St. Augustine relates in his Confessions that when he lived in Carthage with his parents, he made the decision to go to Rome to teach. Augustine was not a saint at that time, but a great libertine. His mother, Monica, who wanted nothing but the salvation of his soul, thought that this departure, which took her son away from her influence in order to expose him to all the temptations of Rome, would be the end of all her hopes. But Augustine relates:
Why I left the one country and went to the other, You knew, O God, but You did not tell either me or my mother. She indeed was in dreadful grief at my going and followed me right to the seacoast. There she clung to me passionately, determined that I should either go back home with her or take her to Rome with me, but I deceived her with the pretense that I had a friend whom I did not want to leave until he had sailed off with a fair wind.… She would not return home without me, but I managed with some difficulty to persuade her to spend the night in a place near the ship where there was an oratory in memory of St. Cyprian. That night I stole away without her; she remained praying and weeping. And what was she praying for, O my God, with all those tears but that You should not allow me to sail! But you saw deeper and granted the essential part of her prayer: You did not do what she was at that moment asking, that You might do the thing she was always asking” (Bk 5, ch. 8).
Monica was opposed to his departure, but it was in Italy that Augustine was to encounter St. Ambrose, who was the instrument of his conversion.
Thus, as St. Augustine said, God refused to grant St. Monica the prayer she prayed on that day, in order to grant her the prayer she prayed every day. Her prayer on that particular day was “Let him not leave!” Her prayer of every day: “Let him be converted! Let him be converted!” Yet it was necessary for him to leave in order that he might be converted. This happens so often in our lives, doesn’t it? We ask, without knowing it, for the very thing which is the contrary of our greatest good, of our true happiness.
From I Believe in Love: A Personal Retreat Based on the Teaching of St. Therese of Lisieux (pp. 101-102). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition.
Prodigal Catholic 