It’s often said that saints beget saints. Today the Church honors Saint Monica, and tomorrow Saint Augustine, her son. But what we now celebrate in joy Monica first sought with tears, with sorrow that begot a saint. Augustine’s Confessions portray the life that made the long-suffering Monica the patroness of difficult marriages and disappointing sons. Reflecting on her life we might sum her up as the patron saint of those who grieve.
Grief is a weight that clings to us. It is like a soaked-through t-shirt or a dentist’s lead vest. It pulls and constricts. When Augustine turned away from Christ, his mother endured the loss and wept more bitterly than for her child’s bodily death (Confessions III.11). But for those seeking God, for whom all things work for good, even grief is a gift. When Saint Paul responds to the Corinthians’ conversion he shows us what it means to grieve. “Worldly grief,” he writes, “produces death” (2 Cor 7:10). Chasing after passing wisdom and reputation and honors has been their undoing. Paul’s biting words have only brought them greater grief. But with great Pauline paradox, he rejoices in the affliction of his spiritual children, for he sees in their sorrow a Godly grief that leads to conversion. “Godly grief,” Paul explains, “produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret.” The pain they felt at the loss of God only strengthened their faith.
Grief is a longing. Our hunger tells us that we’re made to eat, our thirst leads us to our drink. Grief is the pain of loss that tells us we’re made for eternity. Our grief grasps for what we can’t live without—what we shouldn’t have to live without. Why should I lose my job? My son die? My marriage end? Grief proves our love, it tells us what we long to have eternally. But in longing after money, reputation, even the depths of human affection, we rend our hearts as each one passes away. While Augustine was rising and falling with the love of this world, Monica was losing sleep over his soul. Worldly grief stalls us, as we long for how life should have been. But Godly grief, through tears and quaking pain, wakes us to how life still could be. Godly grief is the bitter longing for the one thing we need.
Grief is an ecstasy—literally a standing outside of ourselves. Those who’ve shed heavy tears know what I mean. The clinging weight of grief pulls us out of ourselves into what we’ve lost, and through our longing reveals what we love. Shortly after his conversion, Augustine recounts a scene of holy ecstasy in which mother and son dream about heaven, drinking in the night, panting for eternity (Confessions IX.10). While Augustine is beginning to see with the eyes of rebirth, Monica’s words reveal a frightening shadow of sanctity, “all worldly hope has withered away from me” (Confessions IX.10). We must understand this carefully. Godly grief is not despair any more than hope is the suppression of loss. Grief is hope working in relief—revealing what we long for, moving our hearts to what we need. Experiencing Godly grief is like ascending a ladder, in which, one by one, each object of our earthly love cries out “I am not God, I cannot save you, go higher—search for the one of whom I merely speak!” Now even her son, the call of home, creation’s passing beauty cease to have a hold on Monica in her sanctity.
Grief is a gift, not given for its own sake, but to lead us to an ever-deeper peace. For Monica, indeed for all the saints, the only true loss is the loss of God. For all her grief Monica’s final words speak of perfect peace. She has tasted bitter pain, and now rejoices with her Christian son, asking, “What still keeps me here?” What keeps her anywhere but in the very heart of Jesus? With contempt for this life, she passes freely into death (Confessions IX.10). St. Monica reveals the gift of grief that moves us to know a perfect love, to rest in Christ, who alone is our peace.
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Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)
