St. Monica

This past week, the Church celebrated the feast of St. Monica. For those who may not be familiar with Monica, she is the mother of St. Augustine. Augustine walked away from the Faith at a young age, and he spent many years devoted to a pseudo-religion called Manichaeism. Monica was distraught at her son’s turning away from Christ, and spent all of those years in prayer, offering even her tears for her son’s conversion. Eventually, as Augustine himself puts it, “[God] flashed and shone, and broke through [his] blindness;” God got through to Augustine and led him back to the Faith. Both Augustine and the Church attribute her prayers as one of the chief influences that eventually brought him to the Faith, even if in a behind-the-scenes manner.