Affiche SS. Monica and Augustine at Ostia (SAU 047)

Today, we would call her a ‘helicopter parent’. St. Monica (c. 332−387) was unrelenting in her fervent prayers and tearful entreaties for her eldest son Augustine to return to the values of his Christian upbringing. Augustine had lived fast and loose since he had gone off to Carthage to Rhetoric School, the Roman equivalent of college, at 17. Now in his late 20s-early 30s and eager to escape his nagging mother, Augustine told her one day he was going down to the docks to see off ‘a friend’. Instead, he sailed away himself… to Rome! St. Monica followed. But, when she arrived in Rome, Augustine had already left for Milan for a better job: an imperial appointment as professor. St. Monica followed. At Milan, Augustine came under the influence and became friends with its archbishop St. Ambrose. It was a turning point in the future saint’s spiritual development. + The Lord works in mysterious ways. St. Ambrose became St. Monica’s spiritual adviser and Augustine’s Christian father-figure. St. Monica and her son reconciled. They spent six harmonious months at a rural manor in Cassiciacum (modern Cassago Brianza in Lombardy) while Augustine completed his pre-baptismal instructions in the Faith. And, in 386, with his much-relieved mother in attendance, Augustine (together with his son Adeodatus and friend Alypius) was baptized in the Church of St. John the Baptist by St. Ambrose. + In his Confessions (IX, 10), a frank account of his transgressions and conversion, St. Augustine recalls how he and his mother then set off for Africa. Having reached Ostia, the port of Rome, after a difficult journey, the pair took lodging at a comfortable house. A 14th-century monk Jordan of Quedlinburg, who wrote a life of St. Augustine, later summed up the passage and its experience in four words writing ‘[col]loquebantur soli valde dulciter’, that is ‘they spoke alone together sweetly’ of the life eternal of the Saints in heaven. (The Latin phrase appears on the original chromolithograph where we have added the saints’ names.) + In the Confessions, SS. Monica and Augustine stood at a window overlooking an interior central garden of a typical peristyle Roman house. In this splendid image, they are depicted deep in conversation on a porch overlooking the sea. Seated on a marble bench, St. Monica is dressed in a violet mantle with an emerald green lining over a reddish-pink robe. She wears a white veil and her head is surrounded by a halo in emerald green with yellow-green rays. She gestures animatedly with both hands raised in the rhetorical gesture of supplication or solemn entreaty toward her son. St. Augustine is anachronistically tonsured and dressed in the black habit of his—the Augustinian—order. A priest’s black galero--a low-crowned, wide-brimmed ecclesiastical hat--lays on the bench behind him. He would not live the monastic life nor become a priest until after his return to Africa (in c. 388 and 391, respectively). Focused on spiritual matters, St. Augustine’s eyes are lifted toward heaven. His right hand rests on the balustrade and his left is raised in the rhetorical gesture calling for silence. He is bearded and his head is surrounded by a halo in dark reddish-pink with rays in a lighter shade of that color. Heavenly beams of soft yellow light shine down on the figures of the two saints through gray-violet clouds in an aqua blue beamed sky. Taken as a whole, the scene telescopes the saints’ mother-son relationship: St. Monica’s entreaties to Augustine to mend his ways (the past); the intimate conversation on spirituality at Ostia (the present), and St. Augustine’s commitment to the religious life (the future). + Five days later, St. Monica--her heart’s desire achieved, her earthly work finished--contracted a fever. She died at Ostia following a nine-day illness. + Feasts: August 27 (St. Monica) and August 28 (St. Augustine) + Image Credit (SAU 047): Antique devotional print in chromolithography of SS. Monica and Augustine entitled Loquebantur soli valde dulciter [‘They spoke alone together sweetly’], originally published by the Socièté de St. Augustin, Bruges, Belgium, late 19th century, from the designer’s private collection of religious ephemera.