A TALE OF TWO BRIDGES

Bridge #1

Le pont de l'Europe

The Pont de 'l'Europe was built in 1975 to carry the traffic of the national highway N100 across the Rhône River at Avignon in southern France. As I drove across it on my way to visit the Palace of the Popes, I glanced to my left to catch a glimpse of a far more famous bridge. This second one, although famous, is disappointing in this: it ends partway across the river!

Bridge #2

This second brdge has been made famous because of the charming children's song called Sur le Pont d'Avignon ("On the Bridge of Avignon") written in the mid-1800's.

Also known as le Pont Saint-Bénézet , the Pont d'Avignon was a medieval wooden bridge constructed between 1177 and 1185. It was soon replaced by a stone one composed of 22 arches, an engineering feat 900 meters long. Because of the frequent powerful floods that came down the Rhône, the bridge was in constant need of repair as various arches would collapse and fall into the river. The task of constant repairs became more and more burdensome until by the 1600's the bridge was abandoned, and its arches were dismantled or simply allowed to wash away until today only four of those twenty-two arches are left. And this is the "bridge" that the children sing about in the song.

Learning from the bridges

St. Monica

The remaining four arches hold a powerful lesson when compared to the sleek bridge of the N100 nearby.The contrast is perfect for the celebration of today's feast of Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo. She was a peasant woman whose Christian faith was so deep and strong that her unceasing prayers for the conversion of her son were finally answered, giving the Church one of her greatest thinkers and theologians.

Her unwavering faith was like the Pont de l'Europe, reaching, as it were, all the way to the Lord in heaven. Meanwhile her brilliant but wayward son was, so to speak, wandering lost on the old Pont d'Avignon, using only his intellect to get to Ultimate Truth. 

Finally, thanks to Monica's prayerful tears, he received the grace of conversion. Gradually he began to seethat the bridge he was on could never get him to where he so desperately desired to go, because it stops in midstream. He would later write, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." 

It seems that millions of people today are stuck, like Augustine was, on the bridge to nowhere. Their hearts are restless, and they keep seeking for Ultimate happiness and meaning in the material world, and exclude God from the picture. Given all these people wandering on the bridge that can't take them anywhere, the catastrophic results we see around us are not surprising. 

Let us pray to Saint Monica and her son that more and more of our brothers and sisters may be given the gift of conversion and so come to faith in God in whom alone their hearts can find rest.

Saints Monica and Augustine, pray for us!