The success of EWTN is nothing short of miraculous, but this entry is not about the television station, but rather the miraculous events (quoted below) that happened to its foundress, Rita Antoinette Rizzo, born April 20, 1923, in Canton, Ohio, before and after she was Mother Angelica [5]:
1934
Rita's first miraculous experience: In running to catch a bus, Rita misses a car speeding toward her. When she sees it, she freezes. Rita feels two hands pick her up and put her on the median in the center of the street. The bus driver says he has never seen anyone jump so high before.
December 1940
Rita's physical troubles, which will eventually be diagnosed as ptosis of the stomach (or "dropped stomach"), begin. The illness makes her hands shake, her left arm go numb and her stomach spasm, which make it hard to sleep or eat.
1942
After a visit with Mystic Rhonda Wise, Rita receives a miraculous healing from her recurring stomach ailment. The experience changes her life. She realizes that God loves her personally – and she begins to love Him back.
October 1, 1946
Sister Mary Angelica's brash personality and poor health make convent life difficult. In addition to pneumonia and a tonsillectomy, Sister begins to suffer with water on both knees, which makes kneeling, a requirement at the time, extremely painful. Fortunately, a retired business owner donates his home and estate to the contemplative order. Although nuns normally cannot transfer to their hometowns and must be fully professed to become a member of a new foundation, the abbess tells Sister Mary Angelica she feels the five stories of steps are causing her knee problems so she has decided to send her to the Sancta Clara Monastery in Canton, Ohio.
October 2, 1946
Sister Mary Angelica awakens to find that both knees are normal. This convinces the order that the young postulant has a vocation. In two months, she makes her first profession of vows.
Late 1953
Mother is cleaning the floors with an electric scrubber when she falls, the beginning of three years of back pain. Failed remedies will include a body cast, leg and neck traction, and a back brace.
July 31, 1956
In the face of a risky operation to repair her back injury, Sister Angelica promises God she will start a monastery in the South if He permits her to walk again after surgery. Although the spinal surgery is a medical failure, Sister Angelica can move both legs when she wakes.
April 27, 1959
After the cold winter of 1958 sends spasms through Angelica's back and left leg, Sister is sent to the Cleveland Clinic for observation and physical therapy.
August 7, 1959
Sister Angelica writes Bishop Walsh sharing her plans, income and expense sheets, and makes a plea to go to the hot climate of Birmingham to prevent complete disability of her left limb.
February 3, 1961
Rome grants Mother permission for an Alabama Foundation. To honor her promise to God, and with all the right approvals in place, Mother Angelica leaves her Ohio convent to found Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Irondale, Alabama...
April-May 1993
Severe asthma, coughing and congestion lead Mother to begin a two-week hospital stay on May 5. During the hospital stay, the severity of Mother's cough shatters a vertebra in her spine, damaging a nerve to her right leg and causing her excruciating pain. She now wears a new back and leg brace and can only walk with crutches.
October 12, 1995
Mother sees a 200-acre piece of property in Hanceville, Alabama, one hour north of Birmingham. Three days later, she makes an offer. To keep hotels and restaurants away from the property, she will eventually acquire 403 acres. Mother wants a 13th Century monastery which can grow its own food, and raise its own livestock. She privately refers to this project as a "farm" with a "small farm chapel."
June 20, 1996
Mother receives a miraculous message while in Bogotá, Colombia from the Divine Child Jesus, Who tells her: "Build Me a Temple, and I will help those who help you." Mother later reads an inscription on St. Peter's in Rome that refers to the Church as "this temple." She realizes the Christ Child wants an elaborate temple built. This command radically changes Mother's plans, made six months earlier, to build a small farm chapel for Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Hanceville.
January 28, 1998
While praying the rosary with Paola Albertini, an Italian mystic, Mother Angelica removes the braces from her legs and begins to walk. Three physicians independently examine her and find the healing is real.
July 3, 2000
Mother has a near-death experience, which she shares with her audience on July 11. "In my heart, I really feel I died and came back," she said. "I have no more fear of death… Nothing matters but God, and how we are to express that love to the world."
September 5, 2001
Mother has a stroke which results in the paralysis of half her face. Said Mother: "I've never had in all my life such an awareness that God was choosing me to help people. This is to bring people to a new reality that suffering is brought by God to make us holy."
December 11, 2001
With one eye patched as a result of her stroke, Mother Angelica misses a raised platform blocking her path at a Books-A-Million store and falls, slamming her face into the ground and cracking her left arm above the elbow. The next day, she is given the wrong plasma to thicken her blood, which contributes to her perilous condition. Mother has a vision of the souls in hell, but she is comforted by St. Michael the Archangel. She says: "We must suffer…to keep souls form going to hell. People don't understand what it means to go to hell."
December 24, 2001
Mother has a lethal stroke and collapses. Her only chance of survival is immediate brain surgery. Medical personnel say if Mother does not die within the week, she will be a complete vegetable. A week later, she can not only move her legs, but feeling returns to the left side of her face even as her comprehension improves.
January 25, 2002
Mother Angelica returns home although she will experience seizures of varying intensities over the next two years. They sap her energy and confine her to bed for long periods of time. Her language skills deteriorate.
February 13, 2002
Mother tells Raymond Arroyo that the reason for her stroke is "purification." She also says that just before the stroke "…Jesus came and testified to me…that I would suffer much…Suffer anguish for Jesus' sake…"
[Or, perhaps the suffering was for Mother Angelica's own sake, so that she could skip Purgatory and go directly to Heaven upon her death.]
October 12, 2003
Mother Angelica goes to Lourdes for a secret six-day pilgrimage. She hopes for another miracle of physical healing, but this time the Lord says no.
[This blogger thinks that the additional years of suffering Mother Angelica endured continued to purify her, that Mother Angelica did skip Purgatory, and her soul left her body on Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016, and went to Heaven.]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Angelica
[2] http://www.ewtn.com/motherangelica/life.asp
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
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