ST. MONICA (AUG. 27TH)
St. Monica, Praying for the Conversion of Her Son By Bp. Joseph ( Ancient Church of the West ) St. Monica (332-387) was born of Christian African Berber stock, married a pagan Roman nobleman named Patricius, and had three children, Augustin, Navigius and Perpetua. Patricius was unfaithful and abusive, and refused to allow his children to be baptized. Monica grieved in this dysfunctional relationship and committed herself to prayer and fasting for her husband and children. Through her asceticism, Patricius learned to respect his wife, although he would only convert to the One True Faith in the year before he died. Augustine converted to Manicheanism when he was 17 and studied law and oration in Carthage and in Rome. He lived a dissolute life along the pattern of his father, taking a concubine and living in impurity and gluttony. When he secretly went to Rome to pursue a career in law after his father died, his mother Monica followed him, so that she could continue to w...
