Today's Ornament of Grace for Sunday of the Fourth Week of Advent is St. Angela of Foligno.
Romans 1:1-7
Greetings from Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart to proclaim the gospel of God…Through him we have been favored with apostleship, that we may spread his name and bring to obedient faith all the Gentiles, among whom are you who have been called to belong to Jesus Christ.
Paul, in today’s second reading, reminds us that, like him, we are called to be servants of God who proclaim the Good News in obedient faith. St. Angela Foligno took this calling seriously, at least later in life.
Born to a wealthy family around 1248 in Foligno, a town in central Italy not far from Assisi, Angela’s father died when she was young. Her mother did not have much interest in passing along the faith to her daughter. Intelligent and beautiful, Angela married early and had several children. Her focus, like many today, was on amassing wealth as well as bettering her social position. When she was about 40 years old, she began to realize that, although she loved her family, working for wealth and social position had not brought her true joy. She felt empty inside. Perhaps a serious earthquake, a war, and a wild hurricane around that time also pushed her to consider more lasting things.
Angela sought help from God in prayer. In the Sacrament of Penance, a wise confessor told her to ask God to forgive her sins, pray, and give her life to good works. About three years later, her mother died. Several months after that, her husband and children also died. At that point, Angela began divesting herself of all her possessions. She joined the Franciscan Third Order and asked a Friar Arnoldo to be her spiritual director and confessor. Friar Arnoldo served in this capacity until around 1296 when Angela’s mystic revelations became, he said, too complex for him. Up until then, he had directed her to write down all her experiences and the knowledge she attained from her deep prayer life. She continued to do this for the rest of her life.
Prayer was Angela’s central theme. One translation of her many works states, “No one can be saved without divine light. Divine light causes us to begin and to make progress, and it leads to the summit of perfection. Therefore, if you want to begin and to receive this divine light, pray. If you have begun to make progress, pray. And if you have reached the summit of perfection and want to be super-illumined so as to remain in that state, pray. If you want faith, pray. If you want hope, pray… .”
She advised all to pray with Scripture. Prayer for Angela was oneness with God. And, for her, oneness with God meant oneness with all. That is why she served those in need.
Between 1296 and her death in 1309, her sanctity drew both men and women to follow her as Third Order Franciscans. Later, she gathered a group of women in the Third Order who took vows to be in community as well. Her group realized they could not be enclosed in a cloister – as most women religious were at the time – because they felt called to be out serving those in need.
At Christmastime in 1308, Angela told her sisters in community that she would die shortly and that Jesus, Himself, said He would come to take her to heaven. She died as she slept peacefully in early January, 1309. Pope Francis canonized St. Angela in 2013.
OBSERVING THE BEAUTIFUL ORNAMENTS
If you have a particular virtue you are striving for this Advent, wh
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