Tuesday, August 27, 2024

 

Memorial of Saint Monica, holy woman

(II Thessalonians 3:1-3a.14-17; Matthew 23:23-26)

As a young man, Saint Augustine achieved a modicum of success as a rhetorician.  He headed an academy where he drew several students.  His reputation was growing, but that fact did not pacify his mother, Saint Monica.  More than anything else, Monica wanted her son to practice the Catholic faith.  It seems that she saw material success as the outside of the cup to which Jesus alludes in today’s gospel reading.

Jesus frequently suggests that appearances are not to be judged so much as reality.  The tax collector praying for forgiveness in the Temple is perhaps the best example.  His prayer and not the Pharisee’s who reminds God of his own virtue is heard.  In today’s gospel Jesus condemns the Pharisees’ attention to miniscule points of the Law while ignoring its principal teachings of mercy and fidelity.

Saint Monica ceaselessly petitioned God that her son become a Christian. She also appealed to her son continually that he consider joining Christ.  She knew that Christ was the way to true happiness in eternal life.  To her -- may God grant it so for us as well -- fame, fortune, and fun cannot compete in comparison.

Homilette for Thursday, August 27, 2009

Memorial of St. Monica

(I Thessalonians 3:7-13; Matthew 24:42-51)

“Night and day,” Paul writes to the Thessalonians, “we pray beyond measure to see you in person and to remedy the deficiencies of your faith.” As Paul cares for the community of faith he founded in Thessalonica so St. Monica prayed for her son Augustine. The opening prayer of today’s mass indicates that tears accompanied her orations that Augustine might convert to faith in Christ.

Monica hardly prays alone. In the secular age which we inhabit, many mothers and fathers pray that their children will return to Christ. Parents realize that he is not only the bridge to eternal life but also an anchor to save us from drifting among the half-truths and the compromising pleasures of the world.

Augustine, of course, eventually put aside his mistaken beliefs and scandalous life-style to become first a Christian, then a priest and bishop, and along the way the greatest theologian of antiquity. His writings seem to confirm the efficacy of his mother’s prayers. Speaking to God, he writes in his Confessions, “You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you, yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.”