Memorial of Saint
Monica
(I Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 23:23-26)
Many Catholic parents of adult children today readily
identify with St. Monica. Their children
just do not care about religion. They
may or may not identify themselves with the faith, but they do not go to Mass
and readily express disagreement with Church teaching. Like Monica these parents pray fervently for
their children and, hopefully again like her, remind them of not just the glorious
destiny that Catholic Christians have but the joy of knowing Jesus Christ.
St. Paul in the reading today sees himself as a similar
loving mother. He writes, “…we were
gentle among you as a nursing mother cares for her infants.” He means that like a mother he loved his spiritual
children so much that he was patient in his initial preaching to the
Thessalonians taking pains to explain the gospel in simple terms and also that
he sacrificed himself for them by practicing his trade of tent-making rather
than burden them for his upkeep.
We must be careful not to take up the erroneous ideas of
the young. Surely they have things to
teach us like tolerance for different races, but we have something more
essential that like Paul to the Thessalonians we have to impart – the truth
that salvation comes from the self-sacrificing love of Jesus which all are
called to imitate.
