Mother and son
As we honor on the 28th August Saint Augustine (354-430), Doctor of the Church and bishop of Hippo, I‘d like to share with you some snippets from his autobiographical writings The Confessions, mainly Saint Augustine‘s beautiful prayer for his then already deceased mother Monica, who throughout her life had unceasingly prayed for her husband‘s and for her son‘s conversion and salvation, and whose faithful prayers had been heard – in ways she probably never could have imagined or dared dreaming.
Her husband received the sacrament of baptism on his deathbed, while her son eventually became a bishop, a successor of the Apostles, of the one holy Catholic and apostolic Church in the midst of tumultuous times, leaving behind not only the testimony of working out his salvation by a life of professing and practicing the one true faith, but on top of it a large ouevre of teachings and treatises.
Saint Augustine‘s baptism
In The Confessions, Saint Augustine relates to us his journey from his childhood years in Thagaste, North Africa (present-day Algeria), to his baptism in Christ at the age of 33 by the hands of the bishop of Milan, Saint Ambrose, interweaving the autobiographical sketch with theological meditations in a poetic style and prayers of thanksgiving and praise.
In the months before his baptism, already fully converted to the triune God in his heart, Saint Augustine decided to renounce his career as a teacher of rhetorics, realizing that it is at odds with the law of Christ and his newly found calling in belonging to Him to lend his body and mind to such endeavors any longer:
“I believed it to be pleasing in your sight that I should withdraw the service of my tongue from the market of speechifying, so that young boys who were devoting their thoughts not to your law, not to your peace, but to lying follies and legal battles, should no longer buy from my mouth the weapons for their frenzy; but I thought it better to retire unobtrusively rather than make an abrupt and sensational break. Fortunately there were now only a few days left before the vintage holidays and I decided to put up with this delay. I would then resign in the regular way, but return no more to offer myself for sale, now that you had redeemed me.“
Saint Augustine, The Confessions, New City Press 2018, p. 158-159
About his baptism in Milan, along with his friend Alypius, Saint Augustine tells us:
“And so we were baptized, and all our dread about our earlier lives dropped away from us. During the days that followed I could not get enough of the wonderful sweetness that filled me as I meditated upon your deep design for the salvation of the human race. How copiously I wept at your hymns and canticles, how intensely was I moved by the lovely harmonies of your singing Church! Those voices flooded my ears, and the truth was distilled into my heart until it overflowed in loving devotion; my tears ran down, and I was the better for them.
Saint Augustine, The Confessions, New City Press 2018, p. 166-168
Not long since, the faithful of the church in Milan had begun to find mutual comfort and encouragement in the liturgy through the practice of singing hymns, in which everyone fervently joined with voice and heart. It was about a year earlier, or not much more, that Justina, mother of the boy-emperor Valentinian, had been persecuting your faithful Ambrose, in the interests of the Arian heresy by which she had been led astray. His God-fearing congregation, prepared to die with their bishop, your servant, stayed up all night in the church. Your maidservant, my mother, was among them, foremost in giving support and keeping vigil, and constant in her life of prayer. As for us, we were still cold, not being yet warmed by the fire of your Spirit, yet we too were stirred as alarm and excitement shook the city.
It was then that the practice was established of singing hymns and psalms in the manner customary in regions of the East, to prevent the people losing heart and fainting from weariness. It has persisted from that time until the present, and in other parts of the world also many of your churches imitate the practice: indeed, nearly all of them.
At this time you revealed in a vision to the aforementioned Ambrose, your bishop, where the bodies of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius were hidden. You had for many years treasured them, incorrupt and concealed in a secret place of your own, until the right moment came when you could bring them out into the open to check a certain person‘s ferocity – a woman‘s rage only, yet a queen‘s. When they had been exposed to the light of day and dug up, and were being transported with due honor to the Ambrosian basilica, some people hitherto tormented by unclean spirits were restored to health as confession was wrung from these same demons. But that was not all. A certain citizen of Milan, very well known in the city, who had been blind for several years, became aware of the riotous joy of the people and inquired the reason for it; on hearing what was happening he leapt up and asked his guide to take him there. He was led to the basilica and begged to be admitted, so that he might touch with his handkerchief the funeral bier of your holy ones, whose death was precious in your sight. He did so, and applied the handkerchief to his eyes: they were immediately opened. The consequences of this were the wide diffusion of the story, fervent praise offered to you, and a change of mind on the part of our enemy, for although she was not brought to the healthy state of believing, her persecuting fury was at least curbed. Thanks be to you, O my God!
From what point, by what path, have you led my memory to this, so that I can include in my confession to you these great happenings, which I had forgotten and passed over? Yet at that ime, though the fragrance of your ointments blew so freely abroad, we did not run after you; and that was why I wept the more abundantly later on when your hymns were sung: once I had gasped for you, but now at last I breathed your fragrance, insofar as your wind can blow through our house of straw.“
“A joy there is that is not granted to the godless, but to those only who worship you without looking for reward, because you yourself are their joy. This is the happy life, and this alone: to rejoice in you, about you and because of you.“
Saint Augustine, The Confessions, New City Press 2018, p. 200
Saint Augustine‘s prayer for his deceased mother Monica
“True, she had been brought to new life in Christ, and even before her release from the body she so lived that her faith and conduct redounded to the glory of your name. Yet all the same I dare not assert that from the time you brought her to new birth in baptism no word contrary to your commandment escaped her lips. And by the Truth who is your Son we are warned. If anyone says to his brother, ‘You fool!‘ he will be liable to hellfire, so woe betide anyone, even one whose life is praiseworthy, if you should examine it without mercy! But since you are not ruthless in searching out our faults, we trustingly hope for a place in your house. If anyone were to give you an account of his real merits, what else would that be but a list of your gifts? If only humans would acknowledge that they are human, and anyone minded to boast would boast in the Lord!
Saint Augustine, The Confessions, New City Press 2018, p. 178-180
This is why, O God of my heart, my praise, my life, I will for a little while disregard her good deeds, for which I joyfully give you thanks, and pray to you now for my mother‘s sins. Hear me through that healing remedy who hung upon the tree, the medicine for our wounds who sits at your right hand and intercedes for us. I know that she dealt mercifully with others and from her heart forgave her debtors their debts; do you then forgive her any debts she contracted during all those years after she had passed through the saving waters. Forgive her, Lord, forgive, I beg you, and do not arraign her before you. Let mercy triumph over judgment, for you, whose utterances are true, have to the merciful promised mercy. Since their very power to be merciful was your gift to them in the first place, you will be showing mercy to those with whom you have yourself dealt mercifully, and granting pity to those toward whom you have shown pity first.
I believe you have already done what I am asking you, but look favorably, Lord, on this free offering of my lips. On the day when her release was at hand she gave no thought to costly burial or the embalming of her body with spices, nor did she pine for a special monument or concern herself about a grave in her native land; no, that was not her command to us. She desired only to be remembered at your altar, where she had served you with never a day‘s absence. From that altar, as she knew, the holy Victim is made available to us, he through whom the record of debt that stood against us was annulled. He has triumphed over an enemy who does keep a tally of our faults and looks for anything to lay to our charge, but finds no case against him. In him we win our victory. Who will reimburse him for that innocent blood? Who will pay back to him the price he paid to purchase us, as though to snatch us back from him?
To the sacrament of that ransom-price your handmaid made fast her soul with the bonds of faith. Let no one wretch her away from your protection. Let no lion or dragon thrust in between by force or guile; for she will not claim that she has no debts to pay, lest she be convicted by the crafty accuser and fall into his power; she will reply only that her debts have been forgiven by him to whom no one can repay what he paid for us, though he owed us nothing.
May she then rest in peace with her husband. She was married to no other man either before or after him, and in serving him she brought forth fruit for you by patience, to win him for you in the end. Inspire others, my Lord, my God, inspire your servants who are my brethren, your children who are my masters, whom I now serve with heart and voice and pen, that as many of them as read this may remember Monica, your servant, at your altar, along with Patricius, sometime her husband. From their flesh you brought me into this life, though how I do not know. Let them remember with loving devotion these two who were my parents in this transitory light, but also were my brethren under you, our Father, within our mother the Catholic Church, and my fellow-citizens in the eternal Jerusalem, for which your people sighs with longing throughout its pilgrimage, from its setting out to its return. So may the last request she made of me be granted to her more abundantly by the prayers of many, evoked by my confessions, than by my prayers alone.“
Saint Augustine, Saint Monica, pray for us!