Behind this great man was a great... mother

"Saint Augustine and his mother, Saint Monica" by Ary Scheffer, 1846

Saint Augustine of Hippo was a mama’s boy!?

Today, the traditional western European church celebrates Saint Monica’s day (c. 330 – 387 Anno Domini). She was the mother of Saint Augustine and the main reason – or insistence – for the great life and contribution to Christendom her son would have.

Given in marriage to Patricius - a pagan Roman man - most of Monica’s young life would be spent in fervent prayer for her husband who, though of a violent nature and opposed to her Christian faith, always held her in high regard – like a true noble pagan man of old. She shared a home with a mother-in-law who, with her quarrelsome character, was an added pain to her life in a household where she felt as if she did not belong.

Augustine was one of her three children surviving infancy, and his ill health until early adulthood was an added reason for fervent prayer on Monica's part. Upon regaining health, the 17-year-old Augustine was bent into a wayward life that brought much distress to his mother. When he finally made a first decision regarding the Christian faith, he became a Manichean – a sect that believed in the separation of the spiritual world from the physical world, with the later deemed to belong only to evil. Apart from severely impacting a believer’s view on the divinity of Christ, this sect – as all ideologies too hard on the flesh – was full of adherents leading a life of debauchery. Young Augustine was one of them.

Monica never stopped praying and insisting her son turned to the true doctrine, even to his great displeasure. One could say she took tough love to all new levels, first rewarded with her husband’s and mother-in-law’s conversion and baptism, as a sign to the great joy ahead of her prodigal son’s return to God. Her son would later recall in his “Confessions” that she – arguably maintaining some pagan practices and customs – would insist on presenting offerings of porridge, bread, water, and wine to the oratories of the time, later to transfer them to the poor, as additions to her prayers. After all, the family remained of Berber roots, ethnicity, and culture.

To escape his mother – as all true men must at one point do, even in the case of the best of mothers – Augustine tricked her into believing he was going to meet with friends, when in reality he set forth to Rome. It needs to be added here that the family resided in Carthage – nowadays Algeria – in the times when the northern parts of Africa were still European to all intents and purposes, before the caliphate curse fell on them.

Desperate, Monica followed her son to the eternal city and, when she learnt he had left for Milan, she followed him there too. There she met Saint Ambrose, whose teachings as per Monica’s instruction would be the turning point for Augustine’s return to the true faith.

The Lord showed His kindness and faithfulness to her while she was still on this earth. Her son converted and set on the path to becoming the great Saint Augustine of Hippo we all love and admire. It took 17 long years of prayer, heartbreak and incessant tough motherly love.

Saint Monica is an inspiration for how our role – especially the role of mothers – is to infinitely seek God in our life, His guidance in the lives of those He has blessed us with – especially children, even the prodigal ones – and search the blessing of other like-minded saints who can share the burdens of this world with us and help us in the path to holiness.