Mother, Has Your Child Fallen Away? St Monica Can Help

I don't know how many times I hear it.

"My son used to be an altar boy. My daughter used to love to go to Mass. They don't practice their faith anymore. She is living with her boyfriend. He is in with some bad friends. I don't know what to do. They used to be so close to God."

These are the words of mothers whose hearts have been broken by watching their children turn away from God and head down the road toward perdition. Believe it or not, the priest writing this was away from the Church for several years and could not stand any talk of faith, God, or religion. Was it the devil trying to tear away a priests vocation? Young heart seeking happiness in the wrong way? God writing straight with crooked

lines? Whatever it was, I am back with God because of my mother, who prayed, fasted, wept, knelt, suffered, sacrificed and waited with broken heart and a faintly hoping spirit.

Here are prayers to St Monica, whose boy strayed too. May her intercession bring all sinners back to the merciful embrace of Our Father:

O glorious St. Monica, greatly challenged among mothers, I feel particularly attracted by you who gave such an

enlightened example of motherly love.

Who could understand better than you the anxieties and fears of a mother worrying about the eternal salvation of her children? You endured all, since in the order of nature, St. Augustine is the fruit of your womb, and in the order of grace, the fruit of your tears. For this reason I am greatly convinced that if you here on earth, with the sanctity of your life and the perserverance of your prayers, were one of the great models of the Christian mother, you must enjoy in heaven the privilage of being their singular protector.

Obtain for me the grace to faithfully imitate your virtues, and furthermore, may my children avoid those errors and failures you disapproved of so strongly in your son. And if it will happen, to my misfortune, that they too fall, grant me the grace to obtain with my prayers, supported by yours, as perfect a conversion as you were able to obtain for your son. Amen.