The life of St Monica, mother of Blessed Augustine
Three children came from that marriage, Augustine first, then Navigius, then a daughter, Perpetua, and it was Monica's own steady patience that eventually won Patricius to baptism, and not long after, a peaceful death around 371. From that point her whole anxious attention turned toward Augustine himself, undisciplined and restless as he was growing into manhood, for whose soul she prayed and struggled without letting go for years.
She followed him at last to Milan, where she came to know Bishop Ambrose and joined the life of his congregation, present when Augustine was finally baptized by Ambrose around 387. Setting out afterward together to sail home to Africa, mother and son paused at the port of Ostia awaiting a ship, and there shared a long conversation Augustine later set down in his Confessions, remembered by him as an unusually deep moment of shared reflection on the soul's reach toward God. Monica fell ill at Ostia soon after and died there, the voyage home never completed.
