The Confirmation Saint you always needed

Morning walk on the  feast of Good St. Monica. Little did I know when I was my carefree, highly sanguine, third grade self, that in picking her as my Confirmation saint I was doing it with GRACE. I don't know exactly why I chose her then...but I know why she was given to me. I can almost hear God chuckling and saying, "Perfect!" 

 

St. Monica has taught me two important things over the years. 

 1. That sometimes a vocation is very simple. There is no need to add any interesting or exciting embellishments of your own. St. Monica existed solely to pray for the conversion of her son. That was the focus of all her perseverance, constancy, and fortitude. To get one man into sanctity. Now, granted it was the amazing St. Augustine. But he wasn't ALWAYS amazing. He was a proud, little, passionate peacock for a very long while. And no doubt he laughed at her for praying, or wanted her to get lost so he wouldn't be bothered, or any number of highly attractive things we do to our parents when we are young and stupid. But she kept on praying. and praying. and praying. She never said, "Welp, it's not working. Maybe I am being called to something else...something more exciting perhaps." No, she was born to pray for him and she stayed the course. As a sanguine, I stand in AWE of that, as fortitude is not a sanguine's strong suit. But she has helped me by her kind prayers to become a little more constant and more fixed in my gaze as a mother and not to run after something more exciting than that.

2. She has taught me not to be surprised by thorns. And more importantly, not to run from them when I find them. (Sanguines love those Alleluias...thorns not so much) But if you can dwell among the thorns and not leave, you will be rewarded with roses. They are growing the whole time among those thorns. You just have to persevere until they bloom....and you get a rose like St. Augustine or even greater than St. Augustine.

Good St. Monica, pray for us!