I’m a Catholic who fell in and out of my faith.
Per Catholic tradition, choosing a saint for your Confirmation is a way to model your journey, as an example of someone who’s already walked the path you’re about to take.
I chose Saint Augustine of Hippo as my confirmation saint at 16 years old without much thought.
Maybe it was just the name and my love for hippos. Or perhaps it had to do with being the patron of overcoming bad habits, like procrastination.
I didn’t really know.
But years later, 10 months after graduating from college, I turned to writing as a way out of despair—a way back to life.
And something odd was happening.
The more I wrote, the more I saw myself in Augustine’s story: his inner struggles, his search for meaning, his desire to pen his greatest mistakes and share them with the world—it was eerily becoming my path.
This was too meaningful to be random.
Saint Augustine, the patron of restless hearts, became one of my most needed role models.
Not just in faith, but in life and in writing.
And I now see a deeper reason for this connection: my mother.
Saint Augustine’s mother, Saint Monica, was the reason behind his transformation. She spent years praying for his conversion with tears and hope, even as he rejected her faith and lived a depraved life.
To Augustine, after finally acknowledging his mistakes and fully converting to Catholicism at 31, Saint Monica became more than a mother; she became a symbol of patience and unwavering love.
In his classic book, Confessions, he writes about her tears and credits her persistent prayers with helping him find his way to God.
“She wept for me more than mothers weep when lamenting their dead children. For she saw that I was spiritually dead.”
— Confessions, Book III, Chapter 11
When she died shortly after his baptism, he mourned not only her death but also the role she played in saving his soul.
A devout Catholic who never misses mass and is even returning from a Catholic retreat in Missouri now, my mother’s been praying for me and our family just as much as Augustine’s mother did for him.
She prayed for me all throughout college, as I was the only one in the family who pursued higher education, and she continued praying for me during my trips to Mexico and during my troubled times after graduation.
She always invited me to mass on Saturdays and Sundays, encouraging me to participate more with our small church, for they could always use more people my age.
Like Augustine, since confessing my sins to the world, I began living deliberately.
I know what it is like to live without much movement, and I would not want anyone else to experience what I did.
And I have my mother to thank for guiding me back to a faithful life.
This Mother’s Day, I thank my mother for her faith, the prayers she whispered every night before bed, and the love that never wavered.
Thank you, mother, for being there and continuing to be there.
So, happy Mother’s Day to my mother and to all the mothers in the world— your steady love shapes our lives in ways we never imagined.
Here’s my quote for the day.
God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.
Rudyard Kipling