Homily for Tuesday, 27 August 2019– Memorial of St. Monica

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Psalm 139:1-3, 4-6; Matthew 23:23-26

Tuesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

What do we know about St. Monica, whose memorial we celebrate today? Much of what we know about St. Monica, we know from the writings of her far more famous son, St. Augustine. But St. Augustine’s feast day is tomorrow, so we will speak more on St. Monica today and leave our focus on St. Augustine for tomorrow. Well, that is easier said than done, so interconnected is Monica’s life with that of Augustine.

From Augustine, we know that Monica was an exceptionally generous woman. When Monica sought advice from saintly bishops including Ambrose of Milan on how to bring her wayward Augustine to the Christian faith—it would have been notable enough, especially for a woman of Monica’s time, to have had the personal connections with bishops as Monica did—as Augustine would write later in his Confessions, Monica prepared food and drink to leave at churches and oratories where she would stop to pray. She explicitly instructed these churches to give this food and drink to the poor.

But Monica is maybe best known as a saint who suffered greatly because of the infidelity of her pagan husband Patricius and the unruliness of her son Augustine. We hear from 1 Thessalonians and Matthew’s Gospel today about the suffering St. Paul endured in places like Philippi and the suffering the religious leaders of Jesus’ time caused Jesus. In St. Paul’s case, instead of his suffering causing him to become bitter, because St. Paul had suffered so he became all the more generous not only in preaching “the Gospel of God” but in offering the witness of his life to care for the Christian community of Thessalonica. And, we know, Jesus’ suffering at the hands of the religious authorities of his day culminated in his death on the cross, the ultimate sacrifice of his very self for our salvation.

Still, the suffering St. Monica endured are especially remarkable because she endured this suffering from the people closest to her, her husband and her son. And her love, her suffering, her tears that have been the subject of several beautiful paintings and other works of art, were instrumental in bringing Patricius (on his deathbed) and later Augustine to the faith of Jesus Christ. Augustine spends some of the most poignant pages of his Confessions and other writings movingly mourning his mother, Monica, since she had died not long before Augustine became a bishop and perhaps the most prolific Christian writer to date. Monica was, without doubt, instrumental in Augustine’s and maybe Patricius’ (although he is not named as such) becoming saints.

Monica is the patron saint of people in difficult marriages, people who suffer difficult relationships with their children and family members, and victims of infidelity and abuse. I encourage anybody who has suffered or knows anybody who has suffered any of these experiences to pray for the intercession of St. Monica. Pray for the intercession of saints like Paul of Tarsus, who went from causing good people to suffer to suffering persecution for the Gospel. And may we unite our prayers to those of our Lord, whose suffering and death alone redeems all suffering once for all and saves us.

Let me be clear about this: The Church does not require anybody to remain in an abusive relationship that places our well-being and even life in danger. But saints like Monica and Paul and the suffering of Jesus himself show that no suffering; no perpetrator of suffering is beyond redemption. This is why the examples of saints like Monica and Paul; like Augustine, whose feast we will celebrate tomorrow, and like our Lord Jesus himself, and our prayers through these great figures of our faith matter.