Vigils Reading – St Monica

MONICA AND AUGUSTINE

From the “Confessions” of St Augustine

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We were alone, my mother and I, we stood leaning in a certain window

from which the garden of the house we occupied at Ostia could be seen. Here in

this place, removed from the crowd, we were resting ourselves for the voyage

after the fatigues of a long journey. We were conversing alone, very pleasantly

and “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.”

We were in the present—and in the presence of Truth, which God is —

discussing together what is the nature of the eternal life of the saints: “What no

eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived…”

What we said went something like this: “If to anyone the tumult of the

flesh were silenced; and the phantoms of earth and waters and air were

silenced; and the poles were silent as well; indeed, if the very soul grew silent to

herself, and went beyond herself by not thinking of herself; if fancies and

imaginary revelations were silenced; if every tongue and every sign and every

transient thing—for actually if anyone could hear them, all these would say, ‘We

did not create ourselves, but were created by Him who abides forever’. And if,

having uttered this, they too should be silent, having stirred our ears to hear

Him who created them; and if then He alone spoke, not through them but by

Himself, that we might hear His word, not in fleshly tongue or angelic voice, nor

sound of thunder, nor the obscurity of a parable, but might hear Him, Him for

whose sake we love these things—if we could hear Him without these, as we two

now strained ourselves to do, we then with rapid thought might touch on that

Eternal Wisdom which abides over all. And if this could be sustained, and other

visions of a far different kind be taken away, and this one should so ravish and

absorb and envelop its beholder in these inward joys that his life might be

eternally like that one moment of knowledge which we now sighed after—would

not this be the reality of the saying, “Enter into the joy of your Lord”? But when

shall such a thing be? Shall it not be “when we shall all rise again,” and shall it

not be that “we shall all be changed”?

Then my mother said, “Son, for myself I have no longer any pleasure in

anything in this life. Now that my hopes in this world are satisfied, I do not know

what more I want here or why I am here. There was indeed one thing for which I

wished to tarry a little in this life, and that was that I might see you a Catholic

Christian before I died. My God has answered this more than abundantly,

inasmuch as I see you now, having spurned earthly felicity, become His servant.

What more am I to do here?”