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We had heavy hearts when we read this morning that dear Mother Angelica had died yesterday evening at the age of 92. Then we began to reflect that she had died on Easter Sunday, the great day of the Resurrection, and that she had gone to be with Our Blessed Lord. Mother was already so intimate with Jesus in this life that, if she even got a new pair of shoes, she would go before the Tabernacle and say simply, ''I got some new shoes today, Lord... Like 'em?''
Although she had a childlike love of the Lord, she was no fool.
Biographical Information
One of the first things that we did with Torch of The Faith in 2008Â was to sell copies of Raymond Arroyo's book Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve and a Network of Miracles. Several things stand out for us from that biographical account.
Born Rita Rizzo in 1923, Mother had a tough childhood in Canton, Ohio. Her father was an abusive, absent and unfaithful husband, her mother was mentally fragile and her broken family lived in a ghetto run by mobsters of the Sicilian-based Black Hand Mob.
A few weeks before her 6th birthday, her parish priest, Fr. Joseph Riccardi, was sacrilegiously gunned down by gangsters for courageously resisting their attempts to bury drugs in the school grounds.
In 1933, her own mother, Mrs. Rizzo, lapsed from the Church for 10 years due to a combination of problems at home, harshness from nuns and bad treatment from a visiting missionary priest. When Mrs. Rizzo went over the edge with depression and mental health problems, young Rita had to take on the role of parent.
In 1934, young Rita had a miraculous experience: a car was speeding towards her in the middle of a road and she froze with fear. She felt two hands pick her up and set her down on the central reservation (median in America). A bus driver said that he had never seen anyone jump so high before.
In 1940, young Rita began to suffer with ptosis of the stomach. This caused her hands to shake, her left arm to go numb and her stomach to suffer spasms, which made it difficult for her to eat or sleep. She had a physical and spiritual healing when she was taken to meet Rhonda Wise - a Catholic mystic who had the marks of the stigmata. As well as being healed of the ptosis, Rita had an experience of God's personal love for her - and she began to love Him too. Sometime later, she realized that she was called to be a religious sister after praying the Stations of the Cross in her local parish.
Her life as a religious has been marked by periods of difficult health problems, healings, focus on the love of God, attempts to offer the hope of Christ to the hopeless and remarkable achievements in the field of evangelization.
Mother's eventual founding of a new convent, new communities of nuns and priests, and the gestation, birth, growth, trials and spread of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) is similarly characterized by sufferings, setbacks, miracles and great faith in Our Lord. In time, her own mother Mrs. Rizzo even became a nun in Mother Angelica's growing community!
After the Second Vatican Council, Mother had dabbled with some of the new methods which were becoming popular in those tumultous years. She tried to run her convent more on the lines of a loving family than a strict community, opened up the gate in her convent's sacred enclosure, introduced more modern habits, allowed guitars during Holy Mass and became involved in aspects of charismatic renewal. Still, she continued to impart authentic catechesis on the true doctrines and moral teachings of the Church. Her evangelization booklets and videos on Sacred Scripture from those years remain popular classics today.
In 1993, when modernists portrayed Jesus with a female actor, before the visiting St. John Paul II, Mother went on air to lambast the ''liberal church in America''. She then reintroduced the traditional habits, restored sacred enclosure and focused on traditional devotions and liturgical practices. What remained was the model of running the convent as a loving Christian family and the key work of evangelization.
Nevertheless, when the disgraced and ulta-modernist Archbishop Rembert Weakland criticized Mother's condemnation of liberalism, her feisty response became the stuff of legend: ''He didn't think a woman playing Jesus was offensive... he can go and put his head down the back toilet as far as I am concerned.''
Mother Angelica would run into further trouble with Bishop David Foley who, in a shortsighted breach with 2,000 years of Sacred Tradition, strongly objected to Mother Angelica having Holy Mass offered ad orientem at her new shrine. She would also incur the wrath of the ultra-modernist - and disgraced protector of sexually abusive priests -Â Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles. Mahony attempted to have Mother Angelica silenced and even banned from the Sacraments. He also pushed to have the community that she founded suppressed. Â Â
In spite of all of this resistance, as Raymond Arroyo has recalled in his on-line tribute, EWTN grew from its origins in a monastery garage to become the largest religious media organization on the planet. Whilst hundreds of millions have been reached, in multiple languages, through the TV, countless others around the globe have accessed EWTN on shortwave, AM/FM radio and the internet. Mother Angelica is the only woman in the history of television to found and lead a cable network for 20 years.
Following a serious stroke on Christmas Eve 2001, Mother Angelica signed over the running of the network to a group of laity and focused on spending time with the sisters in the cloistered prayer life of her own community. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI recognized her outstanding efforts and achievements by awarding her the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Cross of Honour for distinguished service to the Church and Pope.
There is a good comment by a gentleman called Scott Woltze on Fr. Z's blog, which is perhaps characteristic of what many people feel today. He wrote: ''If not for Mother, what would so many of us converts and reverts have done to learn the Faith? We wanted, by a grace, the whole Catholic Faith, and we had to look very hard to find it. We often had to settle for a virtual parish (EWTN web and tv, Catholic Answers, Audio Sancto etc) until things got better in our neck of the woods. Thank you Mother, may our Lord's perpetual light shine upon you, and adore him face to face.''
We were amazed this morning when we consulted the details of an article which we originally posted up here called How EWTN Changed Our Lives. That article was posted up on 27th March, 2014 - exactly two years to the date before Mother would go home to Jesus. What follows is a somewhat updated version of that original article.
How EWTN Changed Our Lives
And a little child shall lead them (Isaiah 11:6)
A few months after our wedding in 2002, we had EWTN installed in our new home in Bootle, Merseyside. When we settled down to view the global Catholic channel for the first time, we had no idea that it was about to change our whole life.
The first fruit of our purchase was very practical, in terms of sharing the Faith. In those days, an over-large satellite dish was required to receive the correct signal here in England. This led to probing questions from a neighbour, as to what on earth we were watching! He was somewhat dumbfounded when we explained that we were tuning in to a dedicated Catholic TV station!
Other fruits were also very tangible. We were quite soon weaned off most of the secular television and began to learn more about the practicalities for living our faith in a rapidly secularizing culture. This was stuff that, to be honest, we were just not getting in the parish. We also found the regular TV's diet of vacuity, violence and impurity to be even more unpalatable in comparison to the peaceful prayer and solid doctrine emanating from EWTNÂ at that time. The Mother Angelica Live productions were particularly edifying and instructive. In a time when Catholic orthodoxy in Britain was in such a state of rapid retreat, it was heartening to see so many enthusiastic and articulate Catholics witnessing to the Faith each day.
Being able to watch daily Mass, from the chapel of Our Lady and the Angels in Alabama, meant that we could regularly hear quality homilies and make spiritual communions together after work. On Sundays, we could even join with Mother Angelica's community of nuns in their majestic monastery chapel at Hanceville, for Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.
Each week, we also received intellectual stimulation through the theological discussions, which took place around a low coffee table, on the Franciscan University Presents show. Â
The St. John Paul II library and Ss Cosmas and Damian building brightened with the colours of the Fall season on the campus at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
In February 2004, we began a 30-day prayer to St. Joseph to ask for his intercession as to how we could best serve the Church. Around that time, an advert came on EWTN for the MA course at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, USA. It seemed like a place where I might receive some healing from the effects of the modernistic Ushaw seminary, as well as a place to learn more of our Faith. Angie looked over and casually asked me if I fancied going there for a visit. Without really thinking about it too much, I quite matter-of-factly answered in the affirmative. In a most unexpected turn of events, we found ourselves crossing the Atlantic soon afterwards to have an interview with the admissions department of the university!
On Friday nights in those days, there used to be a young man called ''E-mail Guy'' who passed on-line questions up to the hosts of the Life on the Rock show. We were amazed to find that he was visiting the campus with his mum the day that we arrived. As we were given a tour of the university together, we asked if he was really ''E-mail Guy''! He and his mum were just as amazed to learn that he was famous in England! Even more amazingly, after some setbacks and a good deal of prayer, our new home sold for double the price we had paid for it 2 years earlier, we had stored most of our belongings in my parents' loft and we found ourselves arriving in Ohio that July on a 2-year study visa!
In a remarkable twist, we were loaned some furniture for our rented apartment, by someone who helped to produce the weekly Franciscan University Presents shows for EWTN. These furnishings included a couch, a disused and multi-coloured dining booth from a Taco-Bell outlet and, due to a revamp of the set, the actual low coffee table and chairs from the Franciscan University Presents show; which we had watched every Sunday evening back in Bootle on Merseyside! In this, we discerned a humourous sign of God's Providential care.
We learned so much about the dogmas/doctrines of the Church, and about authentic Christian community, during those two years in Steubenville.
As we've said several times - sorry if it is getting boring! - we hired a Dodge car and took off on a summer-long road-trip across the United States of America in 2005. As well as cruising parts of Route 66, visiting Elvis Presley's Graceland Mansion, Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon and Bonneville Salt Flats, we also made a pilgrimage to key sites in the history of the Catholic Church in North America.
By far the most peaceful and spiritually refreshing stage of our transcontinental journey was the retreat that we spent near EWTN's headquarters in Alabama. It was amazing to think that the purchase of a satellite dish three years earlier had led to all of this! Â
Angie outside the EWTN studios at Old Leeds Road in Birmingham, Alabama.
The studio and daily-Mass chapel are situated in Irondale, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. We were awed by the array of satellite dishes beaming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and His Holy Catholic Church, to all the corners of the globe.
It was very moving to stand here and recall the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ recorded in Matthew 24:14: ''And this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations. And then the end will come.'' And also His words in the Great Commission: ''Go therefore and make disciples of all nations'' (Mt: 28:19).
About one hour's drive north of the studios and daily-Mass chapel is Mother Angelica's monastery and the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, in the pleasantly rural area of Hanceville, Alabama.Â
This is a most beautiful temple for the adoration of the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist. As Mother Angelica has said: ''He designed it, He built it, and He paid for it.'' This refers to the amazing experience she had in Bogota, when a miraculous statue of the Child Jesus turned to her and said: ''Build me a Temple and I will help those who help you.'' Five anonymous families provided all the money for the splendid monastery to be constructed in the style of a 13th-Century European monastery. It was completed in the first couple of years of the 21st-Century.
Mother Angelica used to often say that we should only give the very best to Jesus. As such, the shrine is replete with finest gold, marble, stone and stained glass. Pictured above is the Tabernacle which, with the Sacred Monstrance, is at the very centre and heart of the church on the High-Altar. In her book about the shrine, Mother Angelica wrote: ''The Sacred Host which we adore is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus, consecrated during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.''Â
Beyond the High-Altar is the sacred enclosure, where the full community of contemplative nuns prays together before the Lord in adoration, praise, thanksgiving and intercession for the needs of the Church and the world. The prayer of contemplatives has been described as the heart-beat of the Church.
We were so blessed at our retreat that we did not want to leave EWTN. By God's grace, we were able to pray in Adoration, make a good Confession in the sturdy confessionals, attend very reverent Masses - in the Novus Ordo, but where the priest faced ad orientem and the altar-rails were used for the distribution of Holy Communion to pilgrims who knelt and received on the tongue - and enjoy quiet times in the cloisters and grounds. One afternoon, we were even allowed to spend 45-minutes or so with a religious sister at the grille. Before we left, she assured us that she would pass on our gratitude and prayers to Mother Angelica.
When we returned to England in 2006, we had been so thoroughly weaned off television that we did not bother with it for several years. In 2013, six months after poor Dad died, we moved back home to be with Mum. We soon found ourselves slipping into watching time-sapping things like the One Show. We also noticed that, in the intervening decade, the television had got even worse in terms of atheistic ideology, impurity and violence. It was notable too, that the reductionist theory of evolution was being pushed very subtly through a wide variety of TV genres. We decided to get EWTN installed and again found it uplifting to view the Rosary, Divine Mercy chaplet and various programmes on G.K. Chesterton, Holy Matrimony and classical re-runs of Mother Angelica Live. Mum used to love watching these re-runs and she would laugh delightedly whenever Mother Angelica used to get the giggles in an episode.
We did notice that, with Mother Angelica no longer at the helm, some modernistic programming seemed to have slipped into the mix. Also, we had changed so much through regular attendance at the Traditional Latin Mass, that some of the mixture of rock music, pop culture and Catholicism in the youth programming now jarred with our sensibilities. We also wondered why EWTN was not being more outspoken when the sacrilegious ''Kasper proposal'' began to gather steam. It would be difficult to imagine such a ''neutered neutrality'' during the leadership of Mother Angelica.
That being said, EWTN became a great help to us during a very difficult time. In late August 2014, Mum suffered a major stroke which wiped out much of her memory, her speech and her natural abilities. For nearly 2 weeks she had to remain in hospital. When she first returned home, she did not know the house and kept standing by the front door, begging to be taken to her own mum, who had died in 1994. As we began to come to terms with the fact that Mum no longer remembered her past life, and to learn the tasks of providing 24/7 care, we experienced darkness that would be hard to relate here. And yet, in the very midst of all that, praying the recorded devotions each day with Mother Angelica and her nuns was soothing to Mum and to us. I personally received graces in that time, which I think converted me more to God by being hammered on the anvil of suffering. Mother Angelica's devotions became a life-line and a conduit of grace. Through Mother Angelica's daily devotions, I was not only able to hang on to faith and sanity, but to receive an awareness of God's love and support that I had not imagined before. Nor could I have had this without that Cross. It was as though I was first carved out deeply in a short space of time; and then that newly carved space was filled with a balm of God's love. It was a key moment in ongoing conversion for me. I am very grateful to God and to Mother Angelica for it.
There was another moment of grace in the middle of all that. One day Mum, who could not even remember her own house or having been married to Dad after her stroke, came into the room and saw Mother Angelica on the telly. With a joyful expression, she exclaimed ''Oh!'' and, turning to us with a huge smile, she pointed excitedly to the screen. It seemed that, in spite of everything that had happened to her, she still remembered something of old Mother Angelica!Â
Dear Mother Angelica, you have helped us so much and changed our lives on more than one occasion. Through Mother Angelica, EWTN and Franciscan University of Steubenville we have received many graces, learned so much and deepened our discipleship of Christ.
During the ''Freshers' Week'' at Steubenville in September 2004, we were awarded a bright yellow t-shirt bearing the Franciscan logo in green letters. This was given to us because we had travelled the furthest to get to the campus that semester. As I was given the t-shirt on the platform, I was asked to say a few words at the microphone. I basically said what I want to say now: ''If it were not for Mother Angelica, we would not be where we are today... Mother Angelica, you have given us so much. We want to thank you. May God bless Mother Angelica!''
To which we will only add: Eternal rest grant unto her dear Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon her; and may she rest in peace. Amen.
Ah, God bless you, Mother!
