Blessed Angela of Foligno

Lover of the Eucharist

Blessed Angela of Foligno (1248-1309)

Thirteenth Century Mystic - Passionate Lover of Jesus

Hello, family and welcome.  We're Bob and Penny Lord and we have a very special Super Saint to share with you today, Blessed Angela Foligno.

Within twenty five years after the world was to lose St. Francis of Assisi, the little, great Poverello, the Lord was to call forth a new light to brighten the world - our penitent Blessed Angela.  In Foligno, a city a very short distance from Assisi, a cry would come forth in the night that would one day reach out and touch some of the greatest Saints in the world, and now us.  The seed had been planted by the contradictory Poor One, Francis, and the Lord would not allow it to lie dormant in the ground. 

Like the Mustard Seed, a great strong tree would grow and having blossomed, bear great fruit.  One might agree with such great Saints as Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa in saying that Blessed Angela was one of the blossoms from that tree that would bring a new, delightful fragrance to the world by her love story with Jesus, so like that of St. Francis - her Spiritual Father.

We often say when the Lord wants something...  Well, I guess He has wanted the story of Blessed Angela to be told, as over the years, we have received requests upon requests from mainly Religious to write and make a program about this Blessed, little known here in the United States.  Well, we journeyed in faith to Foligno, Italy, not knowing what, if anything we would find.  But the Lord would not allow His sorrowful penitent's story to remain under a bushel basket.  Somehow, we have a feeling there is someone who has sinned, as our Blessed accuses herself of doing and thinks he or she is too unworthy to be forgiven, no less loved by the Lord.  Does the Lord want to touch that soul and say, You are mine; I have made you and I will always love you?

And so a brilliant star rose in the skies over the Umbrian Valley in beautiful, picturesque Italy.  Somewhere around 1248, a girl child was born to an aristocratic, wealthy, very influential family in Foligno.  We sometimes wonder what was happening in the world of that time that so many living very comfortable lives would discard riches and adopt Lady Poverty.  The battle was on.  God would not allow His children to drown in the mire of the decadent world which promised so much, but delivered nothing but sadness and bitterness.  What would He do?  Pick the most unlikely to do the most likely task He ordains.

Not much is known about Angela's childhood.  All we know is that she suffered the loss of her father while still very young and married at around twenty years old and bore sons.  This was neither to bring her happiness nor fulfillment, for her life became one of meaningless entertainment and desperate diversion.  She describes herself as one hell-bent on self-destruction, as were many of her class and time.  Was there a hole in her heart that she was endeavoring to fill with noise and frivolity?  Parties and flirtations - one, she confesses, led her to commit serious sin, over which she grieved endlessly and did penance for the rest of her life.

Like St. Francis before her, she was the life of any party she attended.  She craved the attention of others and dressed lavishly, at times enticingly, to bring this about, complementing her magnificent gowns with heady, expensive perfumes and costly jewels.  She will later confess she spent hours primping up, brushing and styling her hair.  But God had planted gifts in this runaway maiden and He would not allow them to go to waste.  Although she did not know it at the time, God had much for her to do.  From her writings, which were many, we  discover she was highly intelligent and cultured, quick-witted and later, through her admonitions to her spiritual children, we learn she suffered from being sharp-tongued and enjoying local gossip when all too available.

But in 1285, this was all to come to a screeching halt.  Now 37 years old, mid way through her life, was she assessing what her life meant, what she had contributed to the salvation of her soul and that of others?  No one knows, for sure, only that she began to weep without ceasing, as if her heart would break.  Is it possible that out of sudden fear and realization she might be headed toward the fire of eternal damnation in Hell, she ran to a confessor to unburden herself of all her sins?  But, she later writes, not all of them.  She was too ashamed to confess some of her sins, so now to compound the sin; she was receiving the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist sacrilegiously. 

Contemplating the sorrowful suffering of Our Savior during His Passion, she began her road as a penitent.  She turned to St. Francis, pleading with him to find her a confessor. He appeared to her in a dream and said if she would have only asked him, he would have gladly obliged her, that much sooner.  The next morning, she awakened and went to the nearby church of San Francesco.  But she did not find her confessor there.  Not to be disheartened, she went on to the Cathedral of San Feliciano, also near her home.  There she heard a Franciscan preaching, who just happened to be a relative of hers.  She was so moved by his homily, feeling the presence of God at that moment, she went to him and confessed, only now fully, leaving nothing out.  He dispelled the fear she had that her sins were so grievous and sacrilegious that only a Bishop could absolve her of her offenses.  He assured her that he could absolve her and she could, at last, know peace.  This confessor, it is believed, was her cousin Friar Arnaldo, who would become her ongoing confessor and the one to whom she would dictate her visions.

She began to shed her fine clothes and jewels and begin a life of penitence.  No sooner did her conversion commence, than in around 1288, three years after her conversion, she was to know the deep sorrow of losing her husband, her mother and all her sons to the Angel of Death.  Now, she would dedicate every waking hour to adoring her Lord, especially in His Passion.  However, it was not to be a grand leap, but tiny steps, one little one at a time, for almost five and a half years, before Angela would achieve the spirituality she sought, that intimacy of knowing she was loved by Her One and Only Love –Jesus.

She couldn't do enough to show the Lord how very much she loved Him.  She shed all her belongings, even her country estate and gave all her worldly assets to the poor.  She later wrote it was the finest piece of property she owned.  Her relatives were furious and wanted to have her put away.  Even her spiritual advisors were against her, admonishing her about her extreme behavior.  Warning her that the life she was seeking was ill-advised, they told her they feared she was losing her mind, at the least, or at the worst she was possessed by the devil.  They even had her doubting herself.

We write one liners: It would be almost five and a half years before she would be close to her Lord, to show Him her love, her never-ending love only for Him and Him alone.  It would be five and a half years before she would be able to shed all the lures of the world, dying inch by inch to old desires, especially that of human respect.  But what sustained her those five and a half years, when she obviously was going through the dark night of the soul - feeling nothing - no word from the Lord.  She had desired to love Him and Him alone.  Now, she had no husband, no mother, and no children, only Him.  And where was He? 

She was finally accepted as a Tertiary by the Franciscans, allowed to wear the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis, and make her profession.  She left for Assisi to ask St. Francis' intercession to give her the strength and determination to follow the Rule of St. Francis and to truly live the life of poverty.  We have to remember, as zealous as she was, giving up everything and living a life of poverty, dependent on the alms of others could not be easy for someone who had had everything material.

On the way to Assisi, between Foligno and Assisi, she and her traveling companions stopped at a crossroads a little beyond Spello at one of many wayside chapels - this one consecrated to the Holy Trinity.  Deep in prayer, she had a revelation of the Holy Trinity, which had been foretold would happen to her in a prior vision.  She could feel herself being filled with the Presence of God.  She pulled back from the others, walking slowly, drinking in this new Life that had entered into her soul.

She and her little band of Tertiaries went on to Assisi and the Basilica of St. Francis.  At first they went into the lower Basilica and then they entered the Upper Basilica. There her eyes fell on the beautiful stain-glassed window depicting St. Francis being held up, like a child, closely nestled in the Bosom of Jesus.  Although one sees St. Francis attired as an adult male, the glass window clearly reveals Francis as a child being lovingly embraced by his Father, clearly depicting Jesus' words in the Bible: "Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." 

Once again, Angela is given the gift of becoming enraptured; she would feel the most precious awareness of the Divine within her soul and her very being.  She told her confessor that she saw Christ and He said:

"Thus will I hold you closely to me and much more closely than can be observed with the eyes of the body.  And now the time has come, sweet daughter, My temple, My delight, to fulfill My promise to you.  I am about to leave you in the form of this consolation, but I will never leave you if you love Me."

It is inconceivable to describe the state of ecstasy she must have been in, as Christ told her it was time for their mystical betrothal.  He told her:

"You are holding the ring of My love.  From now on you are engaged to Me and you will never leave Me.  May the blessing of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit be upon you and your companions."

But all things come to an end, even the miraculous Presence of the Divine.  Having the vision leave her, she wanted to die!  Here she was united with the King of the Universe and He left her.  As another human, I can understand the anguish, the heart-rending agony of that separation.  She became overwrought and began to cry out in a loud voice; groaning, she wailed, "Love still unknown, why, why, why?"  To the utter dismay of her companions, she threw herself on the floor and, letting out incoherent utterances, began thrashing and screaming.  The noise attracted the attention of some of the friars, who lived in the adjoining convent and they came running.  With them came Friar Arnaldo, her confessor, who had since joined the Sacro Convento of the Basilica.  Upon witnessing Angela in this completely out of control state, he severely scolded her and her companions, admonishing them to never return to Assisi again.

Although wounded by her confessor, Angela returned to Foligno, filled with the sweet essence of God's Presence within, offering her a peace previously unknown.  She could barely speak for eight days after she returned to Foligno. One of her companions told Arnaldo she saw an aura around Angela.  But this did not move Friar Arnaldo, who had been transferred back to the San Francesco Friary in Foligno.  He couldn't let go of the strange occurrences that came about in Assisi, and so he questioned Angela about her bizarre behavior in the Basilica.  He promised her he would not reveal what she said to anyone except some men of God, whom he respected, who would be able to discern whether that which took place in Assisi was the work of the devil or that of God.

Angela began to pour out all that had been revealed to her, to the utter amazement, as well as uneasiness of her confessor.  When she saw he was writing on a piece of paper, she exhorted him to get a book, as what she had to reveal could never be contained on a mere piece of paper.  And that is how her book, the Memorial, a collection of her visions and insights into her inner walk with the Lord, came about.

For the next four years, Friar Arnaldo heard Angela recount all that she was receiving from the Lord.  As she spoke only in the Umbrian dialect, he had to translate all she dictated into Latin.  Although at times, he had suspicions regarding the things she told him, he faithfully put it all down in his little book, beginning with nineteen steps of her inner life which grew to thirty steps of her journey with the Divine.

At the beginning, recounting the first five steps, she dealt with visions of the Passion and Crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus Christ - sharing her visions of Our Lord Crucified, then of Our Lord Present in the Eucharist, and then of the Divine revelation of God in the Universe. 

When she had visions of the Eucharist, she would see the Host radiating such luminous beauty, "it surpassed the splendor of the sun."  At another time, there appeared "two most splendid Eyes" in the Host, looking at her.  She was also gifted with a vision of the Eucharist where the Child Jesus appeared in the Host, resplendently dressed, majestically seated on a throne.  So passionately was she consumed by the Eucharist, one day she cried out she wished she could receive Communion every day. 

Angela reported that after her soul experienced itself nestled within the Holy Trinity, the soul was able to understand that Jesus was everywhere - in the Eucharist, in the Word and in everyone she met.  But then her soul asked the Lord, why did she feel closest to Him in the Ciborium!  The Lord responded that it was because through the Priest's words of consecration, He dwelt inside the Ciborium.  And He added it was by a special miracle that this comes to pass. 

Another time, as the Priest raised the Host, she heard the Father say, "Behold the Man Who was crucified."  And with the eyes of her soul she saw Jesus.  At another time, during the consecration, when the Priest raised the Host, she saw Jesus descending down upon the Altar, accompanied by a host of Angels.

With one vision of God, King of the Universe, displaying His power and involvement in all of His creation, she was so enthralled with His Divine Presence, her soul cried out,

"The world is pregnant with God!"

Friar Arnaldo could see a transformation coming about, day by day, with Angela becoming less and God becoming more.  But of all the Images of Christ in her walk, now, the one who was most responsible for her ascent to union with Jesus was the Crucified Christ Himself.  He showed her, her most serious sins that needed to be purified and then complemented the pain with His forgiveness and the healing of painful memories.

PENNY

Angela writes of her journey in her book: The Memorial.  There she speaks of the thirty steps of her inner life.  In the early steps, it was visions of the Crucified Lord which accelerated her journey.  In stages seven to seventeen, she tells how her relationship with Jesus, her Lover, grew in great proportions:

"She `looks at the cross;' `stands' at the foot of it to find refuge; `sees' the wounds of Christ while asleep and awake; `enters' into the sorrow of Christ's Passion suffered by the Mother Of Christ and St. John; `sees' Christ's Heart; `places' her mouth to the wound in His Side, and `drinks' from the blood freshly flowing from it; `fixes' her attention on the sorrow over Christ's Passion suffered by the Mother of Christ and St. John in order to experience it herself."

BOB

Holy Thursday of the year 1292, Angela was to once again experience the Presence of God.  Accompanied by her companion, she set out to tend lepers in the hospital.  They gently washed the decaying sores of a leper suffering the final ravages of the deadly leprosy that was attacking him.  Having finished cleaning the wounds of the leper, Angela and her companion drank the water used to wash the leper.  When Angela confessed the episode later, to her confessor, Friar Arnaldo, she said that after having done so, she became immediately aware of the Divine in their midst.  She added, the exhilarating sensation she'd had, drinking the water, and feeling the sweet Presence of God, compared to that which she had known "having received Communion."  

It is the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin and we find Angela in the church of the Friars Minor in Foligno.  Candles are being distributed to the Faithful, when Angela hears God saying that this is the moment that Our Lady entered the temple with Her Baby in Her arms.  Awestruck by the enormity of the moment, Angela felt so much love filling her, she was left speechless. 

Then Our Lady appeared to her, holding the Baby Jesus.  She offered Her Most Precious Baby to Angela saying, "O lover of My Son, receive Him."  Angela looked down at the carefully wrapped bundle in Mother Mary's arms.  The tiny Baby Jesus had His Eyes closed; His Face so sweet, filled with peace.  Our Mother stretched out Her arms and gently placed Her Son in Angela's arms.  As if showing Her faith in Angela, Our Lady sat down and looked upon the two - the Adored and the adoring.

Angela was so overcome by the beauty of the moment - holding the Beloved Baby Jesus in her arms - her eyes went reverently to her little Savior and then over to His Most Beautiful Mother, who just looked at the two and smiled lovingly.  The Baby looked up at Angela with so much love; she thought she would die of ecstasy.  Bringing Him close to her face Angela pressed her cheeks gently on the Cheeks of our little Lord.  His Eyes looked up to her so adoringly; they seemed to burn into her very soul.  She was on fire.

PENNY

On the Friday morning, following the Feast Day, Angela turned to God and asked Him to teach her what pleased Him and all He wanted her to do; for she was ready to obey!  She kept on repeating those words until she heard a voice say, "In truth, I say to you that there is no true way other than following in My footsteps, for in My way there is no deception whatever."

Through experiences such as these, Angela faded more and more, and Jesus, the God-Man surfaced more.  It was glorious; it was Divine.  But all things come to an end - good and bad alike.  Just as it was on Mount Tabor, when Jesus showed Peter, James and John His Transfigured Self, and they were so moved, Peter exclaimed, "Let us build three tents - one for Thee, one for Moses and one for Elijah."  They wanted to stay on the mountain - the transfiguration was so awesome, so glorious!  But Jesus then showed them the valley through which they would have to walk with Him to His death and they did not want to go down in the valley.  Jesus knew what they did not; you cannot experience the Resurrection without the walk through the valley of death and the Crucifixion. 

And so it was with Angela.  With the joy of the Divine Presence, came the persecution by those closest and most accessible to hurting her - the other Tertiaries of the Third Order of St. Francis.  And if that was not enough, the Franciscan Friars not only doubted her visions, they were downright hostile!  So furious were the attacks, she began to doubt her visions.  To add to her misery, she became fair game for the devil and his taunting, as she could not feel the God-Man!  All alone - she felt all alone.  Things got so bad, she wished she could die. 

PENNY

At one point, the Franciscans refused to anoint her as she lay seriously ill on her bed, insisting they had already anointed her companion; and besides, she and her company asked for too many anointings.  The Lord had just asked her to be His martyr.  Was this what He meant?  Not leaving her downcast, she heard Our Lord say that He and all His priests would anoint her.  She need not be upset - she would be anointed.  Her life was forever floating between the highest highs of God's Presence and the lowest lows of His absence.  Just as she was, once again, beginning to feel, without the shadow of a doubt that God loved her, the world came crashing down on her, again.  For two years - years of joy and then despondency, years of feeling like she was the most beloved child of God and then a topsy- turvy fear of being the most despicable child of the devil; she was under the most horrendous attacks of body and soul and then the most glorious elation of God's Divine love. 

As we share on her life, we recall St. Teresa of Avila's words: "If this is the way You treat Your friends, no wonder You do not have many."  The life of a mystic is not an easy one.  To those to whom much is given, much will be required- and along with that the Cross.  Jesus promised that those who follow Him can expect persecution in this world, along with the gift of eternal life in the next.  For the next thirteen years - from 1296 until 1309, the year she gave up her spirit to the God she had known and loved, Angela spoke nothing of that which she may or may not have been still receiving from the Lord.  When asked by a Franciscan Friar about her secret visions, she replied, "My secrets are mine."

Angela spent those last thirteen years instructing her companions.  Many owed their conversion to her.  A few days before Christmas, 1308 until January 4, 1309, she informed her companions of her imminent death.  She left her spiritual testament and a final blessing to her spiritual children, both "present and absent."  Before she closed her eyes for the last time, her Lord told her He would not trust her body to anyone but Himself - not even Angels nor Saints to bring her body to Him, but that He would come for her Himself.  All at once, Angela said, "Behold, the moment has arrived in which my God fulfills His promise to me.  Christ His Son has now presented me to the Father."

The body of Angela of Foligno rests in the Church of Saint Francis in Foligno.  No sooner did she close her eyes than miracles started to come about.  Many believers, especially from the area around Foligno, still come and beseech her for her intercession.  As with many of our Saints, Padre Pio for one, who were declared Saints or Blesseds by the Faithful, long before they were acknowledged by Mother Church, so it was with Angela.  Then on July 11th, in the year 1701, by decree of Pope Clement XI, Angela was recognized by the Church as Blessed.  Her Feast is celebrated on the day of her death - January 4th.  This is a very special super saint.  Pray to Blessed Angela for help.  She is there for you.  She will help.  Ask her.

We thank you, family, for sharing this time with us, for getting to know this most special Super Saint.

We love you - God bless you.