The Son of These Tears

“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” — Psalm 126:5 (KJV)

Monica took her son's new religion very hard. For a while she would not even let him eat at her table. Augustine says she wept for him “more than mothers weep the bodily deaths of their children,” because she believed he was dying in a deeper way.

Then she had a dream. She was standing on a wooden ruler, crying, when a bright young man came up smiling and asked why she was so sad. She told him she was grieving for her son. He told her to look, and see “That where she was, there was I also.” She looked, and there was Augustine, standing on the ruler beside her.

When she told him, Augustine had a clever answer ready: the dream obviously meant that she would one day come round to his view. She answered at once: “No; for it was not told me that, 'where he, there thou also'; but 'where thou, there he also'.” Years later he admits that her quick reply shook him more than the dream did.

But nothing changed quickly. Nine more years went by. Monica asked a bishop who had once been a Manichee himself to talk her son out of it. The bishop refused. Augustine was too proud and too pleased with his arguments to be argued with, he said: “let him alone a while ... only pray God for him, he will of himself by reading find what that error is.” Monica would not stop begging, and she cried. At last the bishop, a little annoyed, sent her away with a sentence she treasured for the rest of her life: “Go thy ways and God bless thee, for it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish.”

Meanwhile Augustine's life went on. He became a teacher of rhetoric, which he describes bluntly: he “made sale of a loquacity to overcome by.” He sold students the skill of winning arguments. And he was living with a woman he had not married. He names this plainly:

“In those years I had one,—not in that which is called lawful marriage, but whom I had found out in a wayward passion, void of understanding; yet but one, remaining faithful even to her.”

They were together for about fifteen years. Arrangements like this were common and accepted in the Roman world, but Augustine does not pretend it was what God intended. They had a son, Adeodatus, whose name in Latin means given by God. Augustine never tells us her name. He does say something honest about the child, that in such a relationship “children are born against their parents' will, although, once born, they constrain love.” Adeodatus wasn't planned. He was loved anyway.

So here is the picture in his early twenties: a brilliant young teacher, a partner and a little boy, a religion that flattered his mind, and a mother crying in church every morning and evening, year after year.

Maybe someone is praying for you like that right now: a parent, a grandparent, someone at church. Maybe it annoys you. Or maybe you are the one praying, for a friend or a brother or a parent, and nothing seems to be happening. Monica's story says two things. First, prayers can take years, and that does not mean they are lost. Second, sometimes the wisest thing is not another argument. The bishop's advice was simple: let him read, and pray.

One thing to do this week: write down the name of one person you have quietly given up on. Pray for them by name every day this week, without lecturing them. Or, if someone has been praying for you, thank them.