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GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY:
Catechesis on Blessed Angela of Foligno
The Holy Father's catechesis today was on Blessed Angela da Foligno,
a 13th century medieval mystic. He also reminded the faithful that today is the anniversary of the last apparition of the Virgin in Fatima.
The Pope referred to two current events: On the 33 Chilean copper miners whose rescue began last night after 69 days trapped more than half a mile below the ground, he said he commended them to the divine goodness of Christ after the ordeal they had undergone. And he assured victims of the toxic waste deluge in Hungary of his prayers.
Here is how he synthesized the catechesis in English:
Our catechesis today recalls the medieval mystic Blessed Angela of Foligno, born in 1248. A carefree wife and mother, Angela at one time looked down on the mendicants and observers of strict poverty in religious life.
However, tragic events and suffering in her personal life gave her cause to become aware of her own sins, leading her to a decisive moment of conversion in the year 1285.
Invoking the aid of Saint Francis, who appeared to her in a vision, she made her confession at San Feliciano. Upon the death of her mother, husband and children, she sold all she had and joined the Third Order of Saint Francis. She died in 1309.
The Book of Blessed Angela of Foligno recounts her conversion, and indicates for us the necessary means of our own turning to the Lord: penance, humility and tribulations.
This same book describes the numerous mystical experiences of Blessed Angela, ecstasies which she had great difficulty putting into words because of the intensity of her spiritual union with God.
Her fear of sin and punishment was overcome by her growth in love for God, drawing her along the "way of the Cross" to "the way of love".
My dear brothers and sisters, may we share her prayer to the Father: "My God, make me worthy to know the most high Mystery, which is your strong and ineffable love… the greatest love possible!".
Here is a full translation of the catechesis today:
Dear brothers and sisters,
Today, I wish to speak to you of Blessed Angela of Foligno, a great medieval mystic who lived in the 13th century.
Usually, one is fascinated by the peak experiences of union with God that she had reached, but probably not enough consideration is given to her first steps - her conversion - and the long journey that led her to the point of departure, 'the great fear of Hell', towards her goal - total union with the Trinity.
The first part of Angela's life was certainly not that of a fervent disciple of the Lord. Born around 1248 to a well-to-do family, she was orphaned of her father and was educated rather superficially by her mother. She was introduced quite early to worldly circles in the city of Foligno, where she met a man she married at age 20, and with whom she had children.
Her life was so carefree that she only had disdain for the so-called 'penitents' - who were widespread in those days - those who, in order to follow Christ, sold all their goods and lived in prayer, fasting, service to the Church and charity.
Some events, like the violent earthquake of 1272, a hurricane, the years-long war against Perugia and its difficult consequences, had an impact on Angela's life, who was progressively becoming aware of her sins until she came to a decisive step: She invoked St. Francis, who appeared to her in a vision, to ask his counsel before she would make a general confession.
It was 1285. Angela confessed to a friar in San Feliciano. Three years later, her road to conversion took another turn: the dissolution of her emotional links, with the death of her mother, followed by the death of her husband and all her children.
She then sold all her possessions, and in 1291, she joined the Third Order of St. Francis. She died in Foligno on January 4, 1309.
The Book of Blessed Angela of Foligno, which puts together all the documentation on our Blessed, narrates her conversion. It indicates the necessary measures - penitence, humility and tribulations. And it narrates the steps - the succession of Angela's mystical experiences which began in 1285.
Recalling them after having lived them, she sought to tell them through her friar confessor, who transcribed them systematically, which he later tried to organize into stages that he called "steps or changes", but without succeeding to organize them fully (cfr. Il Libro della beata Angela da Foligno, Cinisello Balsamo 1990, p. 51).
This is because the experience of union for Blessed Angela was a total involvement of the spiritual and corporal senses, and whatever she 'understood' during her ecstasies only remained, so to speak, a 'shadow' in her mind.
"I truly heard these words", she confessed after a mystic rapture, "but what I saw and understood, and what He (God) showed me, I cannot know or say in any way. I would gladly reveal what I understood of the words I heard (but) it was an absolutely ineffable abyss".
Angela of Foligno presents the mystical experiences she lived, without elaborating on it with the mind, because they are divine illuminations communicated to her soul in unforeseen and unexpected ways.
Her friar confessor finds it difficult to report such events "if only because of her great and admirable reserve with respect to these divine gifts" (Ibid., p. 194).
In addition to Angela's difficulty in expressing her mystic experience, there was also her listeners' difficulty in understanding it. A situation that indicates with clarity how the one true Teacher, Jesus, lives in the heart of every believer and desires to take total possession of it.
So it was with Angela, who wrote to one of her spiritual sons: "My son, if you could see my heart, you would be absolutely constrained to do all the things that God wants, because my heart is that of God, and God's heart is mine". This echoes the words of St. Paul: "It is not I who lives, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2,20).
Let us consider just some 'steps' in the rich spiritual journey of our Blessed subject. The first, actually, is a premise: "It was the knowledge of sin," she specified, "after which my soul had a great fear of damaging itself. At this stage, I cried bitterly" (Il Libro della beata Angela da Foligno, p. 39).
This 'fear of Hell' corresponded to the type of faith that Angela had at the time of her 'conversion' - faith that was still wanting in charity, that is to say, in God's love.
Repentance, fear of Hell, and penitence opened to Angela the perspective of the sorrowful 'way of the Cross' which, from the eighth to the fifteenth 'step', would take her to the 'way of love'.
Her friar confessor says: "The faithful woman then told me. 'I had this divine revelation'... After the things you have written, write that whoever wants to keep grace must not take off the eyes of the soul from the Cross, whether it is in joy or in sorrow as he concedes or allows'" (Ibid., p. 143).
But in this phase, Angela still 'does not feel love'. She says: "The soul experiences shame and bitterness and still does not experience love but pain" (Ibid., p. 39), and she was unsatisfied.
Angela felt she had to give something to God in reparation for her sins, but slowly she understood that she had nothing to give him - indeed, of 'being nothing' before him. She understood that it would not be her will that would give her God's love. because she could only give him her 'nothingness', her 'non-love'.
As she would say: "only true and pure love, which comes from God, in the soul, makes it recognize its own defects and his divine goodness... Such love brings the soul to Christ, and it understands with a certainty that cannot be verified, but neither is there any deception. Together with this love, you cannot mix in anything of worldly love" (Ibid., p. 124-125).
Thus, to open oneself up only and totally to God's love, which has its maximum expression in Christ: "O my God", she prayed, "make me worthy to know the highest mystery that your most ardent and ineffable love made possible, along with love of the Trinity, the highest mystery of your most blessed incarnation for us... Oh incomprehensible love! Above and beyond this love, which has caused my God to become man so I can become God, there is no greater love" (Ibid., p. 295).
Still, Angela's heart always carried the wounds of sin: even after a well-made confession, she found herself forgiven but still stricken by sin, free but conditioned by the past, absolved but still needing penitence.
Even the thought of hell accompanied her, because the more the soul progresses on the way of Christian perfection, the more it is convinced not only of being 'unworthy' (of God) but to be deserving of Hell,
And so, during her mystical journey, Angela understood profoundly the central reality: what will save her from 'unworthiness' and from 'deserving Hell' will not be her 'union with God' and her possessing the 'truth', but Jesus crucified, "his crucifixion for me", his love.
In the eighth step, she says: "But I still did not understand which was the greater good - my liberation from sin and from hell, through conversion and penitence, or his crucifixion for me" (Ibid., p. 41).
It is the unstable equilibrium between love and pain that she felt throughout her difficult journey to perfection. Because of this, she preferred to contemplate the crucified Christ, because she saw in him the realization of tehe perfect equilibrium: On the cross is God-man, in a supreme act of suffering that is a supreme act of love.
In the third Instruction, Blessed Angela insists on this contemplation and affirms: "The more perfectly and purely we see him, the more perfectly and purely we love... Therefore, the more we see Jesus Christ, God and man, the more we are transformed in him through love... What I have said about love, ... I say also about pain" (Ibid., p. 190-191).
To empathize with Christ, to transform herself in the love and sufferings of the crucified Christ, and to identify herself with Christ: Angela's conversion, beginning from that confession in 1285, would reach maturation only when the forgiveness of God would appear to her soul as the free gift of love from the Father, fountain of love:
"No one can have any excuse", she said, "because anyone can love God, and he does not ask anything of the soul, but only wishes it well because he loves it, it is his love" (Ibid., p. 76).
In Angela's spiritual itinerary, the passage from conversion to the mystical experience, from what can be expressed to the inexpressible, comes through the Crucified Lord. It is the 'passionate man-God' who becomes her 'teacher of perfection'. All her mystical experience was, therefore, a straining towards a perfect 'similitude' with him, through ever more profound and radical purifications and transformations.
In this stupendous undertaking, Angela placed all of herself, body and soul, without sparing herself in penitences and tribulations from beginning to end, desiring to die with all the pains suffered by the crucified God-man, in order to be totally transformed in him:
"O Son of God," she implored, "who totally transformed yourself into the passionate God-man, who loved you so much to die for you the most ignominious death and in an ineffably painful and most difficult way - and all this for love of you, o man!" (Ibid., p. 247).
This identification with Jesus also means to experience what Jesus lived through: poverty, contempt, pain - because, as she affirms, "through temporal poverty, the soul finds eternal riches; through the contempt of others and shame, it will obtain honor and the greatest glory; through penitence, carried out with pain and sorrow, it will possess, with infinite tenderness and comfort, the Supreme Good, Eternal God" (Ibid., p. 293).
From conversion to mystical union with the crucified Christ, to the inexpressible. A very elevated journey, whose secret is constant prayer: "The more you pray, the better you shall be illuminated. The more you are illuminated, the more profoundly and intensely will you see the Supreme Goodness, the Being who is supremely good. The more profoundly and intensely you see him, the more you will love him. The more you love him, the more he will favor you. And the more he favors you, the more you will understand him and become capable of understanding him. Successively, you will arrive at the fullness of light because you will understand that you cannot understand" (Ibid., p. 184).
Dear brothers and sisters, the life of Blessed Angela started with a worldly existence, quite far from God. But then the encounter with the figure of St. Francis, and finally, the encounter with the crucified Christ, awakened her soul to the presence of God, because only with God does life become true life, because life becomes, after the pain of sin, love and joy.
Thus Blessed Angela speaks to us. Today we are all in danger of living as if God did not exist - he seems so distant from life today. But God has a thousand ways, one for each of us, to make himself present in the soul, to show that he exists, and that he knows me and loves me.
The Blessed Angela wants us to be attentive to the signs with which the Lord touches our soul, to be watchful of the presence of God, in order to learn the way with God and towards God, in communion with the crucified Christ.
Let us pray to the Lord that he may make us attentive to the signs of his presence, and that he may teach us to really live. Thank you.
Above, a performer from an international circus demonstrates a bicycle trick for the Pope.
The Australian presence was prominent in St. Peter's Square today, with delegations in Rome to attend the canonization of Blessed Mary McKillop on Sunday, Oct. 17, as Australia's first saint. Five others will be canonized with her.
Pope gets book of drawings and messages
from Australian and New Zealand kids
to mark Mary MacKillop's canonization
by the Australian Associated Press
VATICAN CITY, Oct. 13 - Pope Benedict XVI has been presented with a book of drawings, stories and messages from the children of Australia and New Zealand ahead of the canonisation of Australia's first saint Mary MacKillop.
Sister Anne Derwin and Sister Eileen Lenihan from the Sisters of St Joseph met with the Pope in St Peter's Square on Wednesday.
They gave the Pontiff a book, Beneath a Cross of Stars, featuring the children's stories, drawings and handwritten personal messages.
A medallion featuring Mary MacKillop's portrait was also given to the Pope on behalf of the Josephites.
Sr Anne said it was wonderful to speak with the Pope as Mary had done when she was in Rome almost 100 years ago.
"To be in Rome and to meet with the Holy Father only days away from Mary's canonisation was a real honour," she said.
"The Holy Father was particularly pleased to receive the special messages by the children of Australia and New Zealand and was excited for Australia as they prepared to celebrate their first saint."
The canonisation ceremony take place in St Peter's Square in Rome on Sunday, October 17, at 10am Aistralian Eastern Daylight Time.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/10/2010 13:00] |