Remembering Saint Augustine and his Praying Mother

Rosemary Bogdan reflects on Saint Monica's persistent prayer for her wayward son Augustine, who later became a saint.

As mothers, when we hear the name Augustine, don’t we think of the great saint whose mother prayed for him for many, many years? Today, August 28, is the Church’s memorial of Saint Augustine, Doctor of the Church and son of Saint Monica.

Saint Augustine is known as the Doctor of Grace and one of the greatest of all theologians. Dare we think that the prayers of his mother were instrumental in the attainment of her son’s holiness and the tremendous gift of his writings to the Church? Surely, the Lord heard her prayers. Prayer is powerful. A mother’s prayer, I imagine, has an especially powerful effect because it is fueled by motherlove. And what woman does not know the strength of motherlove. I say woman because every woman is a mother in some way. It’s in the DNA.

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Augustine was born in 354 in Tagaste, North Africa. He studied rhetoric and then philosophy in Carthage. There is no question that he was an amazingly brilliant man. I wonder if he tripped a little over his intellect as many very intelligent people do, especially in their early years of adulthood.

Augustine adopted a licentious lifestyle. He lived with his mistress and had a son with her and even embraced the heresy of the Manichees, who believed that all matter is evil. Can you imagine Monica with her head in her hands over this? Did she decide that, well, he’s a good person, God will understand, these are confusing times? I just need to accept him? No, not Monica.

He left for Rome without telling his mother. Somehow, she found him. When he left for Milan, she followed him again. I don’t know if mothers following their sons when they move was common in those days. Not sure it would be appreciated by adult children today, but I see this as a sign of Monica’s tenacity and determination that her son would be saved. She did not give up.

After meeting Faustus, the leading Manichean teacher, Augustine began to question the heresy. Was it that he saw the shallowness? Did he feel in his heart that this was just not the truth? Surely God was calling and revealing Himself to him.

Eventually Augustine met the bishop Saint Ambrose. He had wanted to meet him because he had a reputation as being very learned, not because he was a bishop. How Saint Monica must have rejoiced to learn that Augustine was listening to a holy man.

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Several years went by. Surely the good Saint Ambrose must have treated the wayward young man with kindness, gentleness, and respect. Did Saint Monica become discouraged that several years were passing and Augustine had still not acknowledged the truth? I imagine she prayed then with even greater fervor. In 387 Saint Augustine, at the age of thirty-two, was baptized by Saint Ambrose.

How Saint Monica and all the angels must have rejoiced. God is so lavish. Not only would Saint Augustine become a Christian; He became a priest, a bishop, and a great defender of the faith.

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A mother’s prayer, I imagine, has an especially powerful effect because it is fueled by motherlove. #CatholicMom

Today, on Saint Augustine’s feast day, we recall his spiritual impact.

His over 1700 writings include sermons, treatises, scriptural commentaries, the spiritual classic Confessions and the magisterial City of God. His biographer Possidius wondered how anyone could have produced such a volume of work. At the end of his life, Augustine requested that the seven penitential psalms, copied in large print, be hung in his room. He recited them for the ten days leading up to his death on August 28, 430. (Magnificat August 2023)

The Collect for today’s Mass reads:

Renew in your Church, we pray, O Lord, the spirit with which you endowed your Bishop Saint Augustine that, filled with the same spirit, we may thirst for you, the sole fount of true wisdom, and seek you, the author of heavenly love.

Amen!

The wayward son would become a Doctor of the Church, a great theologian, and a man of true humility. May we never stop praying for our children.

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