Reflection St Monica | August 26, 2026 | How To Pray For A Loved One Who Left The Church | (Episode 247)

Tonight, before we say anything else, I want you to take a moment now and to bring that one person or several persons to your mind.

Perhaps it's your son, your daughter, your grandchild.

Perhaps it's someone stood you stood beside at the baptismal font years ago.

You remember when they were little.

You remember teaching them to make the sign of the cross.

You remember bringing them to Mass.

Perhaps you remember their first communion, their confirmation, the prayers you said with them beside their bed.

And somewhere along the way something changed.

Maybe they simply stopped coming to Mass.

Maybe they tell you that they no longer believe.

Maybe they still say they believe in God, but the church seems to have disappeared from their lives.

Maybe there's anger.

Maybe there's indifference.

And perhaps the hardest situation of all is when there seems to be no hostility whatsoever.

They are good people.

They're kind, they're successful, they're responsible, they love their families.

They simply seem to believe that they can live perfectly well without God.

And if you are a parent who loves your faith, there's a particular pain in that.

Because there are many things you can do for your children.

When they're hungry, you can feed them.

When they are struggling financially, perhaps you can help them.

When they were sick, you could take them to the doctor.

When they needed advice, you could offer it.

But there comes a moment in life of every parent when you discover something terribly humbling.

There are places in the life of your child whether you where you cannot go.

You cannot enter another person's heart.

You cannot manufacture faith.

You cannot force someone to encounter Jesus Christ.

You cannot make someone love the Eucharist.

You cannot argue someone into surrendering his or her life to God.

That helplessness can be excruciating.

But tonight Saint Monica teaches us something extraordinarily important.

Helplessness is not hopelessness.

And there's a great difference between the two.

Because when we reach the place where our hands can do no more, we have not reached the place where God can do no more.

In fact, sometimes that is precisely where prayer begins to become something deeper.

You see, sometimes we romanticize Saint Monica because we already know the ending of the story.

We know our patron saint.

We know Augustine became a bishop.

We know Augustine became one of the great theologians of Christianity.

We know his confessions, we read them for centuries, but Monica didn't know any of that, and that is very important.

She did not pray when the last chapter was in her hands.

She lived somewhere in the middle of that story, and that middle was messy.

Augustine was brilliant, ambitious, restless and searching.

He wandered intellectually, he wandered morally.

He embraced beliefs his mother knew were contrary to Christ and the Christian faith.

His life went in directions that must have frightened her.

And Monica prayed and prayed and prayed.

Not for a week, not for a novina, not until she became frustrated because God had failed to meet her timetable.

No, she prayed for years.

There's something about Monica that I think parents today desperately need to rediscover.

She understood that God was working even when she could not see evidence of his work.

That may be one of the hardest forms of faith.

Why?

Because we're people that like visible progress.

We like to know that our prayers are accomplishing something.

We want the phone call.

We want the conversation.

We want our son suddenly to say, Mom, I think I'm going back to Mass.

Can I join you?

We want our daughter to say, Dad, I think I need God again.

And when nothing seems to happen, we wonder whether our prayers are accomplishing anything.

But prayers are not magic.

Prayer is a relationship.

Prayer is trust.

And sometimes prayer means believing that God is doing something beneath the surface long before we can see it.

I want you to take a good look at the Eucharist tonight.

What do you see?

A host, a piece of bread?

And yet faith tells you that hidden beneath what appears ordinary is the living Christ present here among us.

Perhaps that itself can teach us something tonight.

Do not assume that because you cannot see God working in someone you love, God is absent.

There may be a movement of grace taking place right now that you know nothing about.

There may be questions beginning to surface.

There may be dissatisfaction with life built without God.

There may be memories returning.

There may be wounds slowly healing.

There may be a hunger developing that that person himself does not even yet understand.

God knows how to enter places that are closed to us.

But I think there's another lesson here for us.

Perhaps it's one of the most difficult.

Sometimes because we love someone so much, we begin to unconsciously try to do God's work for God.

We remind, we push, we insist, we argue, we will send articles, we send videos, we ask again about Mass, we'll make a comment at Thanksgiving, we mention the grandchildren's baptism.

And sometimes all of that comes from genuine love.

But there comes a point when that love has to learn another language.

Sometimes the most Christian thing you can do is to stop trying to force open a door and begin standing faithfully before the one who holds the key.

Because your son does not need you to be his savior.

Your daughter does already have a savior.

His name is Jesus Christ.

And he loves your children more than you do.

I want you to think about that for a moment.

That person or persons whose name you carry in your heart, who you carried into this church tonight, God loved that person before you ever even knew his or her name.

Before you held that child in your arms, God knew that child.

Before you worried about that child, God loved that child.

Before you shed your first tear, Christ already shed his blood.

But this does not mean that parents stop witnessing.

It does not mean we become indifferent.

It means we learn the difference between witnessing to Christ and trying to replace Christ.

And there can be a tremendous freedom in saying, Jesus, I have done what I can.

Now I entrust my child to you.

There's something else I want you to consider.

When we say that we want our children to come back to the faith, what exactly do we mean?

Because of course we want them to come back to Mass.

We want them to receive the sacraments, and certainly we want them to be reconciled with the church.

But ultimately, we're asking for something even greater.

We're asking for an encounter.

Because Christianity is not fundamentally about getting someone back into a building.

It's about bringing someone back into relationship with a person, Jesus Christ.

That's what happened to Augustine.

His conversion was not merely Monica finally winning an argument.

Augustine encountered Christ.

Grace reached the places arguments could not.

And that should shape our prayer tonight.

Maybe instead of praying only, Lord, make my son go back to Mass, we begin praying, Jesus, reveal yourself to my son.

Jesus, let my daughter encounter you.

Jesus, place someone in their life who can speak to them in a way that I cannot.

Jesus awaken in them a hunger that nothing in this world can satisfy.

Jesus, when they are alone, speak to them.

When they are confused, come to them.

When they are dispo disappointed, speak to them.

When life does not turn out as they expected, be there for them.

When success leaves them strangely empty, be there.

When suffering opens a crack in the defenses that have built, enter gently.

You see, that's a different kind of prayer.

It entrusts the path of conversion to God.

There's a beautiful tradition associated with Monica's tears.

Augustine tells us how deeply she suffered for him.

And Christian tradition remembers the assurance given to her that the child of so many tears would not easily be lost.

Her tears would not be in vain.

There's something profoundly Christian about tears.

We sometimes think tears mean that our faith is weak.

They do not.

Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus.

Tears can themselves become prayer.

There may be a mother here tonight who has cried over her child, a father who carry worries that he rarely speaks about.

Grandparents who wonder what will happen in the faith and to their family after they're gone.

Don't be ashamed of those tears, but do not let them become tears of despair.

Let them be an offering.

You see, there's a difference between saying I'm crying because everything is lost, and saying, Jesus, even these tears belong to you.

Nothing given to Christ is wasted, not a single rosary, not an hour of adoration, not a mass offered, not a whispered name, not the prayer you say in your car, not the prayer said in three in the morning when a parent can't sleep, not the tear that falls when no one else is watching.

God receives all of it.

Tonight I also want to extend our prayers beyond our own families.

We pray in a special way tonight for all of our young people and for the students at the University of Miami.

Think about how difficult it can be to be a young person today, a young Christian person.

They're surrounded by voices competing for their identity.

Voices telling them that their value comes from achievement, from appearance, from their sexuality, from popularity, from money, from success, from being noticed, from being desired, from constructing an identity that constantly is defending it.

But underneath all that noise is a generation asking ancient questions.

Who am I?

Does my life matter?

Am I loved?

What am I supposed to do with my life?

Is there something more than this?

Those are ultimately spiritual questions, and we should never underestimate what God can do with a young person who sincerely begins asking them.

So tonight, while Jesus is exposed on this altar, I want us to spiritually bring this entire university campus into this church.

Thousands of young men and women, some Catholics, some Christians, some of another faith, some who believe nothing, some who have never been inside a church, some carrying tremendous wounds, some extraordinarily successful on the outside and terribly lonely on the inside.

Some may be even discerning a vocation, some wondering whether their life has been has had any purpose at all, some who may be the only invitation away from walking through these doors.

Lord God, we place them before you tonight.

Because evangelization begins here, before programs, before strategies, before social media, before events, before any preaching, there must be prayer.

If we want young people to encounter Jesus Christ, then we must first bring them to Jesus in prayer.

And I think that's what Monica teaches us.

She did not allow Augustine's wandering to destroy her own relationship with God.

That is tremendously important.

Sometimes we can become so consumed with another person's faith that we neglect our own faith.

My children don't go to Mass.

My grandchildren aren't baptized.

My husband doesn't believe.

My daughter is angry with the church.

And slowly our entire spiritual life becomes anxiety about somebody else's spiritual journey.

But perhaps Jesus is asking something of you tonight as well.

Not only will you entrust your child to me, but will you trust me?

And those are different questions.

Because perhaps the conversation God wants to begin tonight is not only theirs, but a conversion.

Perhaps He wants to deepen something in all of us too.

More trust, more surrender, more patience, less control, a deeper prayer life, a greater confidence in Providence.

Saint Monica's years of prayer were not wasted years while God worked on Augustine.

God was forming Monica's soul too.

The waiting was sanctifying her.

The longing was purifying her love.

The prayer was drawing her deeper into God.

And perhaps that's happening for some of us here.

This may be the most important thing I say to you tonight.

Do not write the ending of a story that God is still writing.

Your child is still alive.

God is still God.

Grace is still grace.

The Holy Spirit is still moving.

Christ is still seeking.

We must let God be God.

Because the Father is still watching the road for the prodigal.

The church is still praying.

And so therefore, we have no right to declare a story finished simply because we do not like the chapter we're presently reading.

If Monica could sit beside you tonight, I don't think she would give you a technique.

I think she would tell you, keep praying, keep loving, keep witnessing your faith.

Do not manipulate, do not despair, do not confuse God's silence with God's absence.

Do not underestimate what grace can do in a human heart.

Because Augustine's story reminds us that something the person who appears to be running farthest from God is carrying within himself a hunger for God that he does not yet know how to name.

And God knows how to find them.

So I want to finish differently tonight.

I don't want to finish with my words.

I want to finish allowing us to do what Monica did.

To bring that someone we love before God.

I want you to look towards the Eucharist.

You don't have to solve anything right now.

You don't have to convince anyone tonight.

You do not have to know how the story ends.

Just bring the person right now, in the silence of your heart, I want you to say their name.

Jesus, you know this person.

You know the whole story.

You know what happened.

You know the wounds I know about and the wounds I do not know about.

You know the questions, you know the anger, you know the disappointments, you know the doubts, you know every road this person has traveled, and you know the road home.

So tonight, Lord, I give this person back to you.

Whether my words can reach, cannot reach, let your grace reach.

Where doors have been closed, enter as only you can.

Where faith has grown cold, breathe again, where wounds have distorted the image of your church, bring healing.

Where the attractions of this world have become louder than your own voice, speak again, Lord.

And where I have become afraid, teach me to trust.

Saint Monica, you knew what it was to wait, pray for me.

You knew what it was to weep and to cry, pray for me.

You knew you who loved without surrendering to despair, pray for me.

You trusted God with Augustine when you could not change Augustine yourself, pray for me.

Pray for our sons and daughters, pray for our grandchildren, pray for those who have walked away, pray for those who no longer believe, pray for those who are angry with the church, pray for those who still believe but have forgotten how much they are loved.

Pray for the young people of this parish.

Pray for the students at the University of Miami.

Pray for every young person searching for meaning tonight.

And Monica, teach us how to wait without losing hope.

Teach us how to love without controlling.

Teach us how to pray without demanding.

Teach us to believe that grace can accomplish what we cannot.

And Lord Jesus, before you in the Eucharist tonight, we surrender every name, every worry, every disappointment, every fear.

We place them here at the foot of the altar, at your feet, and we leave them with you, Lord, because we know the story is not finished.

And because we believe that no one we love could ever be loved by us more than they are loved by you.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us, and our beautiful Jesus, teach us to trust you with the people we love most.

Amen.