May 10, 2009

I thought that thou wast silent ...

Then whose words were they but thine which by my mother, thy faithful handmaid, thou didst pour into my ears? […] These appeared to me but womanish counsels, which I would have blushed to obey. Yet they were from thee, and I knew it not. I thought that thou wast silent and that it was only she who spoke. Yet it was through her that thou didst not keep silence toward me; and in rejecting her counsel I was rejecting thee.

—St. Augustine, Confessions, Book IX, ch. x, 26


Happy Mother's Day To All Moms!

The above painting, by Ary Scheffer, shows St. Augustine and his mother St. Monica (Musee du Louvre, Paris).