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Saint Monica |
Saint Augustine of Hippo |
Saint Monica
Patron Saint of Mothers, Wives and Homemakers, the Feast of St. Monica is August 27th. Born into a Christian family in Tagaste (present day Algeria), North Africa, in 332, Monica married at age 14 and devoted her life to prayer and virtuous living, despite much difficulty with her verbally abusive husband and mother-in-law. After 20 years of marriage, her husband Petrucius, and his mother, converted. He died inside the next year.
Saint Monica also shed many tears and prayed fervently for 17 years for her educated but wayward son, Augustine, who had a mistress with whom he shared a child.
While he was devoted to the Manichean heresy, Monica had a vision that Augustine would be converted. When Augustine had finally turned to celibacy, he, Monica, and the grandson, lived in community with family and friends in Milan, where St. Ambrose baptized Augustine at Easter in 387.
Satisfied that God had answered Monica’s years of pleading prayer, she died on route back home to Tagaste that same year, in Ostia. Her remains now reside in the Basilica of St. Augustine in Rome.
Saint Augustine of Hippo
August 28th marks the Feast of Saint Augustine of Hippo. He was born in 354 A.D. in Tagaste, North Africa. His mother, St. Monica, taught him the Christian faith, but he was not baptized, due to his pagan father’s resistance. At age 17, he followed his intellectual pursuits in Carthage to study rhetoric and immersed himself into a worldly and sinful lifestyle, going against everything that his mother had taught him. Eventually having a mistress who bore his son, he became a professor of rhetoric in Carthage and years later in Milan.
It was in Milan that he came into contact with St. Ambrose and his life took a turn for the better. He sent away his mistress and in 386, Augustine had a miraculous conversion when he heard the voice of a child saying, "Take up and read! Take up and read!" He picked up a bible and read the first passage he saw,
“[Not] in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.” (Romans 13:13-34).
In 387, he and his son were baptized by Bishop Ambrose of Milan, and he adopted a monastic community lifestyle. Ordained in 390, he moved to Hippo where he became Bishop in 396 and served 35 years. He made great strides in his sermons and in writings on philosophy and theology. Considered a Doctor of the Church, his influential works include Confessions and The City of God, as well as his writings on Freewill and The Trinity.
