Raymond Arroyo - The Prayers and Personal Devotions of Mother Angelica

ALSO BY R AYMOND A RROYO

Mother Angelica

Mother Angelicas Little Book of
Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality

Mother Angelicas Private and
Pithy Lessons from the Scriptures

DOUBLE DAY

Copyright 2010 by Raymond Arroyo

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Doubleday Religion, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

DOUBLEDAY and the DD colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The works of Mother Angelica are used with the kind permission of Mother Mary Angelica and Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, Inc. Mother Angelica Literary Properties
2010 by Mother Angelica, P.C.P.A. and
Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
M. Angelica (Mary Angelica), Mother, 1923
The prayers and personal devotions of Mother Angelica /
introduced and edited by Raymond Arroyo.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. M. Angelica (Mary Angelica), Mother, 1923 2. Prayers.
I. Arroyo, Raymond. II. Title.
BX4705.M124A25 2010
242.802dc22 2009045512

eISBN: 978-0-307-58826-5

v3.1_r1

For Raymond and Lynda Arroyo
Who taught me how to pray

Given her trademark outspokenness and ubiquitous presence in the media for nearly thirty years, it is easy to overlook the hidden foundation of Mother Angelicas life: prayer.

Prayer is one of those intensely personal acts that few execute well and even fewer practice with regularity. For Mother Angelica it was a way of life. She prayed as creatively as anyone I have ever encountered and approached the practice from a diversity of angles. Mother could be lost in contemplation, speaking intimately to God as a friend one moment and in the next, leading her nuns in a time-tested litany. Beyond the required prayers of her religious community, this Poor Clare of Perpetual Adoration used assorted modes of prayer to reach God and to remain in His presence throughout the day. Her definition of prayer was simple: to empty ourselves and to be filled with the Trinity.

A sister who lived with Mother Angelica for more than a quarter of a century offered this insight: Mother prayed constantly. She was very busy, but you always felt like she was at prayer with God. She had the gift of gab around people, but in the car, or whenever she had to travel, she was quiettotally silent. Very contemplative. She was always at prayer. Even now in her bed, many times you ask her a question and she wont answer because she is so wrapped up in God.

For Mother Angelica prayer was a habit developed early in her religious life and nurtured over almost seven decades. The dazzling fruit of her temporal existence was rooted in her prayer life. This was the source of so many of her inspirations and a well of solace in her darkest hours. Mothers approach to prayer (like so many things in her life) was innovative and practical. Her goal was to pray without ceasing at every moment of the day, no matter where she found herself.

Everything you do is for Godthough your attention, your activity is focused on the duties of life, Mother Angelica instructed her sisters. This way there is no separation between your life and your prayer; they are woven together like threads in a tapestry. It is very simple to pray without ceasing. It means living in the Present Moment. Thats all it takes, and you can do that wherever you are. Sometimes that union with God and that unceasing prayer is a prayer of anguish, a prayer of tears, or a prayer of joy.

This work is a repository of her favorite prayers, both improvised as well as time-tested compositions. They are filled with anguish and joy, touching on all aspects of life and its varied stages.

The book you are holding completes a cycle of Mother Angelica works that I initiated in 1999. In my biography Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles, I laid bare the facts of Mothers incredible story in a dramatic narrative. With Mother Angelicas Little Bookof Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality and the ensuing Mother Angelicas Private and Pithy Lessons from the Scriptures, I collaborated with Mother and her nuns to give the public access to her spiritual advice and inspired Scriptural teachings.

This book is the most active of the canon. It is a collection meant to be experienced and used, prayed and contemplated. In some ways it is a spiritual biography told through the diverse prayers either recited or composed by Mother Angelica over her long life. The book is also an intimate glimpse of Mothers soul; for these are the prayers, devotions, and meditations that fired her spirit and united her will to Gods own.

The sixteenth-century essayist Michel de Montaigne once said: There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God. Mother Angelica dares that and more in this remarkable collection.

On the pages that follow you will find the prayers Mother recited as a young novice and professed nun; the private prayers she composed as an abbess in her Birmingham chapel; a never before published diary written during a prolonged Dark Night of the Soul experience; private meditations she offered to her sisters; some of her very earliest teachings; and the personal devotions she regularly prayed and later propagated.

Resuming my collaboration with Our Lady of the Angels Monastery and Mother Angelica, I was granted access to materials that have been hidden away in their monastery archives for decades. Much of what follows has never been published before. Some of these prayers were composed by Mother on yellow legal pads in her own hand. Others were discovered on bits of paper, addressed to particular nuns. Selected devotions are drawn in the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration Prayer Book that Mother began using when she first entered the cloister. These are rare and precious supplications and praises. Now they can live on.

Taken as a whole, the contents provide insight into the marvelous flexibility of Mother Angelicas prayer life and the ease of communication she enjoyed with her Spouse. As one of her sisters told me: She would go into the chapel and talk to Jesus as if He were an Italian. That passionate, conversational approach runs throughout these pages as well.

Prayer is not something, it is Someone, Mother often said, and that Someone is Jesus. May her words and these cherished devotions draw you closer to God and cause you to respond to His promptings as Mother Angelica would.

Raymond Arroyo
August 15, 2009
Feast of the Assumption
Northern Virginia

O God, Holy Ghost,

Who didst inspire the author of this book with Thy light, and art, thus teaching us and permitting us to hear Thy voice and also Thy divine instructions, grant us the grace to understand them rightly, that relishing them and practicing them in all our actions, for Thy greater honor and for our progress in perfection, we may know Thee, O God, more perfectly and love Thee more ardently.

O Blessed Virgin Mary, implore for us this grace.