Vigils Reading – St Monica

RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS MOTHER

By St Augustine1

◊◊◊

When I was still a boy, I had heard about eternal life promised to us

through the humility of our Lord God, coming down to our pride, and I was

already signed with the sign of the cross and seasoned with salt from the time I

came from my mother’s womb. She greatly put her trust in you. You say, Lord,

how one day, when I was still a small boy, pressure on the chest suddenly made

me hot with fever and almost at death’s door. You say, my God, because you

were already my guardian, with what fervour of mind and with what faith I than

begged for the baptism of your Christ, my God and Lord, urging it on the

devotion of my mother and of the mother of us all, your Church.

My physical mother was distraught. With a pure heart and faith in you

she even more lovingly travailed in labour for my eternal salvation. She hastily

made arrangements for me to be initiated and washed in the sacraments of

salvation, confessing you, Lord Jesus, for the remission of sins. But suddenly I

recovered. My cleansing was deferred on the assumption that, if I lived, I would

be sure to soil myself; and that after that solemn washing the guilt would be

greater and more dangerous if I then defiled myself with sins.

So, I was already a believer, as were my mother and the entire household

except for my father alone. Though he had not yet come to faith, he did not

obstruct my right to follow my mother’s devotion. so as to prevent me believing

in Christ. She anxiously laboured to convince me that you, my God, were my

father rather than he, and in this endeavour you helped her to gain victory over

her husband. His moral superior, she rendered obedient service to him, for in

this matter she was being obedient to your authority….6

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 baptized 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. She had been the wife

of one husband. She repaid the mutual debt to her parents; she had governed

her house in a spirit of devotion. She had testimony to her good works. she had

brought up her children, enduring travail as often as she saw them wandering

away from you.

Lastly, Lord — by your gift you allow me to speak for your servants, for

before her falling asleep we were bound together in community in you after

receiving the grace of baptism — she exercised care for everybody as if they were

all her own children. She served us as if she was a daughter to all of us.