Key Arguments

• He highlights that as her death approached Monica ‘did not think of having her body sumptuously wrapped or embalmed with perfumes or given a choice monument’ nor did she care about a homeland tomb; instead, ‘she desired only that she might be remembered at your altar which she had attended every day without fail’.
• Augustine explains why this remembrance matters: at the altar Monica knew that ‘what is distributed is the holy victim who “abolished the account of debts which was reckoned against us”. He triumphed over the enemy who counts up our sins, and searches for grounds of accusation, but who found no fault in him in whom we are conquerors’.
• He uses legal and commercial imagery—‘account of debts’, ‘price which he paid to buy us’—to describe Christ’s work, emphasizing that no one can repay Christ’s innocent blood, thereby placing all hope for acquittal and protection in his sacrifice.
• He says ‘By the chain of faith your handmaid bound her soul to the sacrament of our redemption. Let no one tear her from your protection. Let not the lion and dragon intrude themselves either by force or by subtle tricks’, depicting the sacrament as a protective bond in spiritual warfare.
• He imagines Monica’s only safe plea before the ‘clever Accuser’ as confessing that ‘her debts have been forgiven by him to whom no one can repay the price which he, who owed nothing, paid on our behalf’, underscoring a theology of justification by forgiven debts rather than innocence.
• Finally, Augustine asks that all who read his book ‘remember at your altar Monica your servant and Patrick her late husband’, extending Monica’s own request into a communal, liturgical practice among his readers.

Source Quotes

Nor did she care if she had a tomb in her homeland. On that she gave us no instruction; she desired only that she might be remembered at your altar which she had attended every day without fail, where she knew that what is distributed is the holy victim who ‘abolished the account of debts which was reckoned against us’ (Col. 2: 14). He triumphed over the enemy who counts up our sins, and searches for grounds of accusation, but who found no fault in him in whom we are conquerors (John 14: 30; Rom.

2: 14). He triumphed over the enemy who counts up our sins, and searches for grounds of accusation, but who found no fault in him in whom we are conquerors (John 14: 30; Rom. 8: 37). Who will restore to him his innocent blood?

Who will restore to him the price which he paid to buy us, so as to take us out of our adversary’s hands? By the chain of faith your handmaid bound her soul to the sacrament of our redemption. Let no one tear her from your protection. Let not the lion and dragon (Ps. 90: 13) intrude themselves either by force or by subtle tricks. For she will not reply that she has no debts to pay, lest she be refuted and captured by the clever Accuser.

For she will not reply that she has no debts to pay, lest she be refuted and captured by the clever Accuser. Her answer will be that her debts have been forgiven by him to whom no one can repay the price which he, who owed nothing, paid on our behalf. (37) With her husband may she rest in peace.

She served him by offering you ‘fruit with patience’ (Luke 8: 15) so as to gain him for you also. My Lord, my God, inspire your servants, my brothers, your sons, my masters, to whose service I dedicate my heart, voice, and writings, that all who read this book may remember at your altar Monica your servant and Patrick her late husband, through whose physical bond you brought me into this life without my knowing how.34 May they remember with devout affection my parents in this transient light, my kith and kin under you, our Father, in our mother the Catholic Church, and my fellow citizens in the eternal Jerusalem. For this city your pilgrim people yearn, from their leaving it to their return.

Key Concepts

• she desired only that she might be remembered at your altar which she had attended every day without fail, where she knew that what is distributed is the holy victim who ‘abolished the account of debts which was reckoned against us’ (Col. 2: 14).
• He triumphed over the enemy who counts up our sins, and searches for grounds of accusation, but who found no fault in him in whom we are conquerors (John 14: 30; Rom. 8: 37).
• By the chain of faith your handmaid bound her soul to the sacrament of our redemption. Let no one tear her from your protection. Let not the lion and dragon (Ps. 90: 13) intrude themselves either by force or by subtle tricks.
• Her answer will be that her debts have been forgiven by him to whom no one can repay the price which he, who owed nothing, paid on our behalf.
• that all who read this book may remember at your altar Monica your servant and Patrick her late husband,

Context

Book IX, xiii (36–37): Augustine interprets Monica’s dying wish and articulates a sacramental, juridical, and warfare imagery around the Eucharist, Christ’s sacrifice, and remembrance at the altar, culminating in a request to the book’s readers.