A Parent’s Prayer

As I write, it is St. Augustine’s feast day. This saint perhaps has shaped Christian theology and orthodoxy more than any other since St. Paul. Yet many forget, omit, and outright never knew that yesterday was the feast day of his mother, Saint Monica. It’s poetic and appropriate that Augstine’s mother should precede him, for we would not have the towering giant of Augustine’s writings and sermons without the servant prayers of his mother, Monica.

Perhaps you are unaware of Monica’s story. Allow me to rehearse it in brief. Monica was a faithful Christian unequally yoked to an unbelieving husband. This alone, makes her relatable to so many within the Church. It is written that her husband was annoyed at her devoted almsgiving, the continual discipline of regular prayer, and devotion to our Lord Jesus. This devotion was tested when young Augustine fell ill and had not been baptized. The illness and her fear that he would die unbaptized led to her husband relenting and allowing his baptism only for her husband to revoke his consent upon Augustine’s recovery.

Augustine grew up and like so many boys including myself, he was restless, slothful, and pursued the lusts of the world. Yet Monica never stopped praying for her son. The Lord blessed Monica with her husband Patritius’s conversion, who would die shortly thereafter. However, Augustine would finally “get religion” but to Monica’s horror, through the heretical Manichean cult. How many mothers and fathers struggle now and grieve over their own children who have pursued the zeitgeist of this evil age ranging from atheism, gender dysphoria, the occult, agnosticism, and paganism?

Fellow parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins who mourn at their loved ones’ faithlessness, I encourage you to lay your burdened hearts daily to pray for your family. Behold the life and witness of Monica who not only literally pursued her son Augustine (and was left behind) physically but also spiritually through bending the knee to Christ and raising up empty hands asking Him to fill her son’s heart with faith.

These prayers were answered.

God did more than answer her prayers, the Lord redeemed Augustine and used him as God’s vessel “to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word” as a bishop and doctor of the Church (The Consecration of Bishops, The Ordinal, 1662 Book of Common Prayer). It all started with Monica’s prayers to her (and our) Lord.

We live in a broken world with broken marriages and broken families. Paul’s warning to make “the best use of the time, because the days are evil” rings ever true. (Ephesians 5:16). Therefore, may we use the time we have to pray continually over our children and loved ones, whether or not they are infants, toddlers, children, teens, or grown. The best inheritance we have is the next generation of the Church, beginning within our own household.

Our prayers are always weak and they are never enough. Do not be discouraged, for the same Lord God who heard Monica’s prayers listens and hears you as well. It should comfort us that although it took decades of those prayers, Monica lived to see their fruit. We are not guaranteed to see the fruit of our prayers, but remember that our prayers ring in the eternal God’s ears and even after we fall asleep in this life, the Lord God is still living, active, and working to carry out His will—even in the lives of our loved ones who live after us.

For example, though Monica lived to see Augustine’s conversion, she did not live to see him write his Confessions, and the two chapters he wrote entirely focused on her devotion to seeing him convert. When your heart troubles you Christian, I suggest reading these two short chapters from Book 3, Chapters 11-12, and be refreshed that your devotion and prayer are heard by the living God, like Monica’s own prayers and persistence were.

I am no St. Monica, but she is near to my heart. I pray that I may reflect even a slice of her faithfulness in prayer. I also take heart in the words that a bishop told her regarding her prayers over Augustine, when the bishop said, “Go your way; as you live, it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish.”

Keep shedding your tears over your children and over your family. May those tears be prayers when words fail. Take heart that the Lord Jesus tells us to “come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” and promises “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Matthew 11:18, Revelation 7:17 ESV). May our tears, like Monica’s, give rise to future tears of thankfulness from our own children and spur words of gratitude like those from Augustine remembering his mother as one “who had for many years wept for me, that I might live in Your eyes.” Book 9, Chapter 12, Confessions.

O LORD Jesus Christ, who dost embrace children with the arms of thy mercy, and dost make them living members of thy Church; Give them grace, we pray thee, to stand fast in thy faith, to obey thy word, and to abide in thy love; that being made strong by thy Holy Spirit they may resist temptation and overcome evil; and may rejoice in the life that now is, and dwell with thee in the life that is to come; through thy merits, O merciful Saviour, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest one God, world without end. Amen.

– For Children, Prayers and Thanksgivings, 1928 Book of Common Prayer