Monica in the Church of St. Augustine

Walking north the full length of Piazza Navona, I discovered the small street Via di San Augustino. Turning right only thirty or forty yards, I found, as I had been told the day before by a fellow classmate, the Church of Saint Augustine. In spite of his fame as a pillar in the Western Church, the edifice dedicated to his memory is not even mentioned in my “Eyewitness Travel Guide.” The map shows the location marked with a cross, but omits even the name. It is one of hundreds of churches in the eternal city, and not one, presumably, of great significance. But who decides? I entered the church and immediately began looking, not only at the general layout and artwork of the building, but specifically for the place where the body of St. Monica rested. Having looked at each of the side altars and not finding her, and being somewhat disheartened by the scaffolding covering much of the western wall, I wondered if I would see her tomb. Was I (a tourist/student doubts easily) in the right place?

I decided to seek assistance from the caretaker. Italian would help, of course, and though I had done some reviewing before the trip, my Latin studies promptly drove it from my mind, leaving only a few intelligible words at my disposal when needed. Truthfully, Italy, unless one is living with an Italian family and sworn solely to the use of the native tongue, or otherwise forced to do something more difficult than shopping and buying food, doesn’t help much with Italian fluency. Provided you have the money, you can eat and purchase most anything you want with little or no Italian. But in this situation, I had to ask where the body of Monica was laid. “Dove’ Santa Monica?” A flourish of Italian and pointing made it quite clear that her tomb was closed because of the construction. These things happen. When visiting Rome in 1999, I made peace with the fact that I would not see the façade of St. Peter’s. At the end of my eight week stay, workers began to take the scaffolding down that obscured it to reveal an incredibly clean image of Christ and the apostles. I saw a fraction of the total façade, a loss which was duly corrected upon my return in 2002. You can’t see everything, not in one trip, not in many.

But I wanted to see her grave. So I explained myself. English was pointless, and Italian too rough. So I spoke in Latin, though using a couple Italian words “HERI Ostiae fui DOVE Monica mutua est.” (Yesterday I was in Ostia where monica died.) Incomprehension is easy to spot, in any language. As I turned away, however, the man touched me on my shoulder. His hands at his side, he discretely waved for me to follow him toward the high altar, then to the left. We were stopped by boards and yellow caution tape. He waved for me to step over, then, pointing north to an apse left of the high altar, he said something that remains one of the more significant words I carry from this trip, I carry it with me even now. He said, “Monica,” and then walked away.

I walked over debris and parts of disassembled scaffolding until I reach the apse containing the altar under which a portion of her remains have rest since their transfer from Ostia to the Eternal City in 1430. There I remembered Augustine, beseeching his future readers, “to remember at your altar my mother, Monica, your servant, with Patrick my father. . . Remember with deep affection my parents in this transitory light.” The few minutes alone at this site, amidst deep silence, provided one of my most vivid memories, and clear justification for a path I began in earnest eight years earlier. Latin is long and hard. But it miraculously rolls away the stone of a history presumed dead by a modern church impetuously concerned with relevance. The patience required to let Augustine speak on his own terms, even if in an idiom our ears can barely hear, brings him and his story fully to life. It was a good and strong experience, to stand among the dead, who, in Christ, are yet living, real persons, who give life to the Church. Augustine and his mother. I stood amidst relics and debris. It is really one church spanning all these centuries.