St. Monica’s Prayers Were Victorious
For April the writers for NC Catholics were asked to write about a victory over difficulties and suffering. I decided to use a booklet written by Father JaVan Saxon about black saints.
In this booklet was a recounting of the life and prayers of St. Monica. Father Saxon wrote this some years ago for African Ancestry Ministry to be used as thought fit. I send it to you for your edification, as an example of a victory achieved through prayer.
St. Monica, an African laywoman, is a saint with whom black women can readily identify, because Monica epitomizes the present day black woman.
Saint Monica was born in northern Africa about 331. She was a devout Christian and an obedient disciple of St. Ambrose. Through her patience, gentleness and prayers she converted her pagan husband. To her son Augustine, whom she loved dearly, she gave thorough religious training during his boyhood, only to know the disappointment of seeing him later scorn all religion and live a life of disrepute. Before her death, Monica had the great joy of knowing that Augustine had returned to God and was using his energies to build Christ’s Church and that her younger daughter had become a nun.
Today many mothers wonder what they did wrong, that their sons and daughters forsake the Church when they reach adolescence. Many women today need the hope that their prayers and tears will be rewarded as were Monica’s by the return of their children to the sacraments.
Augustine, Monica’s son, not only returned to the sacraments, but became a great saint and Doctor of the Church. It was he who discovered, after looking for happiness in all the wrong places, that “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” It was a truth his mother had known all along.
- Msgr. Thomas P. Hadden