So the happy innocent days flew past in the pursuit of that wisdom which is eternal. "Too late have I loved Thee, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new!" cried Augustine. "Behold Thou wast within me, and I was abroad, and there I sought Thee. I have tasted Thee, and I am hungry after Thee. Thou hast touched me, and I am all on fire."
At the beginning of Lent Augustine and Alypius returned to Milan to attend the course of instructions which St. Ambrose was to give to those who were preparing for Baptism.
In the night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday the stains of the past were washed away for ever in those cleansing waters, and at the Mass of the daybreak on that blessed morning Augustine knelt at the altar to receive his Lord. Monica was beside him; her tears and her prayers had been answered. She and her son were one again in heart and soul.
CHAPTER XI
HOW ST. MONICA SET OUT FOR AFRICA WITH ST. AUGUSTINE, AND HOW SHE DIED AT OSTIA ON THE TIBER
In the old days at Milan, before his conversion, Augustine had often told his friends that the dream of his life was to live quietly somewhere with a few friends, who would devote themselves to the search for truth. It had even been proposed to try the scheme, but it would not work. Some of his friends were married; others had worldly ties that they could not break. The idea had to be given up.
Now he had found the Truth, and at Cassiacum his dream had been in a manner realized. Why should they not continue to live like that, he asked Alypius, at all events until they were ready for the work to which God had called them? And where should they live this life but in their own country, which was to be the future field of their labours?
Alypius asked nothing better. Their friend Evodius, like themselves a citizen of Tagaste, who had been baptized a short time before, was ready to join them. He held a high position at the Court of the Emperor, but it seemed to him a nobler thing to serve the King of kings. So these three future bishops of the Church in Africa made their plans together. Monica would be the mother of the little household, as she had been at Cassiacum; she was ready to go wherever they wished.
A few days before they started an event occurred which they all remembered later. It was the feast of St. Cyprian, and Monica had returned from Mass absorbed in God, as she always was after Holy Communion. Perhaps she had been thinking of her night of anguish in the little chapel by the seashore at Carthage three years before, when God had seemed deaf to her prayers, in order that He might grant her the fulness of her heart's desire.
Suddenly she turned to them with shining eyes.