 Information: Here she had lived absolutely alone for forty-seven years, subsisting apparently on herbs, when a priest and monk, named Zosimus, who after the custom of his brethren had come out from his monastery to spend Lent in the desert, met her and learned from her own lips the strange and romantic story of her life. As soon as they met, she called Zosimus by his name and recognized him as a priest. After they had conversed and prayed together, she begged Zosimus to promise to meet her at the Jordan on Holy Thursday evening of the following year and bring with him the Blessed Sacrament. When the appointed evening arrived, Zosimus, we are told, put into a small chalice a portion of the undefiled Body and the precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ (P.L. LXXIII, 686; "Mittens in modico calice intemerati corporis portionem et pretiosi sanguinis D.N.J.C." But the reference to both species is less clear in Acta SS., IX, 82: "Accipiens parvum poculum intemerati corporis ac venerandi sanguinis Christi Dei nostri"), and came to the spot that had been indicated. After some time Mary appeared on the eastern bank of the river, and having made the sign of the cross, walked upon the waters to the western side. Having received Holy Communion, she raised her hands towards heaven, and cried aloud in the words of Simeon: "Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace, because my eyes have seen thy salvation". She then charged Zosimus to come in the course of a year to the spot where he had first met her in the desert, adding that he would find her then in what condition God might ordain. He came, but only to find the poor saint's corpse, and written beside it on the ground a request that he should bury her, and a statement that she had died a year before, on the very night on which he had given her Holy Communion, far away by the Jordan's banks. Aided, we are told, by a lion, he prepared her grave and buried her, and having commended himself and the Church to her prayers, he returned to his monastery, where now for the first time he recounted the wondrous story of her life. The saint's life was written not very long after her death by one who states that he learned the details from the monks of the monastery to which Zosimus had belonged. Many authorities mention St. Sophronius, who became Patriarch of Jerusalem in 635, as the author; but as the Bollandists give good reasons for believing that the Life was written before 500, we may conclude that it is from some other hand. The date of the saint is somewhat uncertain. The Bollandists place her death on 1 April, 421, while many other authorities put it a century later. The Greek Church celebrates her feast on 1 April, while the Roman Martyrology assigns it to 2 April, and the Roman Calendar to 3 April. The Greek date is more likely to be correct; the others may be due to the fact that on those days portions of her relics reached the West. Relics of the saint are venerated at Rome, Naples, Cremona, Antwerp, and some other places. Catholic Encyclopedia
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(Vatican Radio) A Requiem Mass for Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, PCPA – better known as Mother Angelica – will be celebrated Friday at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama, USA.
The Shrine is located on the grounds of the Monastery of Mother Angelica’s order, the Poor Clare Nuns of the Annunciation, which is also the home of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), founded by Mother Angelica.
The principle celebrant for the Mass will be the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, OFM Cap. Through a spokesperson, Archbishop Chaput described Mother Angelica as “a remarkable figure in the Church.”
Vatican Radio spoke with Michael Warsaw, chairman and CEO at EWTN, about the life and legacy of Mother Angelica. “I think there’s no question that Mother Angelica is the pioneer of Catholic communications here in the United States, and really around the world,” he said. “It was really Mother Angelica who, building on the legacy of Fulton Sheen, perhaps, of thirty years earlier, who really embraced new technologies, the use of then satellite and cable television, and then of course all the emerging platforms that would come in the years later. She used those really most effectively for the spread of the Gospel in a way that really the Church had not done before.”
Listen to Michael Warsaw, chairman and CEO at EWTN interviewed by Chris Wells:
Warsaw described Mother Angelica as “one of the key and transformative figures of the Church” in the latter part of the twentieth century.
Born Rita Antoinette Rizzo in 1923, Mother Angelica entered the Poor Clare monastery in Cleveland in 1944, and made her solemn profession of vows 1953. She founded the EWTN corporation in 1981.
“I think it’s quite interesting, and quite an interesting part of her story, the fact that here is this cloistered, Poor Clare nun in Birmingham Alabama, who had no training, no background in media, was 58 years old, in terrible health, with two hundred dollars in the bank, her twelve nuns, and a garage,” Warsaw said. “And yet she persevered and pushed forward to build EWTN and to create this now global communications for the Church.”
When Mother Angelica began EWTN, Warsaw noted, “she faced a lot of opposition both from outside, but inside the Church, especially of people who said well, you know, this is not something that a nun can, or this is not something that a woman should be doing.” But, he said, “Mother Angelica took all of that in stride, and really pushed forward with her vision, what she believed God was calling her to do.” He quoted Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who described Mother Angelica as “arguably the most significant, most influential Catholic woman in the Church in America in the last fifty years.”
Vatican spokesman Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi has also commented on her passing away saying: “Mother Angelica was ‘a great witness and a missionary apostle,’ expressing the hope to CNA on the 28th of March ‘that she prays for us more than we for her’.”