The Gutsy Faith of Mother Angelica

Rome — Did you hear what the new deputy in the Vatican press office said the other day?

Alongside the news that an American was soon to take over the press office — former Fox News correspondent Greg Burke, no less — there was a mini media frenzy over another appointment: a woman, Spanish journalist Paloma Garcia Ovejero, as a leading face of Vatican communications.

And Garcia Ovejero quickly demonstrated why she got the gig. Rather than feeding the media beast and making the story about her, she displayed what Pope John Paul II referred to as “feminine genius.” She gracefully, masterfully, pointed right to the message: Christ Himself.

“I am in no way the first woman,” Garcia Ovejero explained. “The first woman above all in the church, in the Vatican, and in the press office is the Virgin Mary.” And right after her is Mary Magdalene, who went to the tomb and was called to proclaim the news of the Resurrection to the Apostles.

Garcia Ovejero, a New York University alum, wasn’t giving in to worldly standards about success and what makes for good news.

I couldn’t help thinking of the current presidential race and how silly it is to pretend that Hillary Clinton is any first to be excited about. And then there is the assumption that I keep encountering among people of religious faith that somehow Donald Trump is entitled to their vote simply because he isn’t Hillary — that somehow the devil you don’t know is better than the one you do.

It all begs the question of what faith is and what more can be done to live it in such a way that instead of haggling over which of two poor choices is worse, we seek bold new ones that can transform people and circumstances.

In his new book, Mother Angelica: Her Grand Silence, Raymond Arroyo writes about the founder of an international Catholic television and radio network, one that surpassed all expectations — to the extent that there were any real expectations for such a venture started by a cloistered nun who knew nothing about the media biz. Arroyo tells us: “Mother famously said, ‘Faith is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, and a queasy feeling in the stomach.’ She knew that feeling all too well.” Arroyo goes on to recount her “deserting her mother, Mae, to join a Cleveland monastery at the age of twenty-one,” and going on to build “a television network with no funds in the woods of Alabama.” She acted on her faith “in such a way that the fruits of her efforts became manifest to all. Hers was a gutsy faith.”

What’s a gutsy faith? It’s a holy one. And that means that we are called on to live virtue.

Many call Mother Angelica a “saint,” and Arroyo takes that to mean that she strove for holiness “throughout the arc” of her life, exemplifying virtues “to the extreme,” taking “mad risks for God.” She had a “deep trust in God’s providential care,” which was “the source of her hope and confidence.” This, Arroyo says, “explains why she was untroubled by the things she lacked or the actions of others. Her hope in God gave her fortitude.”

Mother Angelica died this past Easter, and so we can’t ask her to weigh in on current events — terrorism, urban violence, and the presidential election, to name a few of the leading ones on our minds and hearts. But her reliance on God could suggest a way forward to anyone who is tempted to despair on any of these fronts.

Arroyo quotes her: “God’s providence disposes and directs everything for His honor and glory, and for the good of my soul. . . . His providence surrounds me like a cloak. I neither live nor move without it. He keeps the entire universe in order, and still finds time to take a personal interest in you and me.”

“Mother Angelica’s love of God,” Arroyo writes, “was never a private affair or an intellectual exercise, but a lifelong activity to be practiced in public.” She was never content to seek merely some security or comfort for herself. And considering her witness and words, we can see the possibility for renewal. People who move radically beyond themselves in gratitude and love for a Creator who gives them everything they really need are much more than mere do-gooders. They offer the kind of love and mercy our blood cries out for today. And they can even sometimes make headlines for following an exotic alternative lifestyle that sure beats some of the less life-giving conventional potions.

Briefly visiting the Vatican press office last week, I couldn’t help noticing the fresh air there — perhaps not the first thing you’d think of encountering in and around the Eternal City, never mind in some of its centuries-old bureaucracies. But there’s a real belief in the Vatican today that God Himself will help us find ways out of our current suicidal tendencies. (Do I exaggerate? Can you look at the culture and find me a better description?) There’s a real belief, in the midst of all the controversies and criticisms and great progressive hopes about the overhaul of the Catholic Church under Pope Francis, that he is a man of prayer — who knows what Mother Angelica knew about hope and truth — and that he may truly be a vessel of the Holy Spirit for our time.

Realizing that we are not the ones we have been waiting for is humbling but also instructive. It is in gratitude and with a watchful eye and ear to the gifts we are blessed with in the midst of everything else that we should be seeking our starting point for renewal. Just as Mary Magdalene, in seeking to serve Christ, saw clearly the focus of everything she is.

This longer view might be helpful to keep in mind as we watch the conventions and the world.