Prot. 2018/09 LETTER FOR THE VII CENTENARY OF THE DEATH
To all the sisters and brothers of the Franciscan Family “May no one find an excuse for neither possessing nor being able to find Divine Grace, for God gives it to all who seek and desire it”
On January 4th 2009 began the seventh Centenary of the death of the Blessed Angele de Foligno, Franciscan tertiary, declared by Pie XII to be the « greatest Franciscan mystic ». In order to experience and participate more fully in this anniversary, let us be guided by a prayer written for her by Pope John Paul II. He addresses her with these words : « “Enlightened by the preaching of the Word, cleansed by the Sacrament of Penitence, you have become the dazzling example of evangelical virtues, wise mistress of Christian judgement and reliable guide along the road to perfection”. Example of evangelical virtues. Her conversion was not the result of a startling event but developed along a difficult and painful road over seven long years. It is described in her Memoirs in the chapter “Thirty Steps” dictated by Angele herself to Brother Arnaldo, her confessor and spiritual advisor. Following certain tragic events in her town and influenced by the effective preaching of the minor friars, other religious and by the noteworthy example of the first « Brothers and Sisters of Penance », she begins to reject and be disgusted by her empty and dissolute life. She embarks on an upward path, as conscious of her state of sin as she is ashamed of confessing it. Angele only manages to overcome this shame after appealing for Saint Francis’s help. Her prayers are answered and from this complete and liberating confession begins an inner regeneration and a radical reversal in her life's direction. The date is 1285 and Angèle is already 37 years old. She is rich. She has a husband, children and a mother who has always encouraged her frivolous and unruly life (and maybe even urged her in that direction), all of which are difficult barriers to be overcome when embracing a new way of life. But in the Gospel, as Jesus stresses, when faced with God’s calling, all other duties and attachments must give way : only God can ask Man for an exclusive attachment. It is for this reason that all these hurdles, always harsher in a family, cannot distract Angele from her resolutions. She seeks God’s help so as to be able to live solely for Him and take a vow of eternal chastity. The Lord answers her prayers in a mysterious and surprising way : “At that time, my mother, who was a great impediment, died, followed, in a short space of time, by my husband and all my children”. Angele understands that these partings are God’s particular intent for her. But it is not for this that the pain is any less acute. She, herself says that the death of her two sons made her suffer as though her insides had been torn out. This expression puts a stop to all the bizarre versions of a certain hagiography, that portray Angele as a woman who wished her own children’s death so that she could fulfil her own calling to follow Christ. Now she is alone, and mindful of the evangelical advice : “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell everything you own, and you will have riches in heaven; then come and follow me” (Mt 19, 21), it becomes possible for her to detach herself from material goods. The Lord helps her to overcome her remaining hesitations and resistance and grants her the firm resolve required to renounce all her property, even down to the estate and villa that were dear to her heart and which she had saved till to the last. Like Francis and his first followers, she gives the entire proceeds from the sale of her goods to the poor of her town. Free from family ties and earthly goods, Angele can take off for the highest summits, as a true daughter of our heavenly Father : “Legitimate sons are those who try to follow their Master in all things, united, submissive to his Passion, that's to say in poverty, in distress and in contempt, fully knowing that these three things are the foundation and fulfilment of all perfection” (Fourth Letter). Alongside this will of spiritual refinement, Angele practices what we today call “the service of the poorest”. A few events linked to the services Angele and her trustworthy companion performed in the lepers' hospital are the signs: one when Angele sold everything down to the veil she was wearing in order to buy some fish for a meal for the sick, and another, more famous, when Angele and her companion drank the sick people's bath water, feeling “a peace of mind, as gentle as if they had just received Communion”. What appears to us with our modern sensitivities as an absurd and revolting act, is based on a similar act by Saint Francis who ate from the bowl in which a leper was resting his infected stump. Mistress of Christian judgement. At last, six years after her conversion, Angele feels ready to live the ideal of Saint Francis to the full, and with her probationary year completed, she is admitted in Summer 1291 to Profession in the Franciscan Tertiary Order. That same year, with the Saint’s day of our Seraphic father approaching, she went to Assisi on the pilgrimage which would become famous in the history of this Blessed Sister. During her trip and stay in Assisi, she received the very great gift of personally experiencing the presence of the Most Holy Trinity. This very singular phenomenon of grace took place while, totally absorbed, she meditated the request she had made to God through the intercession of Saint Francis : that she might feel Christ's presence vividly, that she might comply perfectly with the Rule of her Profession, that she might die as a true member of the poor. When this mystic episode ended, Angele succumbed to a real despair, full of screams and senseless chatter, to the great disturbance and near outrage of those present. Among them was Brother Arnaldo, who at first forbade Angele from ever returning to Assisi, but later tried to better understand what had happened, and, once convinced that it was indeed a great mystic experience, began putting Angele's words with him into writing. Thus was born the Spiritual Autobiography of the Blessed Angele, or Memoirs of Brother Arnaldo. Guide along the road to perfection. Angele is credited with the foundation and running of a true religious “cenacle”. But just as famous were the instructions she sent in writing to the numerous people who requested and pleaded to her for help, enlightenment, encouragement and solace with their problems, difficulties, doubts and hesitations. Angele fully fulfilled her spiritual maternity towards them. She herself states : “God has given me other sons to replace the ones I have lost”. Francis, her master and model, speaks in his Testament of the “brothers” God has given him. For Angele, as an expression of her womanhood, these spiritual “sons” are a gift from God. The expressions with which she addressed them in her letters are most gentle and touching : ”dearest to my soul – my intimate friends – my dearest…”. And always : “dearest sons”, “my little children”…. To these sons of her soul, Angele hands out her spiritual experience urging, berating, supporting, encouraging them along the road to spiritual perfection on which she herself was travelling, to reach the “fullness of God uncreated”. Blessed Angele is a reliable master guide to prayer: her daily nourishment. She designates it as the necessary means for obtaining « heavenly light » and salvation : “ Without heavenly light, no man can be saved….if you wish to gain possession of this light, pray…;if you wish to increase this light within you, pray; if you want faith, pray; if you want hope, pray; if you want charity, pray; if you want poverty, pray; if you want true obedience, pray; if you want chastity, pray; whatever the virtue you seek, pray. And pray in this way : by reading the book of Life, that is the life of the One who is God and man, Jesus Christ” (Instruction II, lines 229 ss.). Angele is thus a mother in the fullest sense : mother of the children born of her womb and prematurely lost; mother of the disinherited, for whom she sold her earthly possessions; mother to her spiritual sons, who remained at her side till the end.
Angele’s death Her “transitus”, her departure to heaven, is every bit as touching and also highly edifying. Her reverent followers, rush to the dying Blessed sister’s bedside in Foligno to hear her final advice and receive her blessing. She blesses “from the bottom of her heart ... all those, present and absent” and prays with the words of Christ on the Cross. The date is January 4th 1309. With this letter written to all the Franciscans and especially for the members of the Franciscan Tertiary Order, both secular and regular, we wished to recall to mind the character of this Blessed Sister, to deepen our knowledge of her human and spiritual story, in the hope that members of the Franciscan Family will welcome her invitation to live the mystical and spiritual dimensions of the ineffable union of the soul with God, through love.
Rome, November 1st 2008, All Saints Day. Encarnación del Pozo, Ministre Général OFS |
