St. Monica, Our Patroness

Saint Monica was an extraordinary woman. Her influence on her son, St. Augustine of Hippo, was so great and important in the early Church, that upon acclamation of Augustine’s sainthood, Monica was also honored with sainthood.

Monica was born in North Africa, in a city called Tagaste, around the year 330. Her parents betrothed her to a pagan, Patricius, who was a worldly and difficult man, and most likely violent towards her. She gave birth to three children, a daughter and two sons.

Augustin e was her eldest, and at the age of 17, was a student of rhetoric in Carthage. Rhetoric was an ancient form of analysis in effective speaking and writing, with the aim to teach one how to persuade another to one’s own opinion, one’s way of thinking, one’s “school of thought.” Augustine was not a Christian, and he heartily embraced a dissolute life. Monica prayed for him, fasted and kept close to him. She was utterly distressed when she learned that her son had accepted the popular Manichean heresy that “all flesh is evil.” Monica had a very hard time with this, convulsed with rage and despair; but through a dream received the message that in time, her son would come to know Christ. Monica never gave up hope that her son's heart would come to rest in God.

When Augustine was 29, he decided to go to Rome to teach rhetoric. He left for the port to bid farewell to a friend and ended up leaving the country without Monica’s knowledge. She followed him and, upon her arrival, discovered that Augustine had travelled even further, to Milan. In Milan, Augustine came under the influence of Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan. He instructed Augustine in Christianity and eventually baptized him in the year 387. Augustine and his friends planned to return to North Africa to serve in the ministry, sailing from near Rome; and Monica was with them.

It’s been written that Monica’s one desire beyond the baptism of her son was to return to African soil before her death. But it was not to be: she became ill and died at the Roman port of Ostia, in 387.

Saint Monica’s rests in a tomb at the Church of St. Augustine in Rome. In the Holy Year of Mercy, in 2016, pilgrims from St. Monica had the opportunity to pray there and to celebrate the Mass with Fr. Richard.

Notice a round pot - an urn – at the tabernacle’s left. This pot contains African soil, transported to Italy, providing a partial fulfillment of Monica’s desire; she is interred next to it. 

Our city was named after Monica. Fr. Juan Crespi, coming through the area in the 1700’s, saw a local dripping stream. He named it Las Lagrimas de Santa Monica: the tears of Saint Monica, a reference to her intense intercession for her son Augustine before he was a Christian.

By the 1820’s, a grazing permit fixed the name of this area. When a Catholic parish was established in the city in 1886, it was named after the patroness of the city, and our St. Monica Catholic Community was born.