Monica's Seventeen Years of Knocking

For seventeen years, Monica of Hippo refused to stop knocking. Her son Augustine was brilliant, restless, and utterly lost. He chased philosophy in Carthage, took a mistress in Rome, and embraced Manichaeism — a heresy that made Monica weep until she could barely see. Night after night, she prayed. Year after year, she followed him across the Mediterranean, asking God for what seemed impossible: the conversion of a man who wanted nothing to do with the faith.…