Monica, the Peacemaker

August 27 is the feastday of Santa Monica, the mother of St. Augustine. She is more popularly known for her constant prayers and gift of tears by which she obtained from God the grace of the conversion of her husband as well as of her son, Augustine. But the following excerpt from the Confessions (Bk 9, Ch 9) of her son, Augustine, shows how she can teach how to be peacemakers, especially in the present context of fighting in Mindanao:

This other great gift thou also didst bestow, O my God, my Mercy, upon that good handmaid of thine, in whose womb thou didst create me. It was that whenever she could she acted as a peacemaker between any differing and discordant spirits, and when she heard very bitter things on either side of a controversy--the kind of bloated and undigested discord which often belches forth bitter words, when crude malice is breathed out by sharp tongues to a present friend against an absent enemy--she would disclose nothing about the one to the other except what might serve toward their reconciliation. This might seem a small good to me if I did not know to my sorrow countless persons who, through the horrid and far-spreading infection of sin, not only repeat to enemies mutually enraged things said in passion against each other, but also add some things that were never said at all. It ought not to be enough in a truly humane man merely not to incite or increase the enmities of men by evil-speaking; he ought likewise to endeavor by kind words to extinguish them. Such a one was she--and thou, her most intimate instructor, didst teach her in the school of her heart.