Devotion for today: Why not now?

Today is the feast of St. Augustine, bishop and doctor of the Church. We learned in yesterday’s account of St. Monica that her son, Augustine, traveled a rocky and twisted path to his conversion. St. Augustine was brilliant, athletic, popular, secular and a seeker of truth. After years of indulging his senses, he finally came to his senses and made the decision to follow Christ. Here we read the struggle which occurred before he finally turned his will over to God. This selection is from his autobiography, Confessions, which is one of the greatest books ever written.

St. Augustine tells us: I probed the hidden depths of my soul and wrung its pitiful secrets from it, and when I mustered them all before the eyes of my heart, a great storm broke within me. Somehow I flung myself down beneath a fig tree and gave way to the tears which now streamed from my eyes. For I felt that I was still the captive of my sins, and in misery I kept crying, “How long shall I go on saying, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow’? Why not now? Why not make an end of my ugly sins at this moment?”

I was asking myself these questions, weeping all the while with the most bitter sorrow in my heart, when all at once I heard the singing of a child in a nearby house. Whether it was the voice of a boy or girl I cannot say, but again and again it repeated the refrain, “Take it up and read, take it and read.” At this point I looked up, thinking hard whether there was any kind of game in which children used to chant words like these, but I could not remember ever hearing them before.

I stemmed my flood of tears and stood up, telling myself that this could only be a divine command to open my book of Scripture and read the first passage on which my eyes should fall. So I hurried back to the place where I had put down the book containing Paul’s epistles. I seized it and opened it, and in silence I read the first passage on which my eyes fell: Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites. (Romans 13:13-14)

I had no wish to read more and no need to do so. For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled. I marked the place with my finger and closed the book. You converted me to yourself, so that I no longer placed any hope in this world but stood firmly upon the rule of faith.

Prayer of St. Augustine: Lord, our God, You who create us, when our passions are wretched from love of this world, from the life that was our death, when we adopt the life that makes ‘a living soul’, then Your word will be verified in us, according to the Apostle: “Pattern not your life on this world.” And that which you immediately added will follow, “But take on a new form, based on a new mental pattern.” This is not done according to our kind, as if we were conforming to some neighbor’s example or some higher human authority, as if You said, “Let man come to be, according to his kind.” No, You said, “Let us make man according to Our own will and likeness,” that we may experience Your own will at work. Thus does man become new by knowing the God to whose pattern he was made.

St. Augustine, patron saint of printers, brewers, those with sore eyes and theologians, pray for us. (Interesting saint, isn’t he?)

Devotion for today: St. Monica, role model for mothers

The circumstances of St. Monica’s life could have made her a nagging wife, a bitter daughter-in-law and a despairing parent, yet she did not give way to any of these temptations. Although she was a Christian, her parents gave her in marriage to a pagan, Patricius, who lived in her hometown of Tagaste in North Africa. Patricius had some redeeming features, but he had a violent temper and was licentious. Monica also had to bear with a cantankerous mother-in-law who lived in her home. Patricius criticized his wife because of her charity and piety, but always respected her. Monica’s prayers and example finally won her husband and mother-in-law to Christianity. Her husband died in 371, one year after his baptism.

Monica had at least three children who survived infancy. The oldest, Augustine, is the most famous. At the time of his father’s death, Augustine was 17 and a rhetoric student in Carthage. Monica was distressed to learn that her son had accepted the Manichean heresy and was living an immoral life. For a while, she refused to let him eat or sleep in her house. Then one night she had a vision that assured her Augustine would return to the faith. From that time on she stayed close to her son, praying and fasting for him. In fact, she often stayed much closer than Augustine wanted.

When he was 29, Augustine decided to go to Rome to teach rhetoric. Monica was determined to go along. One night he told his mother that he was going to the dock to say goodbye to a friend. Instead, he set sail for Rome. Monica was heartbroken when she learned of Augustine’s trick, but she still followed him. She arrived in Rome only to find that he had left for Milan. Although travel was difficult, Monica pursued him to Milan.

In Milan, Augustine came under the influence of the bishop, St. Ambrose, who also became Monica’s spiritual director. She accepted his advice in everything and had the humility to give up some practices that had become second nature to her (see Quote, below). Monica became a leader of the devout women in Milan as she had been in Tagaste.

She continued her prayers for Augustine during his years of instruction. At Easter, 387, St. Ambrose baptized Augustine and several of his friends. Soon after, his party left for Africa. Although no one else was aware of it, Monica knew her life was near the end. She told Augustine, “Son, nothing in this world now affords me delight. I do not know what there is now left for me to do or why I am still here, all my hopes in this world being now fulfilled.” She became ill shortly after and suffered severely for nine days before her death.

Almost all we know about St. Monica is in the writings of St. Augustine, especially his Confessions.(www.americancatholic.org)

St. Augustine speaks to God about his mother, Monica, at her funeral, in his book Confessions:

“Peace, then, to her and her husband, for she had none before him and none after, to whom she ministered, ‘bringing about the result of patience’ when she made him your prize. May you call others, … your servants and my brothers, your sons and my lords, whom I serve with heart and voice and writings, that as many of them as read this may remember, at your altar, your servant Monica and him who was her husband, Patrick. Through their flesh, in a way incomprehensible, you ushered my soul into this life. May they cherish in memory those who were my parents in the light of this passing world, and are my siblings under you, the Father, and our mother church, fellow citizens of the eternal Jerusalem, to which all your people on pilgrimage aspire. Thus may my mother’s last request for prayers be more richly answered in the prayer of all those reading this testimony than from my prayers alone.

My thoughts: St. Monica is an inspiration to all of us who have worried about the spiritual lives of our children. They may be brilliant, they may be athletic, they may be the most successful humans on the planet, but they may also reject the greatest gift we gave them: the faith. We need never despair, but instead, we must turn to St. Monica for inspiration and guidance. Her 17 years of persistent prayers for her wayward son led to his eventual conversion. He then became a bishop and went on to become a doctor of the Church. St. Monica, patron saint of mothers, pray for us.

 

 

 

Devotion for today: we will not be alone on the judgment day

You are not alone…

 

"When the time comes, as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment,

I've often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God -- and a terror will rip your soul like nothing you can imagine.

But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there'll be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world -- and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement.

They will say to God, 'Spare him, because he loved us!'"

Congressman Henry Hyde