Come, blessed of my Father, says the Lord: I was ill
and you comforted me. I tell you, anything you did for one of my brothers, you
did it for me.Lord God, You teach us that the commandments of heaven are
summarized in love of You and of our neighbor. By following the example of
blessed Angela, the virgin, in practicing the works of charity may we be
counted among the blessed in Your kingdom.
Blessed Angela's life (1881-1922) is
striking because of its simplicity and the felt sense of love. Some parts of her family
history, though, was tough: she was the youngest child of nine brothers, often
undernourished, weak and sick, she was unruly and capricious. Angela received
some schooling and learned to read, but spelling was not a skill she could take
pride in. Angela learned to be a pious woman and in time she was eager to read
good book. By her late teenage years, she entered to the Association of Saint
Zita (caring for sick people.)
Little by little she understood that her
vocation was to suffer with Christ, and accept it resolutely, but conscious of
its weakness. She spent many hours in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament and read books
of spiritual depth, taking copious notes. By order of her confessor, Angela began to make notes of the mystical experiences.
When one of the people she was looking after died, interpersonal difficulties with the deceased's family surfaced for Angela.
She wrote that it feels suddenly that Jesus says to her: "Daughter, why do
you worry? I have not left to you."
In order to follow more closely
Christ crucified and poor, she joined the Secular Franciscan Order on March 15 1912,
and is professed vows on the 6th of August of 1913. As a lay woman consecrated to Christ living under the Rule of St Francis for the Laity, Angela is an example to all of us that obstacles can be overcome with grace.
At her 1991 beatification in
Kraków, Pope John Paul II said: "It is in this city that she worked, that
she suffered and that her holiness came to maturity. While connected to the
spirituality of St. Francis, she showed an extraordinary responsiveness to the
action of the Holy Spirit" (L'Osservatore Romano, 34.4, 1991).
Leave a comment