Dear brothers and sisters!
Three days ago, on August 27, we celebrated the liturgical feast of St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine, who is considered the model and patron of Christian mothers.
Much information about her came to us from her own son in his autobiography, Confessions, a masterpiece that is among the most read books of all time.
Here we learn that Augustine drank the name of Jesus with his mother's milk and was educated by his mother in the Christian religion, whose principles would remain impressed in him even during his years of spiritual and moral dissipation.
Monica never stopped praying for him and his conversion, and she had the comfort of seeing him return to the faith and receive Baptism. God fulfilled the prayers of this saintly mother, about whom the Bishop of Tagaste [Augustine's hometown] had said: "It was not possible that so many tears could be shed for a son".
Indeed, Augustine not only converted but decided to embrace the monastic life, and on his return to Africa, he founded a community of monks.
The last spiritual conversations between mother and son, in the quiet of a house in Ostia as they waited for the ship that would take them back to Africa, are moving and edifying.
By then, Monica had become, to her son, "more than a mother, the spring of my Christianity". Her only desire for years was the conversion of Augustine, whom she now saw headed towards a life consecrated to the service of God.
She could therefore die happy, as she did on August 27, 387, at age 56, after having asked her son not to worry too much about her burial, but simply to remember her, wherever he was, at the altar of the Lord. St. Augustine liked to say that his mother "had generated him twice".
The history of Christianity is constellated by numerous examples of saintly parents and authentic Christian families who accompanied the lives of generous priests and pastors of the Church.
One thinks of Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzene, who both belonged to families of saints. Much closer to our time, let us think of the spouses Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi and Maria Corsini, who lived between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, who were beatified by my venerated predecessor John Paul II
in October 2001, on the 20th anniversary of the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio.
This document, besides illustrating the value of matrimony and the tasks of the family, calls on spouses to be particularly committed to a path of sanctity, which, drawing grace and strength from the Sacrament of Matrimony, they may follow all their lives (Cfr N. 45).
When spouses are generously dedicated to the education of their children, guiding and orienting them in the discovery of God's plan of love, they prepare that fertile spiritual terrain which gives rise to vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life, and matures them.
This shows how matrimony and virginity are intimately linked, illuminating each other, on the basis of their common root in Christ's spousal love.
Dear brothers and sisters, in this Year for Priests, let us pray so that, "through the intercession of the Holy Cure D'Ars, Christian families may become little churches in which all the vocations and charisms given by the Holy Spirit may be welcomed and valued" (From the Prayer for the Year for Priests).
May this grace be obtained for us by the Blessed Virgin, whom we shall now invoke together.
After the Angelus prayer, he said:
Next Tuesday, September 1, Italy will observe the Day for Safeguarding Creation. It is a significant occasion, which also has ecumenical importance.
This year, the theme is the importance of the air, an element indispensable for life. As I did in the General Audience last Wednesday, I exhort everyone to make a greater commitment to the protection of creation, a gift of God.
In particular, I urge the industrialized nations to cooperate responsibly for the future of the planet, and so that it will not be the poorer nations who will pay the price for climate changes.