Praying Your Loved Ones Into the Kingdom

You know, every weekday morning, we pray the rosary together on x at 07:55AM in a space, a live space with 50 people, and we take turns, different people say, different decades. And people bring their prayer intentions. And frequently, there are prayer intentions for people praying for loved ones who have left the faith or never believed the faith are either not Christian at all because they've never been baptized and have no interest in it, or perhaps they've just fallen away.

They went to confirmation as a middle schooler, and they never went back to church after that. Act actually, in ecclesial circles, there's there's the talk about this problem where people go to confirmation kind of as a box to check off, but they never come back to church. Some people call it the sacrament of goodbye. But for Christians who know how important faith is, especially upon death and entering into eternal life, Christians are concerned about the welfare, the spiritual well-being of their loved ones.

They're concerned that people they love may find themselves on the wrong side of the divide in eternal life. Jesus himself talks about the fact that people will be sent away, he will tell them to depart from me. When it comes to worrying about someone in your family that you want to become Christian, there's a beautiful role model to look to and to ask for her intercession. And it's Saint Monica.

Saint Monica, of course, is the mother of Saint Augustine. Their feast days are actually back to back, one after another, in late August every year. Of course, Saint Augustine was the rebel. He was a man who pursued his passions and pleasure. Saint Monica never gave up.

She's a powerful example of perseverance and love. She never gave up no matter how hopeless it seemed. For a devout Christian mother, it can be heartbreak when a son pursues a wayward path. Saint Augustine makes no secret of what he did. If you read his Confessions, autobiography, he embraced a hedonistic lifestyle, rejected Christianity, and joined a sect.

But despite this rejection, Monica remained steadfast in her love for her son and her prayers for his conversion. There is a power in persistent prayer. We see the example that's in the New Testament about the widow coming to the judge at night and being persistent. Monica prayed tirelessly for Augustine's transformation for over seventeen years, without seeing any improvement, without any signs of hope. She prayed for seventeen years with no external change, as far as she could tell.

And her faith sustained her through discouragement. Monica's tearful prayers moved a Catholic bishop to assure her the child of such tears will not perish. A prophecy. But Monica didn't just pray. She pursued her son.

When he left North Africa to go to Rome and then to Milan, she followed, even though he probably didn't want her to. She offered emotional and spiritual support. She balanced her love for him with gentle correction from time to time. Her sacrifices show the depth of commitment necessary when you have loved ones on the wrong path. But the power of prayer and perseverance not only transformed the life of Augustine, it transformed Western civilization.

Saint Augustine is one of the greatest thinkers in history. And because Saint Monica prayed him into the kingdom, he left a legacy for all of us. He converted eventually in the year March with great influence from Saint Ambrose. Augustine himself would become a bishop, one of Christianity's greatest theologians. All of this, of course, is Christian history.

But what's the lesson for you and me is perseverance. Like Monica, we can hold on to hope for loved ones even when change seems impossible. Trust the transformation can happen in god's own timing. It's not up to us when. It's just up to us to persevere.

Saint Monica and Saint Augustine, pray for us.