The Language of Saint Monica, the Experience of Unspeakable Words and Their Influence on Augustine’s Conversion
The Language of Saint Monica, the Experience of Unspeakable Words and Their Influence on Augustine’s Conversion

Summary/Abstract: In this article, we wish to highlight the fact that the words “with much power” of mother Monica won the soul of her son, Augustine, and directed him towards moral beauty, writing the words of eternal life in his heart. And Augustine, as soon as he received the power of the Word, stood up and came close to the light of divinity. The power of the word is extraordinary. Every word has power, because it is someone’s, because through the word someone’s desire and will is expressed. And the desire, the will, the call of that moves the one towards whom it goes. Man subdues man. Man gives power to man, primarily through the word. Saint Monica, like the other great saints of the Church, when she reached the revealed experience and found herself in mystical ecstasy or in the uncreated Light, “there”, in those states, there are no created words and meanings, in other words, categories of human thought, which are formulated and expressed through rational processes. “The experience of glorification (δοξαςμός) surpasses all words and meanings. Saint Monica partook of the uncreated words and meanings and then transmitted this experience of seeing God to Augustine, through created words and meanings to heal him, so that he too, using the created words and meanings, would be guided to the uncreated words and meanings, to the experience of revelation. When Augustine lives the experience of revelation, created words andmeanings are transcended, since he experiences uncreated reality itself.

• Details
• Contents