Memorial Mass for Mother Angelica at Our Lady of the Angels Chapel on March 30, 2016. Credit: EWTN.
The life of EWTN foundress Mother Angelica was a testament to St.
Paul’s teaching that “God chose the weak of the world to shame the
strong,” preached the celebrant of vespers at a prayer vigil offered for
her repose.
“How we do need to interpret” Mother Angelica’s life,
Fr. Anthony Mary, MFVA, preached, “is if we’re going to boast in
anything, the boast of Mother Angelica was not herself. The boast of
Mother Angelica was always Jesus Christ.”
Fr. Anthony Mary
preached at Thursday evening’s solemn vespers for Mother Angelica,
foundress of EWTN and abbess emerita of Our Lady of the Angels
Monastery, as she lay in repose in the Shrine of the Most Blessed
Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama. Mother Angelica passed away Easter
Sunday, March 27.
The vespers were followed by a prayer vigil for Mother Angelica celebrated by Bishop Robert Joseph Baker of Birmingham.
The
reading for the vespers was 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, where St. Paul
writes that “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and
God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the
lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce
to nothing those who are something, so that no man might boast before
God.”
Mother Angelica lived this reading, Fr. Anthony Mary said,
because she, like the Apostles, was “weak” and “lowly” yet served God
faithfully when chosen by Him. “Our Lord didn’t call the perfect” to
spread the Gospel, he noted, but men who were “old” and “weak.”
“How
deeply she loved them,” he said of Mother Angelica and the Apostles,
because “she rejoiced in the weakness of those men” because they were
like us, and not perfect.
She came from a “humble” and
“challenging background,” Fr. Anthony Mary said, and then chose a “life
of humility” by responding to her vocation as a cloistered nun. Mother
Angelica also dealt with back pain and used crutches for years and had
severe asthma. She suffered a stroke in 2001 that forced her off the
air. After that she lived a “hidden life” where she was “frail” and
“weak,” he said.
“Pain is my constant companion,” Fr. Anthony
Mary quoted Mother Angelica, saying it was her “constant reminder” of
her “union with Our Suffering Lord.” This helped her to be in tune with
the promptings of the Holy Spirit, he said.
Her operation, EWTN,
had a humble nature, he added. It started in a garage and the main
campus in Irondale is still “not really anything much to look at,” he
said. It’s “not CNN” and “certainly not ESPN,” he added to chuckles in
the audience. Yet it “carries out the mission that Mother founded” and
has done great work, he noted.
Like the Apostles who were
instructed by Christ in the Gospel to cast their nets over the side of
the boat, the nets were tearing at the size of the catch, Fr. Anthony
Mary said. It was Jesus and the Father Who did this, not the Apostles,
he emphasized. They simply “followed the command of the Lord.”
Mother
Angelica taught that when we preach the Gospel, “we have to cast the
nets” and respond to God’s call, he explained. She lived this by
obedience to God and trusting in His call, he said, and God produced the
fruits.
Preaching at the prayer vigil later on Thursday, Fr.
Miguel Marie Soeherman, MFVA, admonished those in attendance to heed the
words of Mother Angelica on death and judgment.
“Death indeed is
the reality that everyone will face,” he said, noting that Mother
called it “the beautiful moment of our life.”
“We will be judged on love,” he said, on the choices we made “for God or for ourselves.”
“Make
your choice now,” he quoted Mother Angelica. “Wherever you land,
wherever you go, it’s forever. So make it a good destination.”
