Saint of the Week: Monica
5/7/2025
Monica
Christian and Mother of Augustine of Hippo, 387
We know of Monica almost entirely from The Confessions of her son Augustine, a major Christian writer, theologian, philosopher and saint. Monica was born in Thagaste outside the north African city of Carthage, in what is now Tunisia, around 331 AD, of Christian parents, and was a Christian throughout her life. As a girl, she was fond of wine, but on one occasion was taunted by a slave girl for drunkenness and resolved not to drink thereafter. She was married to a pagan husband, Patricius, a hot-tempered man who was often unfaithful, but who never insulted or struck her. Mónica realized early on that that her son was intellectually gifted, a brilliant thinker and a natural leader (as a teenager he led a local gang of juvenile delinquents). She had strong ambitions and high hopes for his success in a secular career, although her efforts to steer him into a socially advantageous marriage were in every way a disaster. However, her spiritual maturity grew through a life of prayer, and her ambitions for Augustine’s worldly success transformed into a desire for his conversion. As a youth, Augustine scorned his mother’s religion and courted various pagan philosophies for clues to the meaning of life. Seeking a career as an orator and teacher of rhetorical arts, he moved from Africa to Rome and thence to Milan (at that time the seat of Rome’s government). His mother joined him there a few years later. In Milan, Augustine met Bishop Ambrose, from whom he learned that Christianity could be intellectually respectable, and under whose preaching he was eventually converted and baptized on Easter Eve in 387 AD. Monica was thrilled. After his baptism, Augustine, a younger brother Navigius, and Mónica had planned to return to Africa. But in Ostia, the port city of Rome, Monica fell ill and said, "You will bury your mother here. All I ask of you is that, wherever you may be, you should remember me at the altar of the Lord. Do not fret because I am buried far from our home in Africa. Nothing is far from God, and I have no fear that he will not know where to find me, when he comes to raise me to life at the end of the world." Recent excavations in Rome have discovered her original tomb. Yet, in 1430, her remains had already been transferred to Rome’s Basilica of St. Augustine, where they remain to this day.
