Feast of St. Monica Mother of Augustine

   Today, August 27th, is the Feast of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine who was kind of a big time person in the Catholic church!  Okay, he was a doctor, as in philosophy and theology not the medical kind!
  His feast is celebrated tomorrow, August 28th.
  St. Monica was a typically devoted mom. She was married to a pagan, but she herself was Christian, Catholic specifically and she made it her mission, as many of us moms do, to get her husband and children to heaven!
  This would require quite a feat of prayer, fasting and 'stormin' the heavens' as my own mother says.
   Yet, Monica never gave up and before she died she would get to witness not only her son become Catholic, but her husband too!
  Yet, unlike all the nice stories we read as kids, or the movies, it was not a quick conversion story or happy one. 
  Monica was married to a man several years older than she, he was a pagan and his mother lived with them. Neither of them were very easy to get along with, he had a raging temper and his own mother not pleasant.  But Monica began praying and begging God for a change of heart which occurred with both her husband and mother-in-law and they both became Catholic.  Monica had another son and a daughter and they both joined religious societies. But then there was Augustine, the son who ran off seeking worldly wisdom and pleasures, had an illegitimate son, and really did not want to change his wild ways.  But Monica, being a really good mom and a worrier, kept praying. In fact it was said that she bugged the heck out of her local bishop to pray for her son.  After 17 years Augustine did indeed return and eventually became a Bishop and Doctor of the Catholic Church. 

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That Lady From Church Episode 1

I don't care if the glass is half full or half empty, I'm just glad to have a glass!