Flora Cantábrica

Saint Monica Mother of Saint Augustine

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Saint Monica
Mother of Saint Augustine
(Year 332-387)
Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine, was born in Tagaste (North Africa), about 100 km from the city of Carthage, in the year 332.
Education.
Her parents entrusted the education of their daughters to a very religious woman with a strict discipline. She didn’t allow them to drink between meals (even though the climate in those parts was very hot), telling them: «Now, every time you are thirsty, you will drink to quench your thirst. And when you are older and have the keys to the room where the wine is, you will drink liquor, and this will do you a lot of harm.» Monica obeyed her for the first few years, but later, as an adult, she began to sneak into the storeroom, and whenever she was thirsty, she would drink a glass of wine. It happened, however, that one day she harshly scolded a worker, and when he defended himself, he shouted, «Drunk!» This made a deep impression on her, something she never forgot throughout her life. She resolved to never drink alcohol again. A few months later, she was baptized (at that time, people were baptized well into their later years), and from her baptism onward, her conversion was admirable.
Her husband.
She wished to dedicate herself to a life of prayer and solitude, but her parents stipulated that she would marry a man named Patricio. He was a good worker, but with a terrible temper, a womanizer, a gambler, and a pagan, who had no spiritual taste whatsoever. He made her suffer greatly, and for thirty years she had to endure his outbursts of rage, as he would scream at the slightest displeasure, but he never dared to raise his hand against her. They had three children: two sons and a daughter. The two younger ones were her joy and comfort, but the eldest, Augustine, made her suffer for several decades.
The formula to avoid arguments.
In that region of North Africa where people were extremely aggressive, the other wives asked Monica why her husband was one of the worst-tempered men in the entire city, yet never hit her, while their husbands beat them mercilessly. Monica replied: «It’s because when my husband is in a bad mood, I strive to be in a good mood. When he yells, I keep quiet. And since it takes two to fight, and I don’t want to get into a fight, well…we don’t fight.»
A widow with a rebellious son, Patricio was not Catholic, and although he criticized his wife’s abundant prayer and her great generosity toward the poor, he never opposed her devoting her time to these good works. Perhaps his wife’s example of life brought about his conversion. Monica prayed and offered sacrifices for her husband, and finally, in 371, God granted her the grace to be baptized by Patricio. He was also baptized by his mother-in-law, a terribly angry woman whose meddling in her daughter-in-law’s home had greatly embittered poor Monica’s life. A year after his baptism, Patricio died, leaving the poor widow with the problem of her eldest son.
The difficult boy.
Patricio and Monica had realized that Augustine was extraordinarily intelligent, and so they decided to send him to the state capital, Carthage, to study philosophy, literature, and oratory. But Patricio, at that time, was only interested in Augustine excelling in his studies, being recognized and celebrated socially, and excelling in physical exercises. She cared nothing about her son’s spiritual life, or lack thereof, and Augustine, neither short nor lazy, drifted further and further away from the faith and fell into greater and worse sins and errors.
A mother with character.
When his father died, Augustine was 17 years old, and Monica began to receive increasingly disturbing news about her son’s behavior. During an illness, fearing death, he sought religious instruction and proposed becoming Catholic, but upon being healed, he abandoned his plan. He adopted the beliefs and practices of a Manichean sect, which affirmed that the world had not been made by God, but by the devil. And Monica, who was kind but not cowardly or weak-willed, when her son returned from vacation and heard him arguing against true religion, simply threw him out of the house and closed the doors, because she did not harbor enemies of God under her roof.
The hopeful vision.
It happened that in those days Monica had a dream in which she saw herself in a forest weeping for the spiritual loss of her son. A very resplendent personage approached her and said, «Your son will return to you,» and immediately she saw Augustine beside her. She narrated the dream to her son, and he told her, full of pride, that this meant that she was going to become a Manichean, like him. To this she replied: «In the dream they did not tell me, the mother will go to the son, but the son will return to the mother.» Her skillful response greatly impressed her son Augustine, who later considered the vision to be an inspiration from heaven. This happened in the year 437. There were still 9 years to go until

Augustine, now converted, decided to return with his mother and brother to his homeland in Africa, and they went to the port of Ostia to wait for the ship. But Monica had already achieved everything she longed for in this life, which was to see her son’s conversion. She could now die in peace. It happened that while there, in a house by the sea, while mother and son admired the starry sky and talked about the joys to come when they reached heaven, Monica exclaimed enthusiastically: «And what else ties me to earth? I have now obtained from God my greatest desire: to see you a Christian.» Shortly after, she was seized by a fever, which worsened in a few days and led to her death. She died at the age of 55 in the year 387.
Throughout the centuries, thousands have entrusted their closest relatives to Saint Monica and have achieved admirable conversions. In some paintings, she is dressed in a nun’s dress, as was the custom of those days for women who dedicated themselves to the spiritual life, scorning adornments and vain attire. We also see her with a walking stick, for her many journeys in pursuit of the son of her tears. Others have painted her with a book in her hand, to commemorate the moment she so desired, the final conversion of her son, when, by divine inspiration, she opened and read at random a page of the Bible.
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