April 13, 2024
The following account of Mother Angelica’s personal grief is taken from her book, “Mother Angelica’s Answers, Not Promises.
“If you are faced with losing someone right now, I know that your existence seems utterly violated and that you feel layers and layers away from the reality that used to be. I know that at this moment you would exchange your own pain, or your loved one’s pain, for any other kind of pain. I know the Lord sees and hears your pleas and bargains. ‘Take me instead.’ ‘Let her live and I’ll give up everything.’ ‘Give him back and I’ll do whatever you say.’ This kind of desperate prayer is normal during times of grief and pain.
Our Lord knows how I mourned and grieved the loss of my mother. Despite all the studying I had done, all the years of prayer I had devoted to God, and all the light God had given me, I still suffered enormous grief at my mother’s death. It was a grief that lasted two years and that still pricks me with pain in those odd moments when I see something she liked to eat or when I read one of her favorite Bible passages. These times, I miss her and am filled with the sorrow of our separation. When she died, I was certain that she deserved to go straight to Heaven and enjoy eternal happiness. But it didn’t make me feel any better about losing her.
People are always surprised to learn that my mother entered our Order late in her life and that I was her Mother Superior. Her twenty years with us in the monastery overcame all the years of bitterness with which she had lived, and made her death a thing of beauty.”
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