Orthodox America
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife (I Cor. 7:14)
If the reader knows anything about Saint Monica, it is that her tearful and
persistent entreaties before God succeeded in bringing her son back to the Christian
faith after he had fallen prey to fashionable philosophies and fleshly
temptations - fact to which Blessed Augustine gratefully and eloquently attests
in his Confessions. For mothers who try hard to instill the Christian faith
into their children, only to have them veer off on some wayward and spiritually
perilous course, Saint Monica is an encouraging example. She is alike
instructive as a model of wifely forbearance, credited with the conversion of
her very difficult husband - a fact less well known but equally deserving of
attention. In an earlier issue (OA 110), we printed a life of Saint Monica that
concentrated on her influence on her son. Here we have chosen to focus on her
relationship with her husband.
SAINT MONICA was born in 332 in or near the
North African town of Tagaste, some forty
miles from the port city of Hippo. Her parents were native Africans, related
ethnically to present day Berbers, and were devout Christians.
In addition to the careful nurturing of her parents, Monica benefited as a child
from the vigilant attention of an elderly nurse. An excellent Christian and
respected by her heads, she disciplined her charges wisely if sometimes
inclined towards "holy severity." The entire household was imbued with
a rare atmosphere of Christian piety, and it is not surprising that Monica grew
to be a sober and virtuous maiden with a well-developed habit of prayer. One
would have expected her to consecrate herself wholly to God in the monastic
life, or to become united to a like God-fearing and virtuous husband. Instead,
as soon as she reached marriageable age, she was betrothed to a pagan, a man of
choleric temperament and dissolute morals. One wonders how Monica's parents
could have consented to such a marriage for their daughter, after having taken
such pains for her Christian upbringing. Surely they were mindful of the
Apostle's injunction: Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers (II Cor.
6:14). Unfortunately, many parents are never so blind as when arranging, or
approving, the marriages of their children.
Patricius was a native of Tagaste, and twice Monica's twenty-two years. While
there is no precise information about his background, it is probable that he
came from an old, noble family, more prominent than Monica's. At any rate, this
is the supposition of Blessed Augustine's ancient biographers, who could find
no other explanation for such an unequal union. In fact, Patricius was not
wealthy. It is true, he was a city administrator, but at that time anyone who
owned more than seventy acres of land was obliged to hold such a position.
Patricius was not without generous qualities, but these were largely dormant
and became animate only later, in response to Monica's unflagging prayers and
exemplary Christian behavior.
Whatever Monica felt towards her betrothed, she was obedient to her parents'
will, consoling herself with the thought that here was a lost soul that was
being entrusted to her, and she determined to sacrifice herself to the task of
guiding this soul onto the path to salvation. Nevertheless, she could not have
anticipated just what this sacrifice was to entail. In the days and weeks after
the marriage, she became increasingly and painfully aware of the abyss that lay
between her and her husband. He was annoyed by her prayers; he found her
charity excessive; he could not understand her desire to visit the sick; he
could not fathom her love for slaves. At every step in her Christian walk,
Monica met with countless hindrances. Her case was far from unique and is well
described by Tertullian in his treatise, "To His Wife," wherein he
speaks of the difficulties a Christian wife endures at the hands of an
unbelieving husband:
"When it is time to go to church, the husband takes his wife to the
baths; if there are fasts to be observed, the husband arranges for a banquet;
if she wishes to visit the poor, no servants are available to accompany her. And
will such a husband allow her to be absent all night long for the paschal
solemnities? or permit her to attend the Lord's Supper, which they disavow?"
As a young bride who had spent her life in a Christian atmosphere, where the
very purpose of existence centered upon the love of God and neighbor, Monica
suddenly found herself in an alien environment. Her husband, although he loved
her in his own way, was a stranger not a soul-mate; and her cantankerous
mother-in-law, who lived with them, only reinforced his fits of anger with her
own. These were prompted by the slanders of the maidservants, whose animosity
towards their young mistress intensified an already painful loneliness. Even
more grievous was Patricius' infidelity, for what wife, especially one raised,
as Monica was, with high standards of chastity and marital devotion, can
countenance the defilement of her marriage bed?
Prayer was Monica's strength, and the joys of motherhood further served to mitigate
the bitterness of her circumstances. She bore two sons and a daughter, whom she
nurtured in the faith with great diligence - and ultimate success. As a boy,
writes Blessed Augustine, "I already believed, and my mother and the whole
household, except for my father. Yet he did not prevail over the power of my
mother's piety in me, that as he did not believe, so neither should I. For it
was her earnest care that Thou my God, rather than he, shouldst be my
father" (I:11). To Monica's great sorrow, Patricius would not have the
children baptized. And when Augustine began to show promise of intellectual
brilliance, Patricius sent him for higher education to Carthage,. where the youth
gradually fell prey to youthful passions.
As young as she was, Monica bore her cross with remarkable fortitude and spiritual
maturity. She realized that her husband's weaknesses and moral failings stemmed
from the fact that he had not yet been enlightened by the Gospel, that he
lacked the grace of God. She shed bitter tears in his absence, but she knew
that a man who did not love God could not be expected to be constant in his
affection towards one of His creatures. With firm hope, she prayed that God Himself
would grant her husband faith and love for Him, which alone are able to inspire
a man with the desire to lead a chaste life.
Monica knew that reproaches were counter-productive, and she tamed her husband's
violent temper by her meekness and devotion. Other women, who endured blows
from their husbands, asked Monica how it was that Patricius, whom they knew to
be irascible, did not once strike her. Monica replied that instead of blaming
their husbands they should blame their tongues, for "she had learnt not to
resist an angry husband, not in deed only, but not even in word." (IX:9)
Regardless of Patricius' religious indifference and often unchristian behavior,
Monica was very attentive towards him, "whom she, the better obeyed,
therein also obeying [God] Who hast so commanded" (I:11). Compelled at
times to contradict him and to go against his will in what concerned the Faith,
she was all the more meek and submissive to him in other matters. And although
superior to her husband in education and moral qualities, she made every effort
not to reveal her advantage. She firmly believed that if the light of the
Gospel was reflected in all her actions, then Patricius would eventually be
persuaded of its power and its truth, and would submit to it more readily than
if she attempted to persuade him with rational arguments. Indeed, her Christian
conduct acted like a soothing balm on Patricius' soul, and, without his
realizing it, drew him gradually closer to the Faith. As Saint John Chrysostom
wrote half a century later in his homily, On Virginity, the believing wife
"will be able to save her husband by putting the Gospel into
practice." This is precisely what Saint Monica did, winning over not only
her husband but also her mother-in-law.
This fruit of her prayers, of her long-suffering, and of her steadfast application
of the Gospel precepts took a long time to mature. It was only after sixteen
years that Patricius was baptized. Nor did Monica enjoy for long her husband's
company at the Lord's Supper, for he died only a year later, in 371.
Nevertheless, her aim had been to sanctify her husband for eternal life, and,
by the Grace of God, this she had achieved. It remained for her to extricate
her wayward son form the delusion of the passions and from the Manichean heresy.
This required another fourteen years of persistent prayer. When at last his
heart, too, was converted, her joy was complete.
Monica was present at Augustine's baptism at the hands of Saint Ambrose in Milan
at Pascha, 387, and they were returning to Africa when they stopped to rest in
the port city of Ostia. One evening they had a long conversation in which she
said to him, "Son, for mine own part I have no further delight in anything
in this life. What I do here any longer, and to what end I am here, I know not,
now that my hopes in this world are accomplished" (IX:10). Indeed, she had
excellently fulfilled her purpose in life, and, after a brief illness, God took
her that she might receive her due reward with the saints in His eternal
kingdom. She was buried in Ostia, a fact verified by the inscription on a stone
tablet discovered there by archaeologists in 1946.
For centuries, Saint Monica was revered in the Roman Catholic Church as a patroness
of married women. It is time that Orthodox women became more closely acquainted
with this exemplar of womanly virtues, whose prayers are especially to be
invoked by those with wayward children and by wives desirous of sanctifying
their unbelieving husbands.
Sources: Confessions, in Great Books of the Western World, vol. 18,
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952; Pravoslavnaya Zhizn, June, July, August, September 1982, Jordanville NY; Butler's Lives of Saints.
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