustine from the ways of error to serve you in holiness, making of him a sign in the world of the power of the grace of Christ and of the intercession of the saints on our behalf; renew, O Lord, in your Church and in our hearts the spirit you gave to Saint Augustine and Saint Monica; grant that in our thirst for true wisdom we and our loved ones may never cease to search for you, and may our hearts rest united in you, the living fountain of unending love. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

A SHORT MEDITATION ON THE LIVES OF SAINTS MONICA AND AUGUSTINE

(PART 5: ST. AUGUSTINE)

His Mother’s efforts in his return to Christianity

Throughout his book titled “Confessions,” Augustine describes many of his mother’s admirable qualities and gifts including her sincere faith and vast wealth of patience. However, his writing also unveils the fear and worry she lived with wanting to keep watch over her son at all times, and thereby, to a certain extent, desiring to control the course of his life. Even from the earliest days of Augustine’s life, Monica seeks to protect him from any potential dangers to his faith. In his youth, his mother decides not to have him baptized because “if [he] continued to live, [he] should defile [him]self again with sin and, after baptism, the guilt of pollution would be greater and more dangerous” (Confessions 1.11). Here, though aware of Monica’s good intentions in keeping him from being baptized, Augustine acknowledges that in withholding such a powerful grace from him, she could have hindered his spiritual well-being. Thus, though her zeal for his salvation is pure, she fails to remember the primary source and guiding force of faith. Augustine also states in his “Confessions”: “She wept bitterly to see me go and followed me to the water’s edge, clinging to me with all her strength in the hope that I would either come home or take her with me” (Confessions 5.8).

By so adamantly refusing to let Augustine out of her sight. Augustine comments, “For as mothers do…she loved to have me with her, and she did not know what joys God had in store for her because of my departure. It was because she did not know this that she wept and wailed…” (Confessions 5.8).

Despite some of Monica’s overbearing motherly instincts, she remains faithful to prayer and displays humility and perseverance even in the face of discouragement. Throughout Augustine’s account of her, he shows how she advances in the trust in God by learning to leave space for God to work through her prayers rather than through her attempts to manage his life decisions. As stated in his “Confessions: “But you sent down your help from above and rescued my soul from the depths of this darkness because my mother, your faithful servant, wept to you for me, shedding more tears for my spiritual death than other mothers shed for the bodily death of a son” (Confessions 3.11). Though she does not know how long she will need to wait, Monica persists in crying out to God with all her heart, and her prayers do not prove futile. While Bishop St. Ambrose tells her to just pray to God and leave Augustine to discover the truth on his own, she “still would not be pacified, but persisted all the more with her entreaties that he should see me. She had firm confidence that God will answer her prayers. She even uses this developed confidence to bring hope to those around her. Later Augustine writes, “…her anxiety for me had already been allayed. For in her prayers to you she wept for me as though I were dead, but she also knew that you would recall me to life” (Confessions 6.1).

After teachings rhetoric for several years in Carthage, he moved to Rome, where he converted for a time to Manichaeanism, a sect led by a Persian prophet that viewed spirituality as a struggle within the body and promoted avoiding sex, eating only vegetables, and believing that the personal fight between good and evil represented a cosmic battle. St. Augustine was also influenced by the Skeptics, a group that in its extreme forms avoided all activity and human contact by going into the desert. One of its central ideas was that it was impossible to be sure about anything. The city’s famous bishop, St. Ambrose, had an influence on Augustine’s conversion through his homilies.

Finally, her prayers come to fruition when Augustine tells her of his conversion. She was overjoyed: “For she saw that you had granted her far more than she used to ask in her tearful prayers and plaintive lamentations. You converted me to yourself, so that I no longer desired a wife or placed any hope in this world but stood firmly upon the rule of faith…” (Confessions 8.12).

Monica’s testimony remains a source of inspiration to parents of wayward children to humbly persevere in prayer, waiting patiently with trust and hope for the day God will reveal the fruit of their cries. Augustine’s life and account of his mother give witness to Romans 8:28: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” By the end of Monica’s life, she had learned to entrust her son to God through prayer, fully living out Ambrose’s advice to “Just pray to God for him” and truly trust that the “son of these tears will not be lost” (Confessions 3.12). (To be continued…)

Silent Prayer and Reflection…

EVERYDAY PRAYER TO SAINTS MONICA AND AUGUSTINE

INTERCESSIONS

• Lord, you gave Saint Monica the strength to overcome the difficulties of her marriage, help all spouses who experience trouble in their marriage to be a consolation to one another.
• Lord, you comforted Saint Monica in her prayer for the conversion of her son, help us not to despair in times of trial, and to place all our hope in you.
• Lord, you granted Saint Monica the grace of bringing her husband and her son to you, may all wives and mothers be instruments of your love in their families, so that they know how to lead their husbands and children to you.
• Lord, through a true conversion of heart you led Saint Augustine out of the depths of sin to your love, come to our heart, so that we will forget our sins and we will be embraced by you, our one and only good.
• Lord, you inflamed the hearts of Saint Monica and her son Saint Augustine so that they would aspire to heavenly things, may we also long for the supreme source of life.

Full of confidence we pray to our heavenly Father in the words Christ taught us. Our Father… Hail Mary (X3)… Glory be…

PRAYER OF PETITION

Blessed Saint Monica, please add your prayers to all those mothers who are concerned and worried about their children, especially those who have turned away from Christ and His Church. Take them under your protection and give them the courage to walk in the ways of the Lord despite the temptation and false values they find in today’s world. Please also, take my personal request to God for my loved ones with the same fervour and persistence with which you prayed for your own son. Amen. Blessed Saint Augustine, we entrust to your powerful intercession our hearts and those of our loved ones, so that we will all be faithful to the Love and Grace of God who invites us to conversion, to live and rest in Him, to live in the communion of love with all our brothers and sisters and to spread his love to all our neighbours. Amen.