We
are committed to providing excellence in Catholic Education in the name
of Jesus Christ, enabling our children to bring their faith and
knowledge into the world.
Widow; born of Christian parents
at Tagaste, North Africa, in 333; died at Ostia, near Rome, in 387.
We are told but little of
her childhood. She was married early in life
to Patritius who held an official position in Tagaste.
He was a pagan, though like so many at that period, his religion
was no more than a name; his temper was violent
and he appears to have been of dissolute habits.
Consequently Monica's married
life was far from being a happy one, more
especially as Patritius's mother seems to have been of a like disposition with
himself. There was of course a gulf between husband and wife; her almsdeeds and
her habits of prayer annoyed him, but it is said
that he always held her in a sort of reverence. Monica was not the only matron
of Tagaste whose married life
was unhappy, but, by her sweetness and patience, she was able to exercise a
veritable apostolate amongst the wives and
mothers of her native town; they knew that she suffered as they did, and her
words and example had a proportionate effect.
Three children were born of
this marriage, Augustine the eldest, Navigius
the second, and a daughter, Perpetua. Monica had
been unable to secure baptism for her children, and her grief was great when Augustine
fell ill; in her distress she besought Patritius
to allow him to be baptized; he agreed, but on the boy's recovery withdrew his consent.
All Monica's anxiety now centred in Augustine;
he was wayward and, as he himself tells us, lazy. He was sent to Madaura to school
and Monica seems to have literally wrestled with God for the soul of her son. A
great consolation was vouchsafed her - in compensation
perhaps for all that she was to experience through Augustine - Patritius
became a Christian. Meanwhile, Augustine had been sent to Carthage, to prosecute his studies, and here
he fell into grievous sin. Patritius died very
shortly after his reception into the Church and Monica resolved not to marry
again. At Carthage Augustine had become a Manichean and when on his return home
he ventilated certain heretical propositions she
drove him away from her table, but a strange vision which she had urged her to
recall him. It was at this time that she went to
see a certain holy bishop, whose name is not
given, but who consoled her with the now famous words, "the child of those
tears shall never perish." There is no more pathetic story in the annals
of theSaints than that of Monica pursuing her
wayward son to Rome, wither he had gone by
stealth; when she arrived he had already gone to Milan, but she followed him. Here she found St.
Ambrose and through him she ultimately had the joy of seeing Augustine yield,
after seventeen years of resistance. Mother and
son spent six months of true peace at Cassiacum, after which time
Augustine was baptized in the church
of St. John the
Baptist at Milan.
Africa claimed them however, and they set out on
their journey, stopping at Cività Vecchia and at
Ostia. Here death
overtook Monica and the finest pages of his "Confessions" were penned
as the result of the emotion Augustine then experienced.
St.
Monica was buried at Ostia,
and at first seems to have been almost forgotten, though her body was removed
during the sixth century to a hidden crypt in the church of St. Aureus. About the thirteenth
century, however, the cult of St. Monica began to spread and a feast
in her honour was kept on 4 May. In 1430 Martin V ordered the relics to be
brought to Rome.
Many miracles occurred on the way, and the cultus of St. Monica was
definitely established. Later the Archbishop of Rouen, Cardinal
d'Estouteville, built a church at Rome in honour of St.
Augustine and deposited the relics of St.
Monica in a chapel to the left of the high altar. The Office of St.
Monica however does not seem to have found a place in the Roman Breviary before
the sixteenth century.
In 1850 there was
established at Notre Dame de Sion
at Paris an Association of Christian
mothers under the patronage of St.
Monica; its object was mutual prayer for sons and husbands who had gone astray.
This Association was in 1856 raised to the rank
of an archconfraternity and spread rapidly over all the Catholic world,
branches being established in Dublin, London, Liverpool, Sydney, and Buenos
Aires. Eugenius IV had established a similar Confraternity
long before.
Sources
ST. AUGUSTINE, Confession,
IX, reprinted in SURIUS. GUALTERUS, Canon Regular of Ostia, who was especially
charged with the work of removing the relics from Ostia by Martin V, wrote a life of the saint
with an account of the translation. He appended to the life a letter which used
to be attributed to St. Augustine
but which is undoubtedly spurious; it purports to be written to his sister
Perpetua and describes their mother's death. The BOLLANDISTS decide for the
contemporary character of the letter whilst denying it to St. Augustine. BARONIUS, Ann. Eccl., ad an. 389; BOUGAUD, Histoire de S. Monique.
