SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow we will celebrate Saint Augustine, our patron saint.
SPEAKER_00: But today, before the church gives us the son, she gives us the mother.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that's exactly right.
SPEAKER_00: Because before there was Augustine the Saint, Augustine the Bishop, Augustine the Theologian, Augustine the Doctor of the Church, there was Monica, the feast day we celebrate today.
SPEAKER_00: We know Augustine well in this parish.
SPEAKER_00: His name is on our church, his story has become part of our story.
SPEAKER_00: But if you want to understand Augustine, you need to know something about the woman who refused to give up on him.
SPEAKER_00: Monica was born in North Africa in the fourth century.
SPEAKER_00: She married a man named Patriscus, who was not a Christian when they married and whose temper caused her considerable suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Then there was her son.
SPEAKER_00: Augustine was brilliant, he was ambitious, he was restless, and for years he wanted very little to do with the faith his mother loved.
SPEAKER_00: He pursued other philosophies.
SPEAKER_00: He lived a life that caused her enormous anguish.
SPEAKER_00: He fathered a child outside of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: He joined the Manichaeans, a religious sect that Monica regarded as a terrible departure from Christian faith.
SPEAKER_00: And Monica watched all of it, and there were many tears.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it what makes her holiness so compelling.
SPEAKER_00: She could not control Augustine.
SPEAKER_00: She could not argue him into conversion.
SPEAKER_00: She could not force him to believe.
SPEAKER_00: She could only love him.
SPEAKER_00: She could speak the truth.
SPEAKER_00: She could pray.
SPEAKER_00: And so she did pray for years and years.
SPEAKER_00: Augustine later wrote that his mother wept for his spiritual death more intensely than mothers weep over the physical death of their children.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
SPEAKER_00: Those were not sentimental tears.
SPEAKER_00: Those were the tears of a mother who could see something in her son that he could not yet see in himself.
SPEAKER_00: At one point she became so desperate that she approached a bishop and begged him to speak with Augustine and convinced him of his errors.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the bishop wisely refused.
SPEAKER_00: Augustine was not ready.
SPEAKER_00: He told Monica to continue praying.
SPEAKER_00: And then came the sentence Christians have remembered for centuries.
SPEAKER_00: The son of so many tears cannot be lost.
SPEAKER_00: And Monica kept praying.
SPEAKER_00: That's where today's gospel suddenly sounds different.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Stay awake, be faithful while you wait.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is a servant whom the master finds doing what he's supposed to be doing when he returns.
SPEAKER_00: We normally hear that gospel as a warning about the end of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: But today I hear Monica, because Monica knew what it meant to stay awake.
SPEAKER_00: She knew what it meant to wait when God seemed to be taking too long.
SPEAKER_00: She knew what it meant to pray when nothing seemed to be changing.
SPEAKER_00: She knew what it meant to remain faithful when the story was not turning out the way she had hoped.
SPEAKER_00: And some of us know exactly what that feels like.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's somebody you love who has walked away from the church.
SPEAKER_00: A son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, a grandchild.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've tried talking to them.
SPEAKER_00: You've tried reasoning, you've tried inviting them, you've worried, you've cried, and eventually you discover one of the hardest truths of love.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot force another human being to choose God.
SPEAKER_00: Monica couldn't either.
SPEAKER_00: But she could place Augustine before God again, again and again.
SPEAKER_00: And then after years of waiting, grace broke through.
SPEAKER_00: Augustine encountered Saint Ambrose in Milan.
SPEAKER_00: He began listening, he began questioning.
SPEAKER_00: He began reading scripture differently.
SPEAKER_00: And finally the restless young man surrendered.
SPEAKER_00: At the Easter vigil in the year three hundred eighty seven, Augustine was baptized by Saint Ambrose.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine Monica watching that.
SPEAKER_00: The son she carried in her womb, the son she had followed with her prayers, a son whom she had shed all those tears standing in the baptismal waters.
SPEAKER_00: Augustine would later say that Monica had given birth to him twice, once into the world and once into eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: There's one part of the story that I love.
SPEAKER_00: After Augustine's baptism, Monica and Augustine began traveling back towards North Africa.
SPEAKER_00: They stopped at Ostia, the port of Rome.
SPEAKER_00: There, mother and son sat together at a window and spoke about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: After all the arguments, all the wandering, after all the tears, now they could finally speak about God together.
SPEAKER_00: Monica told Augustine in effect, there is nothing left for me here.
SPEAKER_00: There was only one reason I wanted to remain alive.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to see you become a Catholic Christian before I died.
SPEAKER_00: God has given me more than I have asked.
SPEAKER_00: Shortly afterwards, Monica became ill.
SPEAKER_00: She was only fifty six.
SPEAKER_00: Her sons worried about burying her so far away from home.
SPEAKER_00: Monica told them not to worry about where her body would be buried.
SPEAKER_00: She only asked one thing, remember me at the altar of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And Augustine did.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we're remembering her at the altar of the Lord sixteenth century later.
SPEAKER_00: There's something else I want us to notice today.
SPEAKER_00: Saint Paul tells the Corinthians, God is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: Not Augustine is faithful, because for many years he wasn't.
SPEAKER_00: Not Monica always understood what God was doing, she didn't.
SPEAKER_00: God is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: That's the foundation of Monica's hope.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's the word we need from our patron's mother today.
SPEAKER_00: Do not give up too quickly when other people on other people you love.
SPEAKER_00: Do not decide that somebody's story is finished while God is still writing it.
SPEAKER_00: Do not confuse God's silence with God's absence, and do not underestimate what God can do with a prayer offered faithfully for twenty years.
SPEAKER_00: Monica could not see what Augustine would become.
SPEAKER_00: She could only see the son she loved wandering farther and farther away.
SPEAKER_00: God could already see a saint, a bishop, a doctor of the church, a man whose words would bring millions of people closer to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And here we are, sixteen centuries later, worshiping in a church bearing his name.
SPEAKER_00: But today we remember the woman standing quietly behind that name, the mother who stayed awake, the mother who kept praying, the mother who kept weeping, the mother who refused to believe that grace had finished its work.
SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow we will celebrate Augustine.
SPEAKER_00: But today we thank God for Monica, because sometimes behind a great saint is someone nobody sees, quietly refusing to stop praying.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the greatest thing you can do for someone, for someone you love, is to simply keep their name before God until grace finds its way.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.