[St Monica, praying]
Yesterday was not only the feast of St Margaret the Barefooted. It was also the feast of St Monica... St Augustine's Mum. The fact that St Monica is St Augustine's Mum, and my tendency to interpret everything as a British panto, has often left me thinking of St Augustine in a principal boy sort of role, with St Monica as a jolly sort of a panto dame. This is obviously nonsense.
St Monica shares a few things with St Marge the B. They both suffered abuse in their marriages, and are both patronesses of those abused in marriage. St Monica spent most of her life worrying about St Augustine and, having converted from paganism, spent a great deal of time praying for him, and for others. Her husband, who remained a pagan, took umbrage (particularly to Augustine’s baptism) and treated her badly. Naturally she bore this with saintly patience.
It’s a good job that St Monica did convert, because she desperately needed the power of prayer – and all the help the graces of his baptism could provide - to likewise turn around her wastrel of a son, St Augustine, and to stem the great tide of laziness and debauchery that washed through his life. Of course we all know that her prayers were answered, and her son became one of the great Fathers of the Church, even if the Orthodox don’t rate him terribly much.
But why am I writing about St Monica? Porridge. That’s why. For many years my friend William and I have argued about when the ‘porridge season’ begins. William has usually opted for the first autumnal sort of day, and has even been known to have porridge in September. I’ve always considered it to begin with the first true frost. I’m sure my Scottish friends think it lasts all year, but we English, particularly Southern English, are more reserved in our porridge consumption.
Anyway, the great porridge question has long perplexed me. I was thinking about this yesterday as the rain was pouring down and I looked out on a bleak English August day. In fact I was thinking that I’d very much like a bowl of porridge, that it would be both warming and filling, but that I’d have to back-track on all my dearly held and conservative views about porridge in order to have one. Then, in the course of my hagiographical explorations, I read about St Monica’s habit of taking porridge as an offering to shrines. St Augustine mentions it in his Confessions, saying that his mother; ‘brought to certain oratories, erected in the memory of the saints, offerings of porridge, bread, and wine.’ (Confessions 6.2.2). St Monica eventually gave up her somewhat pagan habit of making these offerings, and instead offered a heart full of devotion. Presumably at this point she switched to eating the porridge.
This got me thinking.
Perhaps St Monica’s Day should be the official start to the English porridge season. Perhaps it’s there in the liturgical calendar for us. Perhaps one of the fruits of the new calendar (for pre 1970 St Monica’s Day is in May) is that we are now given a sign about when it’s sensible to start eating porridge.
Well it’s oatally good enough for me. Porridge season has started.