A mother's persistence brings success - Mary Manning

In this edition Mary Manning interviews Saint Monica whose feast day is 27 August. Monica was born in Tagaste, North Africa in 333, and died in Ostia, near Rome, in 387.

MM: We know you most through the writings of your son, Augustine. Do you think he painted a fair picture?

M: Augustine’s best known writings are his memoirs, The Confessions of St Augustine. What he wrote about me mostly concerned my role in his spiritual upbringing. He did include an incident from my youth that I believe I told him about myself. I used to drink wine from the cellar secretly until a maid discovered me and called me a ‘drunkard’. I was so shocked that I changed my behaviour. I think he recounted this story because it reminded him if his own bad behaviour and eventual conversion. I wonder sometimes if I was more tolerant of Augustine, knowing how easy it is for any of us to fall into bad ways.

MM: You are known as the patroness of married women and as an example of Christian motherhood. Can you tell us about your own experience of marriage and motherhood?

M: I was married in the fourth century so my expectations of marriage were different from those of women at the beginning of the 21st century. I entered into an arranged marriage at a young age as was common at that time. My husband Patricius was a not a Christian, He was a government official and a bad-tempered man. I soon realised that it was best to put up with him patiently. In my circumstances I could not just walk out on him.

My friends once asked me how I was able to live with a bad-tempered and unfaithful husband. I replied that the two things necessary for domestic peace were for women to honour the matrimonial contract and to remain silent when their husbands were in a bad mood. Augustine wrote that women who followed my advice found peace and were treated better by their husbands.

Quite apart from those considerations, I also had my children to care for, Augustine and his brother Navigius, and our daughter Perpetua.

The fact that Patricius became a Christian the year before he died proved there was some good in him and made my patience worthwhile.

MM: So there were some difficult people in your household—your husband, your mother-in-law who lived with you and Augustine, the most difficult of all.

M: Patricius’s mother was a constant challenge, although at the end she became a Christian in the same year as my husband. Augustine was another matter. Although we recognised early that he was brilliant, he admitted in his Confessions that he was lazy and dissolute as a youth and that his bad behaviour caused me much grief. His values were not the same as mine. He put pleasure ahead of spirituality or good deeds.

MM: Sometimes people who behave badly when they are young change as they mature. Did Augustine change once he left home?

M: Augustine was strong-willed, stubborn, and not infrequently deceitful with me. His behaviour actually became worse after he went away to school at Madaura and to Carthage. Not only did he persist in his pursuit of pleasure but when he was 19 he joined the heretical Manichaean sect. He began to spout heresies, and I intensified my efforts to bring him to Christ.

MM: Did anything help you during this difficult time?

M: I had a dream that gave me some comfort. In it I was standing on a sort of wooden rule, and I saw a bright and smiling youth approaching me while I was bowed down with sorrow. When he asked the cause of my sorrow I answered that it was Augustine’s soul's doom I was lamenting. He told me to rest content and to look and see that where I was Augustine was also. And when I looked I saw Augustine standing near me. Augustine wrote about this dream in his Confessions which shows he was affected by it also.
I was also helped by a bishop who had been a Manichaean before he became a Christian. He said Augustine was not open to hearing the truth so he would not intervene. I was upset but the bishop consoled me by saying that ‘the child of those tears shall never perish’, which I took as a sign from God.

MM: Some people have accused you of being a domineering mother and interfering in Augustine’s life to keep him close to you. What would you say to these people?

M: I’d say they did not know me very well. All my efforts were directed to bring Augustine closer to Christ. Augustine himself acknowledged this in his writings.

I prayed for him for 17 years. I even followed him to Rome where he was to teach rhetoric. At the age of 29 he was not happy to have his mother following him around, but I had to persevere with him.
MM:We know that eventually your efforts paid off. I can imagine your joy at that time.

M: It was doubly joyful. Not only did Augustine become a Christian but also he decided to devote his life to the service of God. In 386 he and a group of his friends gathered as a community in Cassiciacum. I acted as their housemother.

MM: Augustine himself seemed to recognise that you had given up most of your life for him when he wrote, ‘So be fulfilled what my mother desired of me’. This must have made your efforts seem worthwhile.

M: Yes, but when he expressed his gratitude for my life, he rightly gave credit, not to me, but to my creator. This is what he wrote:

‘I will not speak of her gifts, but of your gift in her; for she neither made herself nor trained herself. You created her, and neither her father nor her mother knew what kind of being was to come forth from them. And it was the rod of your Christ, the discipline of your only Son, that trained her in your fear, in the house of one of your faithful ones who was a sound member of your church.’