St Augustine

The lives of St Augustine and St Monica go hand in hand. As any mother and son who were either close to each other or clashing with one another, their lives are interconnected in many ways. St Monica’s feast was celebrated yesterday, and St Augustine’s is today. Any woman who spends her life praying for the conversion of her husband and her wayward son deserves to be canonized, especially after her own son becomes a popular Saint and a Doctor of the Church. Monica’s parents brought her up as Christian and married her to an older, pagan man named Patricius. He was a man with a great deal of energy, but also a man given to violent tempers and adultery. Her son St Augustine writes in one of his books that despite the prevalence of domestic abuse at the time, because of her obedience to him, Patricius never beat St. Monica.

She had three children; Augustine, Navigius, and Perpetua. Through her patience and prayers, she was able to convert her husband to the Catholic faith in 370. He died a year later. Perpetua and Navigius entered the religious Life. St. Augustine was much more difficult, as she had to pray for him for 17 years, begging the prayers of priests who, for a while, tried to avoid her because of her persistence at this seemingly hopeless endeavor. One priest did console her by saying, "it is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish." This thought, coupled with a vision that she had received, strengthened her.

As a young man before his conversion, he taught in North Africa, Carthage and Rome. It was only when he arrived in Milan that his life started to change. In the summer of 386, after having read an account of the life of Saint Anthony of the Desert which greatly inspired him, Augustine underwent a profound personal crisis and decided to convert to Catholic Christianity, abandon his career in rhetoric, quit his teaching position in Milan, give up any ideas of marriage, and devote himself entirely to serving God and the practices of priesthood, which included celibacy. Key to this conversion was the voice of an unseen child he heard while in his garden in Milan telling him in a sing‑song voice to tolle lege ("take up and read"). He grabbed the nearest text to him, which was Paul's Epistle to the Romans and opened it at random to 13:13‑14, which read: "Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." Ambrose baptized Augustine, along with his son, Adeodatus, on Easter Vigil in 387 in Milan, and soon thereafter in 388 he returned to Africa. In 391 he was ordained a priest and became a famous preacher, while 5 years later he was made bishop of Hippo. Augustine died on August 28, 430.