VOL.01 NO. 01

Monica wife of Patricius and mother of Augustine and his sister and brother Tomorrow (28 August) is the feast day of Augustine (354-430), who became Bishop of Hippo in North Africa in 395. His parents were Monica, a Christian, and Patricius, a pagan who became a Christian just before his death in 372. Augustine had a brother and at least one sister.

Today we acknowledge his mother, Saint Monica. Reflecting on aspects of her life may call to mind not only the influence mothers can have on their husbands and children, but the extent to which our attitudes and conduct towards women have changed – or not – and the significant role that women have had in the Lasallian story from its beginning, and which continues to have an essential impact in the present.

Saint Augustine and Saint Monica (Gioacchino Assereto, 1600-1649)

When he was 18 Augustine had an affair with a woman who was below his social station, a not uncommon practice at the time. They had a son, Adeodatus. Augustine loved his son, whose intelligence he said left him ‘awestruck’, but who died at the age of 17. He remained faithful to his partner for fifteen years before sending her away. Monica arranged a more suitable marriage for Augustine, by then professor of rhetoric at , but the girl was only 10 or 11. In Roman law, the minimum age for marriage was 12 (as it still was in seventeenth century France), so the marriage was deferred. Augustine found another partner.

Eventually Monica’s prayers for her son’s conversion bore fruit. Under the influence of , Bishop of Milan, Augustine was baptised in 387. He was ordained a priest, and became a bishop in 395. John Cavadini comments that ‘no other single theologian has exercised as decisive an influence on the shape and character of Western theology, both Catholic and Protestant’.

In his Augustine writes extensively of his mother. Characteristically, the writing is addressed to God. Here are some excerpts.

While we were at Ostia by the mouths of the Tiber my mother Monica died. I pass over many events because I write in great haste. But I shall not pass over whatever my soul shall bring to birth concerning your servant Monica, who brought me to birth both in her body, so that I was born into the light of time, and in her heart so that I was born into the light of eternity.

When she reached marriageable age, she was given to a man and served him as her lord. She tried to win him for you, speaking to him of you by her virtues through which you made her beautiful, so that her husband loved, respected and admired her. She bore with his infidelities and never had any quarrel with her husband on this account. For she looked forward to your mercy coming upon him, in hope that, as he came to believe in you, he might become chaste.

At the end when her husband had reached the end of his life in time, she succeeded in gaining him for you. After he was a baptised believer, she had no cause to complain of behaviour which she had tolerated in one not yet a believer.

She was also a servant of your servants: any of them who knew her found much to praise in her, held her in honour, and loved her, for they felt your presence in her heart, witnessed by the fruits of her holy way of life.

I was glad indeed to have her testimony when in that last sickness she lovingly responded to my attentions by calling me a devoted son. With much feeling in her love, she recalled that she had never heard me speak a harsh or bitter word to her. And yet, my God our maker, what comparison can there be between the respect with which I deferred to her and the service she rendered to me?

My mother stayed close by us in the clothing of a woman but with a virile faith, an older woman’s serenity, a mother’s love, and a Christian devotion.

Excerpts from St Augustine, Confessions (translated by Henry Chadwick; Oxford University Press, 1992)

Lasallian Reflection is developed by the Lasallian Formation for Mission Team. For more information contact us at: [email protected] 02 9795 6400 www.delasalle.org.au Or follow us on social media: lasalleanzppng @lasalleanzppng