Nay rather, I have stilled and quieted
my soul like a weaned child.
Like a weaned child on its mother's lap,
so is my soul within me. // Psalm 131: 2 (Responsorial Psalm for Memorial of Saint Monica)
A few years ago one of our sons was going through a hard season. He had gone away to college and had come home struggling. Further, this was during Covid, when everything felt like it was falling apart anyways, but watching this particular child struggle in this particular way made me especially sad.
I remember one day, on our daily walk with our dog, telling my husband that I felt so tight inside. “I feel like I’m never going to be able to exhale until all of our boys are either married or ordained priests.” And saying this out loud deeply helped, because I realized how crazy it was. There was no way my central nervous system could sustain this level of anxiety and then just calm down once I marked the box of “launched” for this child. I needed to find peace in the now, even though now was very imperfect.
Mothers everywhere have looked to the example of Saint Monica, whose feast we celebrate today, during hard times with children. And while most of us hope that we won’t have to wait thirty whole years for our child to change, we still seek her intercession and follow her good example. She never gave up on her son, who is now Saint Augustine, and I would imagine that in her close walk with the Lord, she found peace even as she waited for the Lord to answer her prayers.
And that is what we are called to as well. We are to pray, hope, and not worry—as Saint Padre Pio advised. We have to get to a place of real peace as we journey along beside our children. We can only find that peace in the Lord which we prayed for in the Responsorial Psalm, not in our children’s good or bad decisions, not in the temporal at all.
Lord, give me a stilled and quieted soul, a dependence on You in the difficult times and the knowledge that every good thing I have comes from You. Only You can bring peace to my soul within. Amen.
Rachel Balducci is a writer and speaker and co-host of the Gist on CatholicTV. She has a Masters degree from the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia and teaches at Augusta University and is working on her doctorate in Religion at the University of Georgia. She and her husband Paul have five sons and one daughter and are part of an intentional Christian community in Augusta, Georgia. Find out more about her here.
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