The final passion of Mother Angelica ...
Many people have noted how fitting it seemed that Mother Angelica passed away on Easter Sunday, the day on which Christians celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection and triumph over death. Now, new details are emerging about her final days that show even more interesting convergences between her life and the liturgical calendar.
“It was on Good Friday,” EWTN Chaplain Fr. Joseph Wolfe explained in a sermon he gave recently about Mother Angelica’s death, “that I heard from one of the caregivers who was helping Mother.”
He continued: “Mother began to cry out early in the morning from the pain that she was having. She had a fracture in her bones because of the length of time she had been bedridden. They said you could hear it down the hallways, that she was crying out on Good Friday from what she was going through. These two people said to me she has excruciating pain.”
Fr. Wolfe saw a special meaning in her suffering on Good Friday, the day on which Christians remember Christ’s passion and death on the cross. “Well, do you know where that word ‘excruciating’ comes from? Ex, from, cruce, from the cross. Excruciating pain.”
But the pain didn’t last all day. “After the 3 o’clock hour arrived on Good Friday she was more calm, she was more peaceful.” Three o’clock is the time at which Jesus died on the cross, according to the Bible. - Finish reading at Church POP
There are a great many prayers and Masses offered for the repose of the soul of Mother Angelica, and that is totally appropriate. Although I'm with the Pope who joyfully pointed to heaven saying: "She's in heaven!" The prayers, the rosaries, the Masses will redound to her glory, no doubt.
Her sufferings, so poignantly recorded as occurring on Good Friday, serve to demonstrate her final sufferings in her religious life as an enclosed Poor Clare nun. She lived and died a holy Poor Clare - the ring of espousal's received at profession, as well as the crown of thorns the Poor Clare receives, signifies her union with Jesus Christ Crucified. Mother Angelica was found worthy to share in the sufferings of her spouse, Jesus Christ, conformed to him in his death, that she might know the power of his resurrection. Persevering in the monastery until death and a life of heroic virtue: That is why she is a saint.
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