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Power of Prayer St Monica Prays for her Son, Augustine, Later the Saint "And you sent Your Hand from above, and raised my soul out of that depth of darkness because my mother, Your faithful one, wept to you for me more bitterly than mothers weep for the bodily deaths of their children. For by the faith and the spirit which she had from You, she saw me as DEAD; and You heard her, Lord. You heard her and did not despise her tears when they flowed down and watered the earth against which she pressed her face wherever she prayed. YOU HEARD HER. What else could have been the cause of that dream by which You so comforted her that she consented to live with me and eat at the same table in the house: which previously she had refused to do because she shunned and detested the blasphemies of my error … "Nine years were to follow in which I lay tossing in the mud of that deep pit and the darkness of its falsity, though I often tried to rise and only fell the more heavily. All that time this chaste, god-fearing and sober widow - for such You love - was all the more cheered up with hope. Yet she did not relax her weeping and mourning. She did not cease to pray at every hour and bewail me to You and her prayers found entry into Your sight. But for all that, You allowed me still to toss helplessly in that darkness … "You gave her another assurance by the mouth of Your priest, a certain bishop reared up in the Church and well grounded in Your Scriptures ... He told her: "Go your way; as sure as you live, it is impossible that the son of these tears should perish." She often said that she accepted this answer as if it had sounded from heaven." ("Confessions of St Augustine" Bk3, ch. xi) Postscript: Monica's prayer was heard well beyond her expectations. She merely prayed that her son would he baptised. He was baptised, became a priest, a bishop, a great theologian and ultimately canonised. Mother and son canonised - unique in the history of the church. The bishop mentioned by Augustine, in the text above, was the great St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, whom the people elected as Bishop before he was baptised! |