Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 2.djvu/109

97 ST. MONICA 97 After eighteen years of married life, during which she had not ceased to pray for her husband, Monica had the joy of seeing him converted to Chris- tianity. He died the following year, 371. It was Monica's great delight to serve the poor. She was ever a diligent student of the Scriptures, and " assisted daily at the holy oblation of the altar, . . . having eternity always in her thoughts." Her son, Augustine, was a source of great anxiety to her. Monica grieved much for his dissipation, and perhaps even more because he was en- tangled in the ManichaBan heresy, and for years she offered up her tears and supplications to the Almighty; as St. Augustine says, '* weeping to Thee for me, more than mothers weep the bodily deaths of their children. Thou de- spisedst not her tears, when streaming down, they watered the ground under her eyes in every place where she prayed. Her prayers entered into Thy presence, and yet Thou suffered st me to be yet in- volved and reinvolved in that darkness." She was somewhat comforted by a dream, and still further by the words of the bishop of Carthage, who although he refused to argue with Augustine, said : it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish." Which answer she took as if it had sounded from heaven. She followed Augustine to Milan, where he had been appointed professor of rhetoric. She found to her joy that St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, '* idready known to the whole world as the best of men," had received him kindly, and that a friendship had sprung up between them ; and when Augustine told her that he was no longer a ManichsBan, although he had not yet become a decided Catholic, she answered that she believed in Christ that before she departed this life she should see him a Catholic believer. Then she hastened the more eagerly to church, and hung upon the lips of Ambrose, whom she loved as an angel of God, because she knew that by him her son had been brought to that unsettled state through which she confidently VOL. n. anticipated that he would pass to the true faith and the peace of God. Ambrose valued her as a devout widow, full of good works and constant at church ; so that when he met Augustine he often burst forth in her praises, con- gratulating him that he had such a mother. About that time, the Empress Justina, an Arian, persecuted St. Ambrose. His devoted followers kept watch in the church, ready to die with their bishop. Monica took part in those watchings. She continued, with renewed hope, her prayers for her son ; and the desire of her life was fulfilled when, at Easter, 387, she saw St. Ambrose baptize him, with his friend Alypius and his son Adeodatus, then fifteen years old. With conversion to the true faith, Augustine, who had long been aspiring after perfection, lost all wish for worldly advantage ; fame, marriage, riches, were nothing to him now. He, his mother, and his handful of devoted friends resolved to return to Africa. On their way, they made a short stay at Ostia, and while there, one evening as Monica and Augustine sat looking from a window over the garden, and talking of heavenly things, she said : ^' Son, for mine own part I have no further delight in any- thing in this life. What I do here any longer, and to what end I am here, I know not, now that my hopes in this world are accomplished." Five days later, Monica fell ill. She had previously ever been careful and anxious as to her place of burial, which she had prepared for herself by the body of her husband ; but during her illness she In d no such feeling, saying to her «sons on the contrary : " Lay this body anywhere ; let not the care for that any way disquiet you : this only I request, that you would remember me at the Lord's altar, where- ever you be." Despite the loving care of Augustine and his companions, Monica died on the ninth day of her illness, in the fifty-sixth year of her age. May 4, 387. St. Augustine has left a beautiful pic- ture of his mother in his "Confessions." Ho bears witness to the high order of her intellectual powers, " the fervour of her mind towards divine things," and H
 * ^ Gk> thy ways and God bless thee, for