The story is told that when the Spaniards first rolled through Southern California, they encountered a natural spring whose waters ran “as pure as the tears of Santa Mónica.” But who was Mónica, and why was she weeping? A fourth century widow, Mónica had a son, Agustín, who was forever getting into trouble.  Although Monica counseled and pleaded daily with him to change his ways, Agustín would neither listen nor change.  Neither, however, would his mother abandon hope. Years of praying and crying - "until the ground was damp with her tears" - finally bore fruit. Monica's wayward son repented, becoming the famed philosopher Saint Augustine, whose books are still studied 1500 years after they were written. Mónica became a saint for continuing to love her son even when he did wrong, and for never abandoning hope. As Saint Augustine wrote, "You extended ... toward me your merciful hand, to bring me out of profound darkness..." Here in the City of the Angels, where so many mothers weep for sons who are victims of violence or perpetrators of violence; where so many families are connected by prisons and hospitals, courtrooms and morgues; it is that merciful hand, like the optimistic long-suffering love of Santa Mónica, that can help us out of darkness, and help us to heal.