27/08/2025
Augustine’s Mother: The Dignity of Womanhood
Growing up in the heart-of-Mushin, in the very heart-of-Lagos, South-West, Nigeria, in an average family of means, I saw all around me poverty of different shades and the length parents went to ensure that their children/wards never had to go to bed hungry. I saw the sacrifice they make at ensuring that their children become somebody in life. At first hand, I understood, without the aid of a tutor or in a classroom ambience, the meaning of the dignity of labour.
More importantly, I came to know, understand and appreciate the virtues of endurance, perseverance, patience, sincerity, dedication, sacrifice; and, their inherent values in bringing up a child in the way that he should go, so that when he grows he shall not depart from it. I saw mothers labour to augment whatever meagre their husbands brought to feed the children; and deny themselves just for their children to have enough sustenance; something apparently lacking in the mothers of our time.
I am eternally grateful to both my late father and late mother for their combined efforts to sustain us, averagely, by legit means possible. As such, they imbued in us the virtue of selflessness. My mother was a typical Yorùbá woman. She never cooked without being mindful of additions for the neighbours. Not because they were paupers; but, this was a typical Yorùbá life: You cook and spread joy and love with the servings.
Today, the Holy Mother Church celebrates a dignified woman per excellon -St. Monica. A woman who, after the Blessed Virgin Mary -The Mother of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, typifies and dignifies motherhood and womanhood. Monica, it was granted by Divine Providence, to be the mother of St. Augustine of Hippo. That Augustine was nebulous and nefarious in his youth was what made Monica carved a niche for herself today as an exemplary, dignified mother.
Born in a Christian home but had to marry early in life to a pagan and violently tempered -Patricius, Monica gave birth to 3 children (Augustine, Navigius and Perpetual). Their father, being a pagan would not have his children raised a Christian...
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