We all know the story of St. Monica of Hippo, a veritable dynamo of prayer and perseverance.
Through her tireless petitions, St. Monica brought both her husband and her mother-in-law to the Faith, and later effected the conversion of her son Augustine from dissolute sinner to saint...and Doctor of the Church, no less!
We whose loved ones have left the Church may look to St. Monica's example for ways to navigate life with our prodigals. We may strive for Monica-like patience, or try to strike a Monica-esque balance between loving unreservedly and standing firmly in truth.
We may emulate St. Monica's prayerfulness in the hopes that our own lost sheep will return to the fold.
For anyone who loves a prodigal, the image of Monica the supplicating mother is likely to hit hard. It hurts to picture an anguished St. Monica kneeling in prayer, "water[ing] the earth" with her tears, as St. Augustine tells us.
We can practically see it. We can even feel it. What we cannot do is hear it. We don't know the words that St. Monica used in prayer.
All we know is that God's heart was moved:
"Graciously you heard her," writes St. Augustine, "and you did not despise her tears when they flowed down from her eyes ...in whatsoever place she prayed."
One thing we can be sure of is that St. Monica did not pray the rosary as we know it. It wasn't until more than 800 years after St. Monica's death that St. Dominic is said to have received the rosary from Our Lady's hands.
But let's suppose that St. Monica had been St. Dominic's contemporary, "praying her beads" for her family's conversion. How might she have related the rosary mysteries to her own life?
The Rosary of Supplication for Our Prodigals can help answer that question.
Created by the St. Monica Ministry, the Rosary of Supplication is a set of meditations on the mysteries of the rosary. Each of the brief meditations is addressed to Mary and speaks either to prodigals' needs or to the hearts of those who await their loved ones' conversion.
Here is a sample meditation:
The Wedding Feast at Cana
With her hard-won wisdom, St. Monica knew that her loved ones' conversion was entirely in God's hands.
Mary, our mother, when the wine ran out at the wedding feast, you trusted that Jesus would make things right. Following your example, we turn to your Son in confident expectation, knowing that He alone can change the water of our prodigals’ disbelief into the wine of faith.
No, St. Monica did not pray the rosary. But we can be sure that St. Monica's prayers and ours seek the same end: unity in Christ and the eternal salvation of all whom we love.