Saint Monica, mother of Saint Augustine
It is celebrated every year on May 4
Saint Monica, mother of Saint Augustine (celebrated on June 15), was born in 332 AD. in the city of Tagasti in northern Africa from Christian parents, pious and God-loving. She married the national commander Patrikios, who had a completely different character from Agia. He felt disturbed by her incessant prayer, found her charitable disposition excessive, could not understand her disposition to visit the sick and the sick. St. Monica faced this whole situation with prayer and struggled to bring up her two sons and her daughter with the education and admonition of the Lord, despite the fact that her husband did not agree to the baptism of his children. Agia did not resist Patrick’s violent temper and moral deviations. He knew that what is impossible for men, is possible with God.
That’s why she was very discreet and patient. The prayer of the Saint was heard and God enlightened the heart of Patrick and after sixteen years he was baptized a Christian, to sleep in peace in 371 AD. A few years later, on the night of Easter on April 25, 387 AD, Augustine was baptized by Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan and the Saint was present at the baptism of her son. Saint Augustine writes about the attitude of Monica’s mother in his “Confessions”:
“My mother shed more tears for me than mothers shed for their dead children. With the fervor of faith, which her great piety gave her, she saw me as morally dead. And You Lord heard her prayer and did not despise her tears, with which she watered the ground, everywhere she prayed. Her pains to regenerate me through the Spirit were harder than those she suffered to give birth to me through the flesh.”
Saint Monica, feeling that she had fought for the faith of Christ, returned to Africa and slept peacefully, after a short illness, in the city of Ostia. She had indeed fulfilled her holy purpose and her witness for Christ. She was buried in Ostia and her holy relics were transferred after a few years to Rome, on April 9.
