And after a silence, she went on in a firmer voice, as if to impress on her sons her final wishes:
"Lay this body where you will, and be not anxious about it. Only I beseech you, remember me at the altar of God, wherever you are."
That was the supreme renunciation. How could an African woman, so much attached to her country, agree to be buried in a stranger soil? Pagan notions were still very strong in this community, and the place of burial was an important consideration. Monnica, like all other widows, had settled upon hers. At Thagaste she had had her place prepared beside her husband Patricius. And here now she appeared to give that up. Augustin's companions were astonished at such abnegation. As for himself, he marvelled at the completeness of the change worked in his mother's soul by Grace. And as he thought over all the virtues of her life, the strength of her faith—from that moment, he had no doubt that she was a saint.
She still lingered for some time. Finally, on the ninth day of her illness, she died at the age of fifty-six.
Augustin closed her eyes. A great sorrow surged into his heart. And yet he who was so quick to tears had the courage not to cry…. Suddenly a noise of weeping rose in the room of death: it was the young Adeodatus, who lamented at the sight of the corpse. He sobbed in such a heartbroken way that those who were there, demoralized by the distress of it, were obliged to rebuke him. This struck Augustin so deeply, that many years afterwards the broken sound of this sobbing still haunted his ears. "Methought," he says, "that it was my own childish soul which thus broke out in the weeping of my son." As for him, with the whole effort of his reason struggling against his heart, he only wanted to think of the glory which the saint had just entered into. His companions felt likewise. Evodius caught up a psalter, and before Monnica's body, not yet cold, he began to chant the Psalm, "My song shall be of mercy and judgment; unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing." All who were in the house took up the responses.
In the meantime, while the layers-out were preparing the corpse for burial, the brethren drew Augustin into another room. His friends and relations stood round him. He consoled the others and himself. He spoke, as the custom was, upon the deliverance of the faithful soul and the happiness which is promised. They might have imagined that he had no sense of grief, "But in Thy hearing, O my God, where none of them could hear, I was chiding the softness of my heart, and holding back the tide of sorrow…. Alas! well did I know what I was choking down in my heart."
Not even at the church, where the sacrifice was offered for Monnica's soul, nor at the cemetery before the coffin, did he weep. From a sense of Christian seemliness, he feared to scandalize his brethren by imitating the desolation of the pagans and of those who die without hope. But this very effort that he made to keep back his tears became another cause of suffering. The day ended in a black sadness, a sadness he could not shake off. It stifled him. Then he remembered the Greek proverb—"The bath drives away sorrow;" and he determined to go and bathe. He went into the tepidarium and stretched himself out on the hot slab. Useless remedy! "The bitterness of my trouble was not carried from my heart with the sweat that flowed from my limbs." The attendants rolled him in warm towels and led him to the resting-couch. Worn out by tiredness and so many emotions, he fell into a heavy sleep. The next day, upon awaking, a fresh briskness was in all his being. Some verses came singing into his memory; they were the first words of the confident and joyous hymn of St. Ambrose:
"Creator of the earth and sky,
Ruling the firmament on high,
Clothing the day with robes of light,
Blessing with gracious sleep the night,—
That rest may comfort weary men
To face their usual toil again,
And soothe awhile the harassed mind,
And sorrow's heavy load unbind."
Suddenly, at the word sorrow, the thought of his dead mother came back to him, with the regret for that kind heart he had lost. A wave of despair overwhelmed him. He flung himself sobbing on the bed, and at last wept all the tears he had pent up so long.