St. Monica

Who they were

Monica was born in North Africa, in what is now Algeria, to a Christian family, and was married young to a man named Patricius, a pagan with a temper and a reputation for infidelity. Almost everything known about her comes from her son's account, and her son was Augustine, which means she is one of the very few women of the ancient world whose interior life is recorded in detail by someone who knew her.

Augustine's Confessions describes her as persistent to the point of being difficult. She followed him. When he left for Rome to get away from her, he lied about the sailing time and left without her, and she followed anyway. She wept over him for years. She pursued bishops for help, and one of them, worn down, told her that it was not possible that the son of those tears should perish, a line she took as a promise and held onto.

Her husband was baptised the year before he died. Her son was baptised at thirty-two, seventeen years after she began praying for it, and she died a few months later at Ostia, on the way home, having said that there was now nothing she wanted in this world.

Augustine went on to become one of the most consequential thinkers in Christian history. He also wrote the account that made his mother a saint people can actually recognise, rather than a name on a calendar.

Why people turn to St. Monica

Monica is asked for by parents of children who have left the faith, and the reason is the seventeen years. Her patronage is not about a quick resolution. What her story actually offers is the opposite: a long, undramatic, apparently fruitless persistence, over a period long enough for the outcome to look settled. She is also invoked by the wives and families of people who drink, from her own marriage. Anyone praying for a person who shows no sign of changing is praying in her territory.

How to ask their intercession

Name the person. Ask her to pray for them, and ask her for what she plainly had, which is the ability to keep asking without turning it into pressure on the person you love. This is a standing intention rather than a novena, and expecting a timeline is the part of the practice most likely to make you miserable.