Homily for Wednesday, 27 August 2014– Memorial of St. Monica

Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-10, 16-18; Psalm 128:1-2, 4-5; Matthew 23:27-32 

Mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers among us: How many of you worry about your children; grandchildren; great-grandchildren, especially if they are not living and practicing their faith regularly or, in the words of St. Paul, perhaps living in some “disorderly” or immoral way? It can be deeply distressing, especially for mothers (for fathers, too) when children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren seem to drift farther away from religious practice or be living in an increasingly “disorderly” or relativistic way in which the very sense of right and wrong seems to be dissipating.

For those feeling this kind of distress, Monica may be a good saint to whom to pray. St. Monica is the mother of St. Augustine, who lived in many ways a “disorderly” life before his conversion to Christianity.

I find it curious that, in our first reading today, St. Paul ends his second letter to the Thessalonians by advising the Thessalonians to “shun any brother” or sister “who lives in a disorderly way.” St. Augustine was the poster boy for disorderly living before he became a Christian in response to his mother Monica’s dying wish.

If St. Monica had followed St. Paul’s advice literally and shunned her “disorderly” son, the Church would not have gained in St. Augustine one of the greatest minds and most influential and sometimes troublesome figures it has ever known. Instead, St. Monica was for St. Augustine and is for us an example of patience. She is an example of allowing her life of faith to speak, for the most part silently; prayerfully; sometimes through tears for her son.

I do not wish to criticize St. Paul who, in his letters to the Thessalonians, was responding to a different disorder in that community than Monica was with Augustine. Some in Thessalonica in St. Paul’s time were taking advantage of the Christian community. They reaped its spiritual benefits and hospitality without supporting it by their work and wealth.

The example of St. Monica toward St. Augustine and for us may be closer to the kind of faith Jesus urges of the scribes and Pharisees in our Gospel reading today: One that is patient; that is not too quick to criticize or to condemn; that is not hypocritical; that is lived more by silent witness than by loud and visible legalism that can stifle the prophets of our faith whose message challenges us.

There is a fine line between the silent witness to faith that is St. Monica’s example to us and the need to hold one another to account, perhaps vocally as in the case of St. Paul or even Jesus to the scribes and Pharisees. The appropriate approach to a particular situation, whether silence, calm, and prayer, or a more vocal admonishment of those living in “a disorderly way,” is for us to discern prayerfully. We have the example of St. Monica, along with St. Paul and our Lord Jesus in today’s readings, to help us in this discernment through prayer.