Raymond Arroyo - Mother Angelicas Private and Pithy Lessons from the Scriptures

I went to those who were not looking for me;
I was found by those who sought me not.

ISAIAH 65:1

Holy rusticity is better than sinful eloquence.

SAINT JEROME

Introduction

F or Mother Mary Angelica, it all began with the Word. And the Word was made fresh...

Everything the Poor Clare nun is known forher television network that now reaches 140 million households around the globe, her teachings that continue to touch people throughout the world, her thriving religious ordershas its root here: in Mother Angelicas love of Gods Word and the zealous, practical way she unpacked it for the common man.

Her love affair with the Scriptures began in a dramatic and unorthodox fashion. Though she had been a religious for twenty-six years, absorbing a daily diet of Scripture at Mass and through the reading of spiritual classics, she had never studied the Bible with any serious attention. Then in 1971, after repeated requests, Mother agreed to allow Father Robert DeGrandis, a charismatic Birmingham priest, to pray over her. He prayed that she would receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now, Angelica was extremely suspicious of this baptism and of the many charismatic Christians who espoused its virtues. These believers pursued the gifts of the Holy Spirit: prophecy, speaking in tongues, healing powers, and so forth. They maintained that no gifts could be received without first being baptized in the Spirit. Angelica dismissed much of this talk, and only submitted herself to the laying on of hands to get Father DeGrandis to stop badgering her.

When it was over and nothing happened, she smugly stared at the priest and asked, Is that it? But there was more to come.

About a week later, while reading the introduction to Saint Johns Gospel (In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God), Mother found herself unable to speak English. When she tried to converse with her nuns, a language not her own spilled from her mouth. DeGrandis assured her that there was no need to worry, she had merely received the gift of tongues. The gift didnt last very long, but as she told me in an interview for my biography Mother Angelica, The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles, the event had an important lasting effect on her: I got initiated into the New Testament through this little experience... I think the Lord used it to reorient my soul, and the Sisters toward the Scriptures, so that we talked about them, we read them, and we discussed them. It was really the beginning.

Following this experience, Mothers daily lesson to her nuns became spirit-led riffs on the Scripture. She began to scrawl notes in the margins of her Jerusalem Bible, furiously underlining key passages of practical import. Soon a group of Episcopalian women asked her to lead a weekly Bible study for them, which she did. For nearly five years the Bible study in her monastery parlor became her private training ground, a place for Mother to refine her teachings before a hungry public. These Journeys into Scripture, as she called them, became the template for her television work, and the fountainhead of the Eternal Word Television Network. Mother didnt just teach the Scriptures; she got inside them, animating them for a contemporary audience. She picked apart the stories and people of the Bible, finding humor, unexpected lessons, and punchy instruction for daily living. She made the Scriptures accessible to everyone, and somehow new again.

To truly know the Bible, there are obvious advantages to spending time with the Author. Being a contemplative nun, Mother Angelica had an inside track. She literally spent hours each day meditating and conversing with God in prayer. This daily regimen of faith is underappreciated in our age, but the benefits are enduring. Saint Teresa of Avila, the Spanish mystic, said of her experience with God during prayer: He would take me into His room. This is a royal chamber filled with countless and immense riches. Introduced to the secrets of Heaven, like the great Saint Paul, the Bride sees invisible things and hears unutterable words. Mother Angelica saw those invisible things and heard those unutterable words as wellbut unlike her contemplative peers, she was able to share the fruit of her contemplation with millions over the airwaves.

First in print, then on tape, and later on television, Mother Angelica gradually coined a theology of the streetan approach to Scripture that was immediately relatable to daily living. Rita Rizzo, as Angelica was known before religious life, came from the hard streets of southeast Canton, Ohio: an Italian ghetto, pocked with everyday struggles, heartache, and simple joys. Her painful childhood would forever connect her to the concerns of the man on the street, concerns that she brought to her exploration of the Scriptures. Mothers biblical approach, like the woman herself, was practical, no-nonsense, and very human.

Here is some useful advice Mother Angelica gave her nuns about reading the Word of God. It summarizes her philosophical approach to the Scriptures and her method for studying them:

When we read the Gospel we dont use our imaginations. We dont look at the Gospel as applicative to our lives. We look at the Gospel many times as a record of Jesuss life, a thing confined to the past. We think of it as almost a divine history book, which in a way it is. After all, this is the story of salvation historybut it is much more than that. It is a guide for living.

And we do some things wrong. We dont read enough of Scripture at one time. You go in there and pick out one little thing in isolation and dont visualize anything. Its just words. I mean, when you come across the trial and pain of Jesus we need to have an imaginative picture of that. There is a line here: Like the sheep that is led to the slaughterhouse, like a lamb that is dumb in front of the sheers, like these He never opened His mouth. We should take that phrase and ask ourselves, Have I ever been that frightened? Have I ever been so scared that I went dumb? Try to imagine a time in your life when youve had that kind of fear. And dwell on the line.

Like these, He never opened His mouth. Unlike Jesus, youre always opening your mouth about something. Were always defending ourselves. Do you see? Reading this line of Scripture you have a dual opportunity: to have sympathy for Jesus, and to examine your conscience.

There are so many ways of reading Scripture. If youre a symbolic reader, then you see symbolism in it. If youre a fundamental reader, then you take every word literallywhich can be dangerous because there are contradictions. My scriptural approach is spiritual. Im trying to apply whats here to everyday living. Its the truth. So you cant just read it like a book.

Mother sought to discover a spirituality in the Scriptures. Her method was earthy, relevant, and free of the stiff conventions or novel innovations that too often remove us from the core message of the Bible. Though informed by the traditions and wisdom of the Church, Angelica managed to peel back centuries of staid ideas and misunderstandings, offering us a Bible that is as current as it is funny. Here is the greatest story newly told, as only Mother Angelica can tell it.