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Tourists on a glorious spring day in 2003, my husband and I took a short metro ride to the outskirts of Rome to Ostia Antica, the ruins of a once great port city. For several hours we roamed this large, preserved site of antiquity.
At an intersection on one of the many cobblestone streets, I was suddenly riveted in place. The plaque on the low, waist-high stones stated that this was the site of the building where St. Monica died in 387. Touching the stones, I found both prayer and tears begin to well up in me. It was a mother-to-mother link, because I was agonizing about my own “son of many tears.”
At the time, my young adult son had dropped out of college and abandoned his faith. He had a dead-end job and a live-in girlfriend, and was an alcoholic. When confronted about his excessive use of alcohol, he would always boast that he could “stop whenever he wanted.” He must have wanted to, because one warm July day in 2005 he stopped.
But then the seizures began. He was hospitalized,…
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St. Augustine is a key spokesperson for the Fall/Redemption perspective of Original Sin, concupiscence, control of passion as represented by a dualistic mind set of either/or. He is quite at home with A.Tanquerry, Thomas a Kempis and ascetic spirituality.
I prefer a cosmic dialectic of both/and. Faith as trust, passion a blessing, all holiness as relational leading to unity (Ephesians 1:11).
“Original Blessing” by Matthew Fox, a tasty read.
Mornica shld serve as a virtue to christian mothers not 2 give up the faith. As believers we learn from st. Augustine n the father that:life is vanity upon vanity.
St. Monica is a saint whose life is worthy of emulation,i pray to have the kind of heart she heard and it pays to be prayerful;may God grant us the Grace to be good people to all around us especially during our trying times in life.St. Augustine was a cross to her but she never gave up,may we try to still be faithfully and prayerful during our times and not condemn our kids who we think has gone astray,St. Monica, pray for us.Amen