Prayer to St. Monica

Q: What is the prayer to St. Monica for a child who has left the faith?

A traditional one is the mother's prayer from *The Christian Mother* (Benziger, 1880), which asks God to visit a son or daughter with his grace "through the intercession of the most blessed Virgin Mary, of St. Monica, and of all the Saints," and ends: "St. Monica, who hast been especially victorious in thy prayers for thy Son... assist me in my supplication." The full text is above.

Q: How long did St. Monica pray for St. Augustine?

About seventeen years. The *Catholic Encyclopedia* says she saw Augustine yield "after seventeen years of resistance." He was baptized by St. Ambrose in Milan at Easter in 387, and Monica died at Ostia a few months later, at the age of fifty-six.

Curated and reviewed by Pastor Lyvers

Oil-painting-style illustration of a mother in her fifties praying alone at night by a window, holding a rosary and a framed photograph of her grown son

A prayer to St. Monica asks the mother of St. Augustine to join her prayers to ours for a child, spouse or friend who has left the faith. She prayed and wept for her son for some seventeen years until he was baptized. The traditional prayers below come from the old Roman Missal and an 1880 prayer book for Christian mothers.

Few sorrows cut as deep as watching a child walk away from God. St. Monica knew that sorrow for most of her life. She prayed and wept for her son Augustine through his years of unbelief and sin until, at last, he was baptized and became one of the greatest saints and teachers the Church has ever had. That is why parents, and especially mothers, have turned to her for sixteen centuries. Here are traditional prayers we can pray with her, and what her story teaches about praying for someone we love.

A mother's prayer to St. Monica for a child

This prayer comes from The Christian Mother, a prayer book for mothers by the German priest W. Cramer, published in English by Benziger Brothers in New York in 1880. It is titled "Prayer to be said for Children who are addicted to Certain Faults," and it asks God's mercy through the intercession of Our Lady and St. Monica. Say "son" or "daughter" as fits:

Almighty God! rich in graces Thou who directest the hearts of men like rivers of water, graciously listen to my supplication in behalf of my son [my daughter]. Thou knowest how much the sad condition of his [her] soul fills my heart with sorrow and anxiety. All my endeavors in his [her] regard prove fruitless. What remains for me but to take refuge in Thee? Thou art, O God, "powerful to bestow every grace in abundance," and to move with Thy grace the most hardened hearts. How often hast Thou brought back the most obstinate sinners! How often hast Thou listened to the prayers of pious mothers, and for their sake granted to their children the grace of true conversion! Therefore, despise not my prayer, though I confess it is not worthy of being heard. I have sinned before Thee, and I myself may partly be the cause of my son's [daughter's] faults and errors. But, O merciful God! pardon me, since I am truly sorry for my sins. Let mercy take the place of justice. Through Thy infinite mercy, through the merits of Thy divine Son, my Saviour, through the intercession of the most blessed Virgin Mary, of St. Monica, and of all the Saints in heaven, I entreat Thee, visit my son [my daughter] with Thy grace, that he [she] may see his [her] faults, be heartily sorry for them, and, henceforward walking in all things according to Thy holy will and divine pleasure, obtain salvation. O Mary, Mother of Mercy, refuge of sinners, St. Monica, who hast been especially victorious in thy prayers for thy Son, and all Ye Saints in heaven, assist me in my supplication with your mighty intercession, that it may be granted! Amen.

This is a humble prayer. It does not blame the child. It admits that the parent may share the fault, asks pardon for that, and then asks the one thing that matters: that God's grace will reach the child's heart. The line "rich in graces Thou who directest the hearts of men like rivers of water" echoes Proverbs 21:1, "As the divisions of waters, so the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: whithersoever he will he shall turn it" (Douay-Rheims).

Painting of Monica in white robes and Augustine in red seated side by side at a window over the sea, her hands clasping his as both gaze upward — Ary Scheffer's Saint Augustine and Saint Monica: mother and son at the window at Ostia, shortly before her death, their eyes on heaven. ⓘ

The collect of St. Monica's feast

The Church's own prayer for her feast asks for the gift Monica's tears won for her son. This is the collect as translated in a 1916 missal for the laity, The Mass Every Day of the Year, when her feast was still kept on May 4:

O God, the consoler of the afflicted, and the salvation of those who hope in thee, who mercifully accepted the pious tears of the blessed Monica for the conversion of her son, grant us by the intercession of both to deplore our sins and to obtain the grace of thy pardon. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God world without end. Amen.

It is a surprising prayer. We might expect it to ask for the conversion of others. Instead it asks for our own: let us, too, weep for our sins and find pardon. That is the first step for any parent praying for a child. Since 1969 the feast has been kept on August 27, the day before the feast of St. Augustine, and praying the collect of the day in her honor on her memorial carries a partial indulgence (Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, concession 21).

Close-up painting of an old, deeply wrinkled woman in a white wimple and black veil, her bony hands clasped in prayer as she looks up — Luis Tristán's St. Monica (1616) shows her old and worn, hands clasped, eyes raised in prayer. ⓘ

A prayer for those who have wandered

Pope St. Pius X indulgenced this short prayer on November 22, 1905. The English Raccolta of 1910 (no. 70) gives it, and it is a good one to say every day alongside our prayer to St. Monica:

Lord Jesus, most merciful Saviour of the world, we beg and beseech Thee, through thy most Sacred Heart, that all wandering sheep may now return to Thee, the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls. Who livest and reignest with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

The words "the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls" are St. Peter's (1 Peter 2:25), written about believers who had once gone astray like sheep and had come back.

St. Monica's story: "the son of these tears"

We know Monica almost entirely from her son. In his Confessions, written about ten years after her death, Augustine tells his life as a long prayer to God, and his mother is in it from beginning to end. Our full entry on St. Monica tells her life; here are the parts that speak most to a parent praying today.

Years of tears

Monica was born in 331 or 332 at Thagaste in North Africa (the Catholic Encyclopedia gives 333) and married Patricius, a pagan with a hard temper. She won him to the faith before he died. Her eldest son was brilliant and restless. In his late teens Augustine joined the Manichaeans, took a mistress, and threw himself into a career in rhetoric. Monica, Augustine writes, was "weeping to Thee for me, more than mothers weep the bodily deaths of their children," and God "despisedst not her tears, when streaming down, they watered the ground under her eyes in every place where she prayed" (Confessions III.11).

Fresco detail of a woman in a red-brown cloak kneeling in prayer in a church with other women, while at right a haloed woman in red raises her hands in grief beside two small children — Benozzo Gozzoli's fresco in San Gimignano (1464–1465) shows Monica in grief as her son leaves her. ⓘSt. Augustine Leaving His Mother

"Only pray God for him"

At one point she begged a bishop to talk her son out of his errors. The bishop refused. He told her that Augustine was not ready to listen, and said, as Augustine records: "let him alone a while... only pray God for him, he will of himself by reading find what that error is, and how great its impiety." When Monica kept pleading "with entreaties and many tears," the bishop, a little exasperated, sent her away with the words 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" (Confessions III.12).

There is wisdom here for parents. Arguments rarely bring anyone back. Prayer, patience and love do, in God's time.

Carthage, Rome and Milan

When Augustine sailed for Rome, he deceived his mother so that she could not follow, and she spent that night praying in a chapel by the harbor at Carthage. She followed him anyway, to Rome and then to Milan, where she found St. Ambrose. Through Ambrose's preaching and his own reading of St. Paul, Augustine was converted, and Ambrose baptized him at Easter in 387. The Catholic Encyclopedia counts "seventeen years of resistance."

Oil-painting-style illustration of St. Monica weeping and praying at night in a small chapel by the harbor of Carthage as a ship sails away — Monica weeps and prays through the night in a chapel at the harbor of Carthage as her son's ship slips away.

A few months later, at Ostia, waiting for a ship home to Africa, mother and son stood at a window and spoke together of heaven. Monica fell ill and died there at fifty-six, telling her sons: "Lay," she saith, "this body any where; let not the care for that any way disquiet you: this only I request, that you would remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever you be" (Confessions IX.11).

How to pray for a child who has left the faith

The Church has no magic formula, and Monica had none. What she had was persistence. A few practical habits, learned from her:

Pray every day, by name. One of the prayers above, a decade of the rosary, or simply "St. Monica, pray for my son."
Offer the Mass for them. Monica's one request at death was to be remembered at the altar. Ask a priest to offer a Mass for your child's conversion, and offer your own Communion for them.
Make a novena from August 18 to 26, before her feast on August 27, or at any time a need presses.
Fast and sacrifice for them, quietly.
Keep the door open. Monica drove her son from her table once and then, after a dream, took him back. Love the person; pray for the soul.
Don't despair. Seventeen years is a long time. Many parents pray far longer, and God's timing is his own.

In 1850 a group of mothers in Paris formed an association under St. Monica's patronage for "mutual prayer for sons and husbands who had gone astray." It became the Archconfraternity of Christian Mothers in 1856 and spread across the Catholic world (Catholic Encyclopedia). Praying together with other parents is an old and good custom.

An old father in a red cloak bends to embrace his ragged son, who kneels against him with shaved head and worn sandals, while others watch from the shadows — Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son (about 1668): the father embraces the son who has come home, the hope behind every prayer to St. Monica. ⓘThe Return of the Prodigal Son

St. Monica, alcohol and addiction

Augustine records that as a girl Monica, sent to draw wine from the cask, began sipping from the cup, "and thus by adding to that little, daily littles... she had fallen into such a habit as greedily to drink off her little cup brim-full almost of wine." A servant's insult, "wine-bibber," shamed her, and she gave it up at once (Confessions IX.8). For that reason she is also asked to pray for those caught in drinking or addiction. See our prayer for an addict and the patron saints of alcoholics.

Where St. Monica is honored

Monica was buried at Ostia. In 1430 Pope Martin V had her relics brought to Rome, where they rest today in a chapel to the left of the high altar in the Basilica of Sant'Agostino, near the Piazza Navona. Pilgrims who pray there for their children are following a path walked for six hundred years.

Side chapel of a Roman church with an altar and painting framed by marble columns, a green ancient sarcophagus beneath the altar and a kneeler in front — The chapel of St. Monica in the Basilica of Sant'Agostino in Rome, with her ancient sarcophagus beneath the altar. ⓘ

Related pages: St. Augustine, her son, whose feast is August 28; the patron saints of mothers and of marriage; and our prayer for family.

St. Monica, mother of tears and of hope, pray for our children and for us.

Frequently asked questions

What is the prayer to St. Monica for a child who has left the faith?

A traditional one is the mother's prayer from The Christian Mother (Benziger, 1880), which asks God to visit a son or daughter with his grace "through the intercession of the most blessed Virgin Mary, of St. Monica, and of all the Saints," and ends: "St. Monica, who hast been especially victorious in thy prayers for thy Son... assist me in my supplication." The full text is above.

How long did St. Monica pray for St. Augustine?

About seventeen years. The Catholic Encyclopedia says she saw Augustine yield "after seventeen years of resistance." He was baptized by St. Ambrose in Milan at Easter in 387, and Monica died at Ostia a few months later, at the age of fifty-six.

When is the St. Monica novena?

Her feast is August 27, the day before the feast of her son St. Augustine, so a novena to St. Monica is prayed from August 18 to August 26. It can be prayed at any time of year for a child, a spouse or a friend far from God.

What is St. Monica the patron saint of?

Mothers, wives, widows, difficult marriages, and parents of children who have strayed from the faith. She is also asked to pray for people struggling with alcohol, since Augustine tells in his Confessions that as a girl she fell into the habit of drinking wine and was cured of it.

What did the bishop tell St. Monica?

When she begged a bishop to argue her son out of his errors, he refused, saying Augustine was not ready, and told her: "let him alone a while... only pray God for him." When she kept pleading with tears, he said: "Go thy ways and God bless thee, for it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish" (Confessions III.12, Pusey translation).

Where are St. Monica's relics?

In the Basilica of Sant'Agostino in Rome. She was buried at Ostia, and in 1430 Pope Martin V had her relics brought to Rome, where they rest in a chapel to the left of the high altar.