Aug 28th - Augustine

Though yesterday was her feast, I decided to combine Monica with her probably better known son and celebrate them both together. They are so inextricably linked for without the love, patience, and prayer of Monica, Augustine would have been lost to us, and we would at best place him as a minor player in the ranks of the heretics and at worst have forgotten him like so many others who denied the truth in favor of their own limited or selfish beliefs.
Feel free to switch today and yesterday if you desire.
We often forget the role of mothers in the salvation of there sons, as we often dismiss Mary's role in our salvation. May we remember the efforts of those who have brought us fully to God and may we speak the same words as Augustine:

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Where did I find you in order to make your acquaintance in the first place? You could not have been in my memory before I learned to know you. Where then could I have found you in order to learn of you, if not in yourself, far above me? “Place” has here no meaning: further away from you or toward you we may travel, but place there is none. O Truth, you hold sovereign sway over all who turn to you for counsel, and to all of them you respond at the same time, however diverse their pleas. Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you! Lo, you were within, but I outside, seeking there for you, and upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong – I, misshapen. You were with me, but I was not with you. They held me back far from you, those things which would have no being, were they not in you. You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you; I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned for your peace. When at last I cling to you with my whole being there will be no more anguish or labor for me, and my life will be alive indeed, alive because filled with you. But now it is very different. Anyone whom you fill you also uplift; but I am not full of you, and so I am a burden to myself. Joys over which I ought to weep do battle with sorrows that should be matter for joy, and I do not know which will be victorious. But I also see griefs that are evil at war in me with joys that are good, and I do not know which will win the day. This is agony, Lord, have pity on me! It is agony! See, I do not hide my wounds; you are the physician and I am sick; you are merciful, I in need of mercy....On your exceedingly great mercy, and on that alone, rests all my hope.

― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions