This weekend we commemorate St. Monica and her son, St. Augustine of Hippo. St. Monica devoted much of her adult life to worrying about, praying over and directing her son to Christ. By the age of 17, St. Augustine was lured from his Christian upbringing into the fast and free life, sired a son out of wedlock, and misdirected his gifts to the study of pagan religions. He spent many years feeding his passions, and as he admitted in his autobiography Confessions, had a difficult time submitting his will to pursue good over evil. He was ambitious, well-spoken, curious, and smart and probably thought himself “wise by human standards” (I Cor. 1:26).
Fittingly, in the first reading this Sunday Paul reminds us that “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise … so that no human being might boast before God” (I Cor. 1:27). It took St. Augustine many years to understand that the path he had chosen was one of folly, returning to his Christian roots for baptism when he was 32. Imagine his mother’s joy at witnessing this response to her unfailing prayers! Not only did her son renounce the passions that chained him and turn to the one true faith, but he fully embraced it - as St. Augustine seemed to do in all areas of his life – to serve as a Catholic priest and bishop.
The regional Catholic high school being built in Columbia also bears the name ‘Augustine.’ However, this priest, Father Augustine Tolton, was neither wise, nor powerful, nor noble, but one of the “low and despised in the world” (I Cor. 1:28). He was born a slave in our diocese in 1844. His mother, Martha Jane, like Monica, was a woman of great faith and courage, who made sure her children were baptized and educated in the Catholic faith. Heroically, she gathered her young children and ran away from her slave owners, crossing the Mississippi River by rowboat to the safety of the Illinois where she could raise them in a state free from slavery.
Unlike St. Augustine’s youthful rebellion, as a teen Augustine sought to give his life over to God as a priest but could find no seminary in the United States that would admit a black man. After much persistence and with much help, he was accepted to the Urban College in Rome where he studied and was ordained into the priesthood. Sent back to his home country to Quincy, Illinois, Father Augustine Tolton has the distinction of being the first full-blooded African American priest to serve in the United States.
We read these stirring histories of the men and women that struggled and ultimately shaped our faith and cannot imagine our lives as having the significance or impact that theirs have had. For we simply live day to day, sometimes in pain or sacrifice, sometimes in laughter and lightheartedness. Can any of us truly boast of our unfailing prayer, devotion, persistence or heroism for the Lord? More than likely, we cannot, nor in their time did Martha Jane or Monica or their sons think they did. Just as they found then, it is in weakness that we fall to our knees for penance and help; it is in our frailty that we look up to Christ, finally, through our human struggle, understanding the meaning of “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (I Corinthians 1:31).
And so I pray: Dear Lord, we give ourselves to You in faith, knowing that You are our strength and the answer to all our prayers.
