St. Monica’s Heartbreak: A Catholic Mother’s Fight for St. Augustine
Episode 42: St. Monica’s Heartbreak: A Catholic Mother’s Fight for St. Augustine
What do you do when someone you love walks away from the Catholic faith?
For St. Monica, the answer unfolded over years of prayer, grief, patience and a son she could not control. Long before St. Augustine of Hippo became one of the greatest theologians in Christianity and a Doctor of the Catholic Church, he was a brilliant, ambitious young man who rejected his mother’s faith, embraced Manichaeism and pursued a life that left Monica deeply worried for his soul.
In Part 1 of this Rebel Saints deep dive into St. Monica and St. Augustine, we go back before the halos and holy cards to meet them as they actually were: Monica navigating a difficult marriage, learning discipline and praying for the people she loved; Augustine chasing pleasure, intellectual certainty and success; and a mother trying to remain faithful while her son moved farther from the Christianity she hoped he would embrace.
We also explore Augustine’s infamous pear theft, his relationship with the unnamed mother of his son Adeodatus, his attraction to Manichaeism, Monica’s famous tears and the devastating night Augustine deceived his mother and sailed away from North Africa without her.
For Catholics praying for a child, spouse, friend or family member who has left the Church, St. Monica’s story raises a difficult and deeply relevant question: How do you keep trusting God when the person you are praying for appears to be moving in the opposite direction?
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse: The Catholic Church does not teach that a spouse must remain in a dangerous or abusive situation. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops offers pastoral guidance and resources for those experiencing domestic violence.
USCCB: When I Call for Help — A Pastoral Response to Domestic Violence Against Women
If you are experiencing domestic abuse in the United States, the National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 800-799-SAFE (7233) or by texting START to 88788. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
References & Further Reading
Purchase a copy of St Augustine’s Confessions on Amazon
St. Augustine’s Confessions may be read for free online - via Gutenburg
St. Augustine, Confessions, Book II — Augustine’s famous account of stealing pears as a teenager and his later reflection on why human beings sometimes choose wrongdoing simply because it is wrong.
Read Confessions, Book IISt. Augustine, Confessions, Book III — Augustine’s years in Carthage, his attraction to Manichaeism, St. Monica’s grief over his rejection of Christianity, her dream about his eventual return to the faith, and the famous account of her tears.
Read Confessions, Book IIISt. Augustine, Confessions, Book IV — Augustine reflects on the roughly nine years he spent associated with the Manichaeans and on his pursuit of reputation, intellectual achievement and worldly desires.
Read Confessions, Book IVSt. Augustine, Confessions, Book V — Augustine recounts his growing dissatisfaction with Manichaeism, his decision to leave Carthage for Rome, and the night he secretly sailed away while Monica prayed nearby at a shrine associated with St. Cyprian.
Read Confessions, Book VSt. Augustine, Confessions, Book VI — Augustine describes Monica’s arrival in Milan, St. Ambrose’s growing influence, the marriage arrangements Monica helped make for him, and the painful separation from the unnamed woman with whom Augustine had shared many years and had his son Adeodatus.
Read Confessions, Book VISt. Augustine, Confessions, Book IX — one of the major sources for St. Monica’s own life, including Augustine’s account of her youthful habit of drinking wine, her marriage, character and later relationship with her son.
Read Confessions, Book IXPope Benedict XVI on St. Augustine and St. Monica — Benedict reflects on Augustine’s search for truth, Monica’s role in his life and the spiritual significance of their relationship.
Read Benedict XVI’s General Audience on St. AugustinePope Benedict XVI on St. Monica — a particularly useful short Vatican source describing Monica as a model and patroness of Christian mothers and highlighting her perseverance in prayer for Augustine’s conversion.
Read Benedict XVI on St. Monica
TRANSCRIPT
Hey Rebels, welcome back to Rebel Saints Podcast. I'm your host, Nicole, and I am so excited for today's episode. As I record this, it is the feast of Saint Monica, it's her feast day. I have been so swamped with work and it's wedding season, so my husband and I have been busy, doing that, and then I actually tweaked my back.
And so even as I sit here, I am very uncomfortable. But I was like, if I don't do this, it's just not gonna happen. And I have been wanting to share these saints with you, to talk about them and to see what we can learn from them Saint Augustine spent years of his life rejecting his mother's religion. It was her constant faith.
Even when she probably doubted and she got really pissed off at him she never stopped wanting what she knew he needed. I think that's the greatest example she gives. Saint Augustine of Hippo, I call the patron of this podcast, the inspiration for this podcast. And he is one of our doctors of our church, the greatest theologians.
That just shows that God is working on us and God is always just there waiting to help us, like be the best we can be with Christianity. All right, that was so cheesy. Anyway, like I said, today is August twenty seventh and yes, the Catholic Church does celebrate Saint Monica today and tomorrow we will be celebrating the feast of Saint Augustine. So this is gonna be a two part episode 'cause I have a lot of information to get into and I mean you haven't even you haven't even heard our theme song.
So let's just let's take a little break, but don't go away 'cause this is gonna be a great episode. All right, welcome back to Rebel Saints. Thanks so much for sticking around. Let's ask this question.
What do you do when someone you love is making choices you can't control? And Monica spent years discovering the answer to that very question. While her son Augustine spent years being the reason why she needed one. This story of these two saints takes place in northern Africa.
And Monica was born around three thirty-one AD, In what is now Algeria. I don't think a lot of people realize how strong a foothold Christianity had in Africa, That is something that I want you to keep in your mind, okay? Because European art, right? Artists tend to create art and people that they resemble.
And so a lot of the paintings and things that we have of Saint Monica and Saint Augustine are very European. More modern, more recent art is actually depicting them, how they probably would have looked. And I think that's a really important to just Mention. So Augustine and Monica, they lived in what is Roman North Africa.
Okay, so this was all still controlled by the Romans. It was an intellectually vigorous region. These people were smart this area had already produced major Christian thinkers, like Tertullian, Saint Cyprian of Carthage, and Cities across the region were connected to the wider Roman world through trade and education, government, and the Mediterranean itself. It was all connected.
And if you look on a map northern Africa and Europe, they're all not that far away from each other. Monica grew up in a Christian household, but Christianity had not yet become the default religion there were still a lot of pagans around her, there were Christians around her, there were people that had, other religious beliefs. But the Roman Empire was moving through like some major changes during her lifetime. And the household that she eventually would marry into was a combined house of paganism and Christianity.
A lot of the details that we know about Monica came directly from Augustine, a significant portion of his book, Confessions, which I will link to it in the show notes and on my website, RebelSaintsPodcast. Com, where he is remembering his mom. And he remembers her with like she's got such a personality. And she was definitely a strong personality.
And she was a woman who was not afraid to share her thoughts and express her opinions, but she was also very smart. And quick on her feet, I think. And I'm so glad that He didn't kind of just not give her due. If you know what I mean.
And I think, you know, saints we especially ones that live so far away that we don't really know a lot about, you know, we can kind of just put them like in this little pedestal and we forget that they were people and they had flaws and they had to do everything that people do, right? And the pictures that we have of saints, you know, like holding flowers and looking like they have a halo behind them. That's not really how they became saints. And so that's what I'm most interested in, because that's that's us now, right?
We are we are called to become saints. And we are called to want to do that and want to be saints in heaven with Jesus. And so that's what I'm most interested in. In with respect to the lives of the saints and what we can learn from them and the example they offer us.
And so Monica had edges, she wasn't just this like one-dimensional person. And according to Augustine, she even developed a small wine problem as a young person. And I was not expecting that, because. When you look at Saint Monica, you're looking at her in the stained glass and you're looking at her, you know, on your prayer card.
She was a woman and she had her troubles and her problems and her bad habits, just like the rest of us, And teenage Monica, I mean, like, how real does that get, right? Basically she developed a bit of a wine habit because there was a servant in her household who I guess helped raise her and the other kids in her household. She would go and draw wine, and probably bring it up. From wherever it was, maybe a cellar or something like that, and back in the day, wine wasn't kept in these perfect little wine bottles.
They were kept in, you know, maybe bigger ceramic jars or whatever, and then probably poured into something smaller, And so what she would do is she kind of began taking a sip here and a sip there. And before she knew it, she developed a taste for it, so when I when I learned that about her, I was like, holy cow, how relatable is this? Because how many teenagers go and sneak, some of their parents' liquor from the liquor cabinet? I mean, I So, basically, she would go, this was her job and her habit grew.
She developed a habit. This elderly servant became angry with her and called her a drunkard. Holy cow, was she like, you know, like totally, totally drunk, like going up to family dinner. This insult of being called a drunkard by a servant totally embarrassed her.
Like it mortified her. And this calling out of her flaws or her, you know, these deficits in her character had her like do a self-eval, basically she corrected her behavior. And now granted, that's easier said than done. And so I going back to the teens, if you do have a teen who maybe has developed a habit, obviously pray for them.
But get them get them some help. Okay. Because it can get pretty bad and the sooner you can nip problems in the bud when they're younger, that easier it can be as they get older. But the biggest thing is to always try to keep an open conversation, a lot of love.
But there are boundaries that are needed to be had with teens. But a lot of times it's just there's probably something else going on and they just need somebody to talk to. And so Going back to Monica, Augustine tells the story about his mother developing a wine habit. This is years later, when he heard it, he was hearing it as a younger person, maybe from her.
As parents and as children, when our when we're little or when our kids are real little, you know, we sometimes look at the adults in our lives or, you know, that we care about as kind of flawless, especially if you have good parents who love you and take care of you well. When you realize your parents aren't perfect, that's kind of an eye opener. Right. And I think, Augustine when he's tells this story, he's doing it as a way of showing God's grace.
Even when operating through what were malicious words, like words not given in love, by this servant to Monica. The servant had been trying to put her down and hurt her feelings. But God used those words to work, this self-knowledge into her. And the insult changed her behavior.
Would that work on every person? No, sometimes that will just cause a person to spiral, especially our teens today. You know, our teens today are a whole other beast, we have to find ways to talk to them in a constructive manner that's not just gonna like completely break them down. Okay.
So But for Saint Monica in the year three hundred and thirty one, this was inconvenient, but allowed for wonderful, I guess like a self awareness or a spiritual wisdom, sometimes the person that's like most annoying to you, right? Is God helping you like stretch you. I hate that, like when there are people in your life that really cause you to take a moment and you're like, I have to show this person grace. Like I they maybe bring out the worst in me, but I gotta reel that in, right?
And that is kind of where I think this lesson in Monica's life could really help us. My middle son brought me some chicken nuggets because I asked him to make some for my daughter for her dinner so that I could come here and record. And you know when I when I tell you there are some kids that you're like, my goodness, you're gonna be the one that makes me a saint. I used to think it was him.
But honestly, I think he's the one that's gonna turn us all into saints. And not in the Saint Monica way. But anyway, I digress. Back to Monica.
Monica's holiness grew through experiences like that one, It caused her to learn self-discipline and self-awareness, patience, and the ability to receive correction long before anyone, was painting halos around her head. And then she married this dude named Patricius. And Patricius would give her a hell of a lot more practice in patience and self awareness. So Patricius was a pagan when he married Monica.
Augustine describes his father as socially ambitious for his son and capable of generosity, while also remembering a man who had a fierce temper and who was unfaithful to his wife. Now marriage in the fourth century. Roman world operated within a legal and social assumptions that can feel pretty foreign to us, especially considering the status and expectations that were placed upon women. Augustine tells us that some of the married women Monica knew appeared with bruises, you know, from violence at home.
He also shares that Monica learned to recognize the pattern of her own husband's anger. And so she would wait, because he was like a hothead, and she would wait until his temper had cooled before discussing whatever had provoked him. Augustine really admired this quality about his mother and how she was able to navigate through what was a very volatile household, but also to kind of gain power and, authority or maybe even some equality with her husband in the way that she conducted herself. And saying this, I want to be very careful in how I articulate this, because we're describing a biography of a saint who lived in the very early part of, the fourth century, she didn't have what would be described as a healthy marriage.
Okay? And women and men who are in these unhealthy, volatile marriages or even relationships, you don't have to be married, you do develop to help you cope. And what I want you to not take from Monica in this instance is that this is not an instruction on how to navigate a toxic relationship or an abusive marriage. A woman or a man being harmed by their spouse, you don't get extra holiness points for another assault.
The church recognizes circumstances in which spouses may need to separate from their husband or wives, particularly when physical, emotional harm has been done to the spouse. Monica lives in a very different legal and cultural environment. And Augustine is telling us how. His mother managed these circumstances that she actually had.
And there are places that you can go to for help, and I will actually put some in the show notes. Monica was also someone people would come to, with gossip and she also became known for refusing to share the more negative or vicious gossips she heard about someone else. Like she would just keep that to herself and not repeat it, which I personally love, Because a of times we can get so caught up in gossip or, you know, spill the tea or whatever. And so I personally hate gossip.
Like I don't I don't enjoy it. And whenever people are kind of gossiping, I always just tend to try to leave the conversation or navigate outside of that because I kind of feel well if they're gonna gossip with you about somebody else, they're certainly gonna gossip about you, like with another person, right? And so I just don't even want to participate in it. And so sh instead of going and say, my God, did you hear what Sally said?
She would just the gossip would die with her. You know, in that in that sense. And I love and I admire that so much about her But what she would do though is if it was positive, she would then she would also she would share that. And so a lot of times, even if there was like a misunderstanding between friends or whatever, she and there was something positive to come from that, she would help reconcile those relationships.
And I that is just beautiful to me. St. Monica, I guess you could say, understood, repeating everything, you hear is generally a terrible contribution to civilization. And, working through all of that and managing her home and trying to love people for who they are, where they're at in that moment, but also wanting more for them.
Her husband eventually became a Christian. And he was actually baptized a little while before his death. I think Monica's story is often treated, as like almost a warm-up act for Saint Augustine, but this Tells us something so much more important about her. And that's long before she became famous for praying for her son, she was doing it for her husband, Monica understood, her assignment with respect to what we're supposed to do for the people we love and even the people we don't love, right?
The people that are hard to love, we're supposed to pray for them. Probably the people even more so that are really hard to love. Right? And she understood like the heartache that, sharing your life with someone else whose relationship with God, was not what it could be, she cared for her husband and I hope she loved him through all those years.
But It eventually led to his baptism and his union with God. And sometimes I think, you know, that's probably just it. That's probably why God put these two together because he knew if there was anyone that was gonna help bring him to the church, right? It was Monica.
And as wives and as husbands, that was what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to help our spouse on their path to sainthood, That's why you're supposed to be with someone who wants to make you be a better person, who's always, trying to help you level up or whatever, Especially on the interior part, like the spiritual part, like the part on how you live your life. And so she did this. She had a lot of great practice with her husband, Patricius, and then came her son, Augustine.
And yeah, he had he added a lot more to this plot. He certainly did. So Augustine. He was born on November thirteenth, three hundred and fifty-four.
And his parents quickly realized he was extraordinarily intelligent. And they made sacrifices to educate him. In the Roman world, a gifted student who mastered rhetoric could rise socially, find prestigious employment, and enter the circles of law, government, or like imperial administration. And rhetoric involves language, persuasion, literature, argument, and the ability to hold an audience.
And Augustine loved it and became really, really good at it. I guess people can become impressed by their own brilliance. And Augustine was no different. Okay?
The man was not humble at all. He was like, Yeah, I am, I am all that, and a bag of chips. That's like an old saying, but whatever. So eventually he studied in Carthage the descriptions of his young adulthood in Confessions are actually pretty candid.
He says that he loved theater and hanging out with his friends and, he loved like what we would call, I guess, hookup culture today. And he really enjoyed that particular part of his life. The man liked sex. And he desired professional success, he loved to be praised, and he wanted to be a part of like the intellectual social circles.
And he possessed that kind of mind that would allow him to get there. But having said all of that, he was also really good at making pretty bad decisions. And He used his life as a philosophical investigation at one point. So, for example, in his book he talks about this time when, as a teenager, he and his friends stole some pears off of someone else's tree.
And, he's like, No one needed the pears. I certainly didn't. And, he said they weren't even that great. And He ended up actually, you know, like saying like he threw most of the fruit to the pigs.
I think a lot of times when people recall these stupid things you do as a young person, you'd be like, Yeah, like we were such idiots, right? But Augustine takes this example of this thing he did as a teenager. And he actually kind of goes into like the metaphysics of evil, which is honestly why he's so great. Because he took this thing that he did, and he's like, this is the mechanics of evil, this is how it works, right?
And he became fascinated by the fact that, He enjoyed the stealing because his friends were there and it was exciting he used this experience because he wanted to understand human beings better and how we humans can be drawn to these things that do very little for our own genuine good and we know it, but yet we still do them anyway. And he's like basically asking the question, why do we desire things that damage us? And how can someone understand goodness and still make choices that undermine their own happiness? He also wondered, why does the human will become divided against itself?
If you've ever walked into confession absolutely determined to like never commit that particular sin again, and then you find yourselves back in confession, three weeks later confessing the same thing, you are essentially part of Augustine's research, Because this is exactly what he talked about. And He knew this kind of experiment very intimately because that's exactly what he would do. As he entered adulthood, his struggles with desire and just kind of filling this personal need for things and success and things that weren't great for him. He became very, very familiar with that.
While he was studying in Carthage, Augustine began a relationship with a woman and he never actually names her. What was her name? I would love to know her name. But basically, this is a woman that he was involved in a very intimate romantic relationship for like a decade.
And he had a child out of wedlock with this woman. She gave birth to his son, Adeodatus which means "gift of God". Augustine clearly loved his son, and he described him as being remarkably intelligent. I'm like, yeah, like you know, he's got you for a dad, right?
The mother disappears in Augustine's story. But we know that the relationship did last for years. And Eventually Augustine was separated from her because preparations were being made for a socially advantageous marriage. And Monica participated in these marriage arrangements.
Class and status mattered. So much during this time. And it matters, I think, even to a lot of people today, right? And Augustine was climbing socially, and this was key to having a lot of your success in this society he lived in.
And so the woman who had shared his life, she didn't necessarily fit into the future that was being planned for him. So She left but Adeodatus remained with Augustine. And, Augustine writes about the separation between the him and his lover in language that really reveals how painful it was for him. He describes his heart as wounded, where it like had been attached to her.
So he clearly loved her. He says that and then he went on to have other sexual relationships with other women while he was waiting until his proposed bride was old enough to be married. Okay. So he's like, Well, I loved her, but she's gone now and I've got needs and so let's go and I think this gives all of us a very clear window into where Augustine was.
So yeah he was very capable of examining anything with intellect. And He had a capacity to know what he was choosing, and how he was consistent at least, there's a quote where he prays Lord make me chaste, but not yet. I think it's relatable, like, Lord help me be a good person, but after I do this thing, or Lord, I'm gonna stop doing this, you know, after this one last time. Kind of a thing.
It's so human, right? And that's why it's like people are people. Like we don't change. Like human nature is human nature.
Augustine asking God to transform him while hoping it begins after that frat party, that weekend is so freaking relatable. Augustine knew he knew he absolutely knew that the goodness He desired what it required. And it wasn't like his lack of understanding that prevented him from doing these things. His desires developed a momentum.
His habits had become very powerful. And he had spent years training himself to entertain and follow his appetites whenever they spoke loudly enough, which was often. And these early experiences, with just kind of constantly seeking and just trying to fill his life with all of these things and experiences really did influence his later philosophy. And when Augustine eventually writes about grace and freedom and human will, he is like working from his own experiences, which I think is why.
What he writes is so relatable even today. He talks about remembering what it felt like to become a man and how he could analyze the architecture of his own desire and like struggling to govern it, right? So like he could say, Okay, like this is how desire occurs and I can't control myself, basically. And through it all, Monica watched.
She watched it all unfold. And then Augustine actually found religion. And that drove her completely crazy. When he was about nineteen years old, Augustine encountered this religion called Manichaeism.
And Manichaeism. Was founded during the mid third century by a person named Mani. He was a Persian religious teacher who created this complicated religious system centered on the enormous Cosmic struggle involving light and darkness. So if you think about Augustine, he was intellectually ambitious.
And, this kind of faith basis had a lot of appeal to him. Because Christianity had left him with questions he felt had never been answered, right? And I mean that's like the mysteriousness of it all. And if questions were answered, they weren't answered adequately enough, which I think so many people can relate to that.
He wanted to absolutely understand evil, the nature of God, and the strange war of desires happening inside human beings. Manichaeism presented itself as intellectually sophisticated and offered explanations that really kind of satisfied him in that time period. And so, he went all out, like full chest. Like he was into this a hundred percent.
And honestly, he remained associated with this movement for almost a decade, like nine years. I kind of imagine his mother sitting at home, thinking about her highly educated son, the son she and her husband had sacrificed so much for. And, he examined her religion and he was like, nah, not for me. And he just moved on.
Hello. So relatable to a lot of people, right? I think, if you are a parent who is struggling with children who have left the faith or, you know, don't want to go to confirmation prep or even first communion prep, like, "Oh my god, I gotta go to catechism today." We understand that tone Right? Because we've been doing that forever, It's like you're f you got a freshman in college and they've been going out and experiencing the world and all of a sudden they can think for themselves and they have all these ideas that are completely not in line culturally.
With Catholicism and all of a sudden they hate everything you stand for... I think that's very relatable to a lot of people. And that is exactly what Monica was experiencing. Augustine, because of the person he was, if he if he could have had a podcast, he would have had a podcast.
So, you know, like I'm sitting here and trying to like introduce you to it and to persuade you to become Catholic And so he debated and he argued with people and he mocked Christian ideas that to him were intellectually crude. Monica was apt Absolutely devastated by these actions of her son. And there was a time where she even refused to like sit at the same table with him because his attacks on her faith had become so absolutely offensive to her. She was like, You are not gonna abuse my lord and my belief system.
So she set boundaries, And I love that. She's like, no, you're not doing this. And then she had a dream. And in the dream, Monica saw herself standing upon some kind of wooden rule or like a line of like measurement, and a luminous young man approached and asked why she was grieving.
She told him she was mourning the spiritual condition of her son, and the young man told her to look around. Augustine was standing where she stood. Augustine being Augustine heard the dream and immediately tried to reinterpret it. Perhaps he suggested Monica would eventually become what he was.
Monica replied that the dream had said Augustine would stand where she stood. I can almost hear her say, kid You're gonna come around. I got you. Don't worry.
And so at this point, she had also begun seeking help from her bishop. She was like, I need you to intercede for this boy, right? This bishop in particular had experience with this Manichaeism movement, and Monica wanted this bishop to sit Augustine down. Dismantle his arguments and you know straighten the whole thing out like yesterday.
And the bishop was like, I'm not doing it. Nope, sorry. Because he understood Augustine's personality rather well from Monica's description, and he recognized a young man intoxicated by his newly discovered ideas would probably turn the proposed theological intervention. Into another opportunity for him to show everybody how smart he was.
So he actually advised Monica to give it some time and he told her to pray on it, because Augustine would eventually read enough to discover the weaknesses in Manichaeism for himself. But Monica continued pressing him because she knew what her son needed, and she was not gonna take no for an answer. So she continued pressing the bishop and she continued weeping and grieving for her son. And so finally the bishop, like I guess she wore him down, and he told her to go in peace because the son of such tears could not perish.
And again, that's like another line that becomes very famous yet Augustine does give her, this other view, which for me is the more haunting one, he says Monica wept for him with the grief a mother would have for a dead child. Because spiritually speaking, that was how lost he appeared to her. She understood that if her son didn't come to know Jesus and didn't come to repent and really embrace God and Jesus he would be separated from her in the next life. In a way he was already dead.
And so she was grieving. And that is just my gosh, it's so beautiful, right? And Augustine writes that God saw those tears as they poured from her eyes and watered the earth wherever she prayed, which is such a beautiful line. And as a mom you know, who has shed tears for her kids and for other kids that I love, I just can relate to that.
I can relate to that so much. Because i there's not a whole lot of like sentimentality around it, right? Like it's not something you would put on a bumper sticker. And if you really try to think of it and look at it from Monica's point of view, when it was occurring She had no idea.
No idea that we would be talking about her son and herself sixteen centuries later. And It again, what are saints? Saints are people of extraordinary faith, ordinary people with extraordinary faith. And so that is what we need to try to develop and grow and have even in the face of such grief.
So, what she saw was her son just disappearing from her, into these ideas that she knew to be false. And, he was having relationships that weren't good for his spirit and his soul or good for him and hanging around people that weren't good for him. And his ambition was carrying him so far away from the life that. She had hoped he would have and that the life that, she knew God could help him have.
And so she prayed without knowing how many more years she would have to pray. She just she just prayed ceaselessly. And I think, that's the part that we really need to focus on with Saint Monica. Because, faithfulness is really easy to romanticize when we already know the ending.
But Monica lived much of this her like her past sainthood she lived it like and she was in the middle of it and the middles can be pretty crappy most of the time Okay. So, again we've got a young man, Augustine, and he wants to go and experience the world and do all these things and Eventually he became very dissatisfied, just like the bishop had said, with Manichaeism And he had spent years, waiting for his teachers to answer these difficult questions. And, the promised intellectual clarity, it never came. Although his career was growing and he was, moving up in the world.
Around 383. AD, Augustine decided to leave Africa for Rome. He wanted to go to Rome because he thought he would be able to find better students, people who had better learning and greater professional opportunities. And Monica actually intended to go with him.
But her son had other plans. So when they reached the port, he actually convinced her that he needed to remain near the ship because a friend was preparing to sail. And so Monica stayed nearby at a shrine dedicated to Saint Cyprian and she prayed. Augustine boarded that ship without her.
And he sailed off into the night and his mother remained behind. When he's writing and reflecting upon this years later, he recounts this story and he's says, I deceived such a mother he recognizes how cruel and insensitive and selfish that was. He was just thinking about himself kids will do that, right? And what we can only hope for is that they recognize That later on.
And so Monica, what did she do? She did what Monica did. She spent the evening asking God to keep Augustine from sailing, because she believed that remaining near her was the safer course for his soul. But that was not a prayer that was answered by God.
He eventually landed or came to Milan, and Saint Ambrose was a person that he engaged with a lot. And they spoke about Christian thought and philosophy. And Ambrose, not yet a saint. Was one of these people that helped lead Augustine to his eventual conversion.
And Augustine later understood that Monica had correctly identified the deepest things she'd wanted while misunderstanding the route by which it would happen. Which I think, yeah, it checks, right? She wanted her son, she desired her son, and she prayed for her son to be brought to Christ, but she thought. He would find Christ being near her, And her influence and who she could introduce him to.
But what he needed to do was board that ship. I think this is a another great lesson that we can take away from this is that, when we pray for other people, there is this Dimension to prayer that can actually be very scary. Because when we ask God for something, we also tend to attach our own plans for that something, right? And there is an outcome that we desire.
But sometimes God has a way of getting that doesn't look like what we want. And that is exactly what happened here. God is not a vacation planner. He doesn't send us that itinerary either, So we're here thinking Why isn't God answering my prayers?
Why is God doing this to me? Why is you know, and it's like all the while he is. He's working. He's just not working in ways that you think he should.
And so the boat leaving to Monica was just an absolute betrayal by her son, right? I can just imagine her when she realized he'd left, didn't say goodbye, lied to her. I can just imagine just weeping and being heartbroken and angry. And later when Augustine is writing about this, he is looking at it through these other layers, And he can see how these two perspectives are important because we often interpret, what God is doing while this story is still in progress.
We can't fully understand the plot in chapter four. Until we get maybe to chapter nine. Okay? And so, yeah, Monica went home and she had no knowledge of who Ambrose was.
I think I'm gonna pause here and end this episode part one here. The next episode I'll pick up with St. Ambrose and Augustine's time in Rome. I think for now we c we can pause and take a break and kind of just absorb what happened.
Anyway, guys, thanks so much for sticking with me. I hope I didn't bore you too much. This is a pretty long episode, but these are two amazing saints and I just I really want to take this deep dive with you. So thank you so much.
Pope Saint John Paul the second has this beautiful quote that says, it is Jesus that we seek when we dream of happiness. And that is one of my absolute favorite quotes, because it is, it's on this same line of thought, right? That our hearts are restless until they rest in him. For now, this is Rebel Saints.
It's a podcast for restless hearts called to be saints. Restless hearts. You are welcome here. Bye.
