In an article entitled “Monica: A Model of Prayer and Piety” Dr. Sam Storms perhaps even with tears, do you continually intercede on their behalf? Has their rebellion driven you to despair? Have you simply quit, giving up all hope that God might yet bring them to saving faith? If you are tempted to, don’t. If you already have, renew again your prayers for them.
I can think of no one who was more devoted to praying for the salvation of a cold-hearted idolatrous child than Monica, the mother of the famous Saint Augustine. Monica consecrated her life to interceding for the salvation of her wayward and immoral son. She eventually sought out the help of a respected bishop, imploring him to meet with Augustine to address his spiritual plight. He declined. Here is how Augustine tells the story in his Confessions:
“She pleaded all the more insistently and with free-flowing tears that he would consent to see me and discuss matters with me. A little vexed, he answered, ‘Go away now; but hold on to this: it is inconceivable that he should perish, a son of tears like yours.’ In her conversations with me later she often recalled that she had taken these words to be an oracle from heaven” (The Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding [Vintage Books, 1997] 53).
He later would add his own word of affirmation to his mother’s belief that her son would eventually come to Christ:
“Could you, then, whose grace had made her what she was, disdain those tears and rebuff her plea for your aid, when what she tearfully begged from you was not gold or silver, not some insecure, ephemeral advantage, but the salvation of her son? No, Lord, that would have been unthinkable; rather you were present, you heard her, and you acted: it was done as you had predestined that it should be. Could you have deceived her in those visions and assurances you had given her, those I have already recorded and others not mentioned, to which she held fast in her faithful heart and which she regularly in prayer presented for your attention, as pledges bearing your own signature? Perish the thought! Though you forgive us all our debts, you deign by your promises to make yourself our debtor, for you merciful love abides forever” (88).
In the Confessions Augustine describes at great length his mother’s dream which she interpreted as God’s promise that he would eventually bring her son to saving faith. This was not an isolated experience for her, which led Augustine to say this concerning how she discerned the difference between God’s voice and her own desires:
“She claimed that by something akin to the sense of taste, a faculty she could not explain in words, she was able to distinguish between your revelations to her and the fantasies of her own dreaming soul” (117).
Augustine’s now-famous conversion experience was followed by Monica’s exuberant joy. Upon telling her of his new life in Christ,
“she was filled with triumphant delight and blessed you, who have power to do more than we ask or understand, for she saw that you had granted her much more in my regard than she had been wont to beg of you in her wretched, tearful groaning. Many years earlier you had shown her a vision of me standing on the rule of faith; and now indeed I stood there, no longer seeking a wife or entertaining any worldly hope, for you had converted me to yourself. In so doing you had also converted her grief into a joy far more abundant than she had desired, and much more tender and chaste than she could ever have looked to find in grandchildren from my flesh” (169).
With deep affection he referred to her as “that servant of yours who brought me forth from her flesh to birth into this temporal light, and from her heart to birth in light eternal” (183).
Monica’s prayers for her son were only one manifestation of her piety. She patiently endured multiple infidelities in her husband, whom she eventually led to Christ, as was also the case with her mother-in-law. According to Augustine, she would often serve “as peacemaker whenever she could if friction occurred between souls at variance” (186). Indeed, “she was the servant of your servants. Every one of them who knew her found ample reason to praise, honor and love you as he sensed your presence in her heart, attested by the fruits of her holy way of life” (187).
As the end of her earthly life approached she looked with anxious longing for heaven:
“For my part, my son, I find pleasure no longer in anything this life holds. What I am doing here still, or why I tarry, I do not know, for all worldly hope has withered away for me. One thing only there was for which I desired to linger awhile in this life: to see you a Catholic Christian before I died. And this my God has granted to me more lavishly than I could have hoped, letting me see you even spurning earthly happiness to be his servant. What now keeps me here?” (190).
Monica died at the age of 56. The fruit of her relentless prayer life lived on.
I find this a very interesting topic. Can we surmise why God chose the sheep that he chose? They were chosen before the foundation of the world. Were they chosen because of God’s knowledge of the Christians who prayed for them? Did he put it into the hearts of those who pray for them to pray more for the ones whom He plans to save? Does he save for everyone we pray for?
We’re taught to pray for God’s will to be done. Not our will, but His will. Jesus thanked His father for blinding certain people from the truth. I find that very interesting.
I may receive criticism for saying this, but I tend not to pray too much for my lost fleshly family. Jesus pointed to the people sitting around him listening to them and calling them his family. Sometimes the emotion involved with the thought of my family being lost breaks my heart and I’ll pray to God about them, but I always feel inclined add into my prayer that I know God’s will will be done in the matters of Salvation, that he saves whom He wills to save.
I hesitate to make this comment because the article seems to be sincerely offered to hold up Monica as an ideal pious Christian mother whose conduct is exemplary, to be emulated. Augustin gives a highly subjective, sentimental, melodramatic and emotionalized account, a hagiography in praise of his mother, whom he obviously idealized, adored and revered; as she did her son. It’s wonderful that God saved him. But do years of agonized prayers and rivers of anguished tears of a parent or relative, begging and pleading for the salvation of a loved one, cause God to decide to save? No, because He ordained those He will save, before the foundation of the earth. Pray fervently for loved ones and others to be saved, yes – share the gospel message with them – but have some trust in God that He will bring it to pass – if it is His will that the son (or whoever) be saved. Monica’s actions seem more fear-driven than faith-driven. Many mothers pray for their sinner sons, and they are never saved. Does this mean they didn’t pray and cry hard or long enough to move God to save? Of course not. The son or other person was not of the elect, in which case, no amount of mother’s pleading and wailing would avail. Augustin gives the nod to predestination, but not before strongly implying that his mother’s impassioned pleas finally motivated God to act. This whole episode has a flavor of mother veneration which by those days had been giving rise to the exaggerated myths about Mary, based on the notion that mothers have some inherent special standing or powers to get favors from God for their children. The statements of the reluctant bishop, I find unbiblical (you are crying so much, how could God not save your son), a way to placate, flatter or calm the overwrought mother. Do we have to convince God to finally take the action that He planned before creation? No. Does he want us to pray for others’ salvation? Yes. But instead of being nearly unhinged with anxiety (as Monica seems to have been), what about making our requests known to God with prayer and supplication, and then submitting and resigning ourselves to His will, and waiting upon him in quiet and confident submission, whatever His decision? Also, as a side note, Augustin says that after his conversion he was no longer seeking a wife. I don’t think he had ever spight a wife, since he could have married his long-time mistress, and his mother already had a grandson, the son of Augustin and the mistress. Augustin was brilliant but he many personal hang-ups and issues, before and after his conversion. Being converted to Christ after a life of sexual indulgence, does not mandate becoming a lifelong celibate and forsaking marriage – but of course, this was another error that had crept into the church by his time.