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For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, “Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming” (Luke 18:4-5, ESV).
There’s nothing more powerful than a praying mother.
In yesterday’s Interruption #1946, we discussed Augustine, perhaps the most brilliant and influential theologian of the Christian faith (except for the Apostle Paul). Though Augustine was raised as a Christian, he rebelled against God for 17 years, during which time he fathered a child out of wedlock and lived with a longtime mistress.
But he had a praying mother named Monica.
She wept and prayed for him for those 17 years, a prime example of Jesus’ parable of The Widow and the Unrighteous Judge, when the widow kept coming to the judge until he granted her request. As Jesus said…
Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily (Luke 18:6-8a).
Admittedly, 17 years isn’t that speedy, but Monica didn’t stop praying. Augustine’s mother was so distressed with her son’s licentious living that she asked a local priest to debate him about his heretical thoughts and, in a sense, argue him back to Jesus. Probably knowing of Augustine’s intellectual prowess, the priest refused, but, noticing Monica’s fervency, told her…
Go your way all identical with your tears; it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish.
Wow — a paraphrase of The Widow and Unrighteous Judge parable!
Monica didn’t stop praying or following him. When Augustine tried to escape her influence by secretly boarding a ship bound for Rome, Monica learned of the duplicity and followed him to Italy. We can imagine Augustine thinking himself safe, while drinking with newfound friends in Rome, when he looks up and says, “Oh no! Here’s my mother!”
Then, when Augustine quickly left Rome, she tracked him down to Milan, where she introduced him to Ambrose, an early church father with an intellect almost equal to Augustine’s. The brilliance of Ambrose and the prayers of Monica finally broke Augustine’s resistance.
In his book Confessions, Augustine credits his mother’s persistent praying for his conversion, writing of her that, “She shed more tears for my spiritual death than most women shed for the bodily death of their children.” A few days after Augustine was baptized by Bishop Ambrose, Monica told him that her purpose in life was complete. Having witnessed the miracle of his conversion, she died a few weeks later!
We should just stop and consider Monica. There’s nothing more powerful than a praying mother!
Mothers praying — yesterday and today!