Angela of Foligno

Angela was born at Foligno in Umbria on 4 January 1248 into a prosperous family. Early orphaned of her father, she received from her mother a superficial education and spent her youth far from the faith. Beautiful, intelligent, and passionate, she married a notable citizen of Foligno and bore several children. For years she loved the world's pleasures and even scorned the penitents who sold their goods to follow Christ in prayer, fasting, and charity.

Within a few years the violent earthquake of 1279, a fierce hurricane, and the long war against Perugia shook her carefree life. She began to feel the precariousness of existence and the fear of hell. She desired the sacrament of penance, yet shame kept her from a complete confession and left her in torment. In prayer she obtained from Saint Francis of Assisi the assurance that she would soon know the mercy of God. She returned to the confessional, this time fully reconciled with the Lord. Around the age of thirty-seven, despite the hostility of her relatives, her conversion began in earnest under the sign of penance and renunciation of things, affections, and self.

After the close and premature deaths of her mother, husband, and children, Angela sold all her goods and distributed the proceeds to the poor. With her companion Masazuola she went on pilgrimage to Assisi in the footsteps of the Poverello and in 1291 entered the Third Order of Saint Francis. She entrusted herself to the spiritual direction of Friar Arnaldo, a fellow citizen and kinsman, who became her biographer and the author of the famous Memoriale. In that work the stages of her vocation and her constant ecstasies and mystical experiences—culminating in the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity in her soul—are divided into thirty "steps."

Of a vision of the Triune God she told her confessor: "I saw a fullness, an immense majesty that I cannot describe, yet it seemed to me that it was every good. … After His departure I began to cry out loudly … Love unknown, why do You leave me?" The youthful fear of damnation soon gave way to the knowledge that she could not be saved by her own merits but, with a repentant heart, only through the infinite merciful love of God.

To a constant life of prayer, especially Eucharistic adoration, she always joined charitable service to the least, tenderly assisting lepers and the sick in whom she saw Christ Crucified. Already known in her lifetime as Magistra Theologorum, she promoted a theology grounded in the Word of God, obedience to the Church, and direct experience of the divine in its most intimate manifestations. Passionately involved in the controversies that tore the Franciscan Order, she drew around herself a circle of spiritual sons and daughters who saw in her a guide and true mistress of faith; thus her figure embodies one of the models of feminine genius in the Church. She founded a community of women tertiaries who lived a common life without enclosure so that they might continue works of charity.

At Christmas 1308 she told her companions she would die soon. A few days later she had a vision of Christ promising to come personally to take her to heaven. She died in her sleep on 4 January 1309 (some accounts say the night of 3 January), already popularly called a saint before her death. Her remains rest in the Church of Saint Francis at Foligno. Pope Clement XI confirmed her cult in 1701; on 9 October 2013 Pope Francis completed what his predecessors had begun by canonizing her by equipollence.

May Saint Angela of Foligno intercede for us, that we may turn from empty pleasures to the merciful love of the Crucified and practice generous charity toward the poor and the sick today.

BENEDICT XVI

GENERAL AUDIENCE

Saint Peter\'s Square Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Blessed Angela of Foligno

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today I would like to speak to you about Blessed Angela of Foligno, a great medieval mystic who lived in the 13th century. Usually, people are fascinated by the heights of the experience of union with God that she attained, but perhaps they consider too little her first steps, her conversion, and the long journey that led her from the starting point, the "great fear of hell," to the goal, total union with the Trinity. The first part of Angela\'s life was certainly not that of a fervent disciple of the Lord. Born around 1248 into a well-to-do family, she was orphaned of her father and was brought up by her mother in a rather superficial way. She was soon introduced to the worldly circles of the city of Foligno, where she met a man whom she married at the age of twenty and with whom she had children. Her life was carefree, to the extent that she allowed herself to despise the so-called "penitents"—very widespread at that time—that is, those who to follow Christ sold their possessions and lived in prayer, fasting, service to the Church, and charity.

Certain events, such as the violent earthquake of 1279, a hurricane, the protracted war against Perugia, and its harsh consequences, impacted the life of Angela, who progressively became aware of her sins, up to a decisive step: she invoked St. Francis, who appeared to her in a vision, to ask him for advice with a view to making a good general Confession: we are in 1285, and Angela made her confession to a Friar at San Feliciano. Three years later, the path of conversion experienced another turning point: the severing of emotional ties, since, within a few months, the death of her mother was followed by those of her husband and all her children. She then sold her possessions and in 1291 joined the Third Order of St. Francis. She died in Foligno on 4 January 1309.

The Book of Blessed Angela of Foligno, in which the documentation on our Blessed is gathered, recounts this conversion; it indicates the necessary means: penance, humility, and tribulations; and it narrates its stages, the succession of Angela\'s experiences, which began in 1285. Remembering them, after having lived them, she sought to recount them through her confessor Friar, who transcribed them faithfully and then attempted to arrange them into stages, which he called "steps or mutations," but without succeeding in fully ordering them (cf. The Book of Blessed Angela of Foligno, Cinisello Balsamo 1990, p. 51). This is because the experience of union for Blessed Angela is a total involvement of the spiritual and corporal senses, and of what she "comprehends" during her ecstasies there remains, so to speak, only a "shadow" in her mind. "I truly heard these words," she confesses after a mystical rapture, "but what I saw and understood, and what He [that is, God] showed me, in no way do I know or can I tell, although I would gladly reveal what I understood with the words I heard, but it was an absolutely ineffable abyss." Angela of Foligno presents her mystical "lived experience" without elaborating on it with her mind, because they are divine illuminations that are communicated to her soul in a sudden and unexpected way. The confessor Friar himself struggled to report such events, "also because of his great and admirable reserve regarding divine gifts" (Ibid., p. 194). To Angela\'s difficulty in expressing her mystical experience was also added the difficulty of her listeners in understanding it. A situation that clearly indicates how the one and true Master, Jesus, lives in the heart of every believer and desires to take total possession of it. Thus in Angela, who wrote to one of her spiritual sons: "My son, if you saw my heart, you would be absolutely forced to do all the things that God wants, because my heart is God\'s and God\'s heart is mine." Here St. Paul\'s words resound: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20).

Let us therefore consider only a few "steps" of the rich spiritual journey of our Blessed. The first, in reality, is a premise: "It was the knowledge of sin," as she specifies, "following which the soul had a great fear of damnation; at this step she wept bitterly" (The Book of the Blessed Angela of Foligno, p. 39). This "fear" of hell corresponds to the type of faith that Angela had at the time of her "conversion"; a faith still poor in charity, that is, in the love of God. Repentance, fear of hell, and penance open up for Angela the perspective of the painful "way of the cross" which, from the eighth to the fifteenth step, will then lead her onto the "way of love". The friar confessor recounts: "The faithful woman then said to me: I have had this divine revelation: \u00After the things you have written, have it written that whoever wishes to preserve grace must not take the eyes of the soul from the Cross, whether in joy or in sadness that I grant or permit\u00" (Ibid., p. 143). But in this phase Angela still "does not feel love"; she states: "The soul experiences shame and bitterness and does not yet experience love, but sorrow" (Ibid., p. 39), and she is dissatisfied.

Angela feels she must give something to God to make amends for her sins, but slowly she understands that she has nothing to give Him, indeed that she is "nothing" before Him; she understands that it will not be her own will to give her the love of God, because this can only give her her own "nothingness," her "non-love." As she will say: only "true and pure love, which comes from God, resides in the soul and causes it to recognize its own faults and divine goodness [...] Such love leads the soul into Christ and she understands with certainty that no deception can occur or be present. Along with this love, nothing of the world's love can be mixed" (Ibid., p. 124-125). Opening oneself solely and totally to the love of God, which has its highest expression in Christ: "O my God," she prays, "make me worthy to know the highest mystery, which your most ardent and ineffable love accomplished, together with the love of the Trinity, that is, the highest mystery of your most holy incarnation for us. [...]. Oh incomprehensible love! Above this love, which caused my God to become man to make me God, there is no greater love" (Ibid., p. 295). Nevertheless, Angela's heart always bore the wounds of sin; even after a well-made Confession, she found herself forgiven and yet still broken by sin, free and conditioned by the past, absolved yet in need of penance. And even the thought of hell accompanied her, because the more the soul progresses on the path of Christian perfection, the more it will become convinced not only of being "unworthy," but of being deserving of hell.

And so, along her mystical path, Angela comes to a profound understanding of the central reality: what will save her from her "unworthiness" and from "deserving hell" will not be her "union with God" and her possession of the "truth," but rather the crucified Jesus, "His crucifixion for me," His love. In the eighth step, she says: "Yet I did not yet understand whether my liberation from sins and from hell and my conversion to penance was a greater good, or His crucifixion for me" (Ibid., p. 41). It is the unstable equilibrium between love and sorrow, experienced throughout her difficult journey toward perfection. Precisely for this reason, she prefers to contemplate the crucified Christ, because in such a vision she sees the perfect equilibrium realized: on the cross is the God-man, in a supreme act of suffering that is a supreme act of love. In the third Instruction, the Blessed insists on this contemplation and states: "The more perfectly and purely we see, the more perfectly and purely we love. [...] Therefore, the more we see God and man Jesus Christ, the more we are transformed into Him through love. [...] What I have said of love [...] I also say of sorrow: the more the soul contemplates the ineffable sorrow of God and man Jesus Christ, the more it grieves and is transformed into sorrow" (Ibid., p. 190-191). To identify with, to be transformed into the love and sufferings of the crucified Christ, to identify with Him. Angela's conversion, begun with that Confession of 1285, will reach maturity only when God's pardon appears to her soul as the gratuitous gift of a Father's love, the source of love: "There is no one who can make excuses," she states, "because anyone can love God, and He asks nothing of the soul other than that it love Him, because He loves it and is its love" (Ibid., p. 76).

In Angela's spiritual itinerary, the transition from conversion to mystical experience, from what can be expressed to the inexpressible, takes place through the Crucifix. It is the "passionate God-man," who becomes her "master of perfection." Her entire mystical experience is therefore a striving toward a perfect "resemblance" to Him, through ever deeper and more radical purifications and transformations. In this marvelous undertaking, Angela puts her whole self, body and soul, sparing herself no penance or tribulation from beginning to end, desiring to die with all the pains suffered by the crucified God-man in order to be totally transformed into Him: "O children of God," she recommended, "transform yourselves totally into the passionate God-man, who loved you so much that He condescended to die for you a most ignominious death, and one altogether ineffably painful and in a most distressing and bitter way. This solely for your love, O man!" (Ibid., p. 247). This identification also means living what Jesus lived: poverty, contempt, sorrow, because – as she states – "through temporal poverty the soul will find eternal riches; through contempt and shame it will obtain supreme honor and the greatest glory; through little penance, done with pain and sorrow, it will possess with infinite sweetness and consolation the Supreme Good, the eternal God" (Ibid., p. 293).

From conversion to mystical union with the crucified Christ, to the inexpressible. A towering journey, the secret of which is constant prayer: "The more you pray," she affirms, "the more enlightened you will be; the more enlightened you will be, the more deeply and intensely you will see the Supreme Good, the supremely good Being; the more deeply and intensely you will see Him, the more you will love Him; the more you will love Him, the more He will delight you; and the more He will delight you, the more you will understand Him and become capable of understanding Him. Subsequently you will arrive at the fullness of light, because you will understand that you cannot comprehend" (Ibid., p. 184).

Dear brothers and sisters, Saint Angela's life begins with a worldly existence, quite distant from God. But then her encounter with the figure of Saint Francis and, finally, her encounter with Christ Crucified awaken her soul to the presence of God, to the fact that only with God does life become true life, because in sorrow for sin, it becomes love and joy. And so Saint Angela speaks to us. Today we are all in danger of living as if God did not exist: He seems so far removed from daily life. But God has a thousand ways, for each person his own, to make Himself present in the soul, to show that He exists and knows me and loves me. And Saint Angela wishes to make us attentive to these signs with which the Lord touches our soul, attentive to the presence of God, so as to learn the way with God and toward God in communion with Christ Crucified. Let us pray to the Lord that He make us attentive to the signs of His presence, that He teach us to truly live. Thank you.

Greetings:

Je salue cordialement les pèlerins venus de Guadeloupe, du diocèse d'Arras et de celui d'Évry accompagné par Mgr Michel Dubost. Je salue aussi les choristes de la cathédrale de Saint-Malo et les paroissiens de Malonne, en Belgique. Que la bienheureuse Angèle de Foligno soit pour vous un exemple et un guide spiritual qui vous conduira vers le Christ. Bon pèlerinage et que Dieu vous bénisse!

I am pleased to welcome the delegates of the International Association of Financial Executives Institutes. I also extend greetings to all the English speaking pilgrims and visitors, especially those from England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, South Africa, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and the United States. May God bless you all!

Von Herzen grüße ich alle Pilger deutscher Sprache, heute besonders die Ministranten aus dem Erzbistum Köln, die sich mit Kardinal Meisner nach Rom aufgemacht haben, und ebenso die Meßdiener aus Borken in Westfalen. Ich grüße auch die Neupriester aus dem Germanikum mit ihren Gästen und nicht zuletzt die Schwestern der heiligen Elisabeth. Der Aufenthalt in Rom schenke euch geistliche Kraft für euren Alltag. Gott segne euch alle.

Saludo a los peregrinos de lengua española, en particular a las Hermanas de la Compañía de la Cruz; a los miembros de la Hermandad de Nuestra Señora de la Estrella, de Sevilla; a los representantes de la Cofradía de Investigadores de Toledo, acompañados por el Señor Cardenal Antonio Cañizares Llovera; a los fieles de la Arquidiócesis de Santiago de los Caballeros, con su Arzobispo, Monseñor Ramón Benito de la Rosa Carpio, así como a los demás grupos procedentes de España, México, Honduras, Argentina y otros países latinoamericanos. Que la Beata Ángela de Foligno nos ayude a comprender que la verdadera felicidad consiste en la amistad con Cristo, crucificado por amor nuestro. A su divina bondad sigo encomendando con esperanza a los mineros de la región de Atacama, en Chile. Muchas gracias y que Dios os bendiga.

Saúdo com profunda amizade os peregrinos lusófonos presentes nesta Audiência, particularmente os fiéis portugueses de Valongo e os brasileiros de Ribeirão Pires, Porto Alegre e São Paulo. Sobre todos invoco as luzes e bênçãos do Céu que possam, a exemplo da Baeta Ângela de Foligno, ajudar-vos a compreender o quanto Cristo nos amou e nos ama. Ide com Deus. Obrigado!

Saluto in lingua polacca:

With a cordial greeting I turn to the Poles. The anniversary of the election of John Paul II is approaching. Together with you I thank God for the testimony of faith, hope and love that my great predecessor on the Chair of Peter gave us. I pray that the fruits of his life, ministry and teaching may endure in the Church and in the hearts of men. To your prayers I commend the work of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East. Praised be Jesus Christ!

Saluto in lingua croata:

From the heart I greet and bless the Croatian pilgrims, and in a special way all the priests and faithful of the Archdiocese of Rijeka, led by their Archbishop Monsignor Ivan Devčić, as well as the faithful from the Parish of Our Lady of Fatima in Split and the Queen Jelena Choir of Solin. Dear friends, the Church places great hope in you, your families, and parish communities so that you may constantly build love and reconciliation in your homeland. Strengthened in the faith, pray for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary that you may persevere. Praised be Jesus and Mary!

I cordially greet the Slovak pilgrims, especially those coming from Nitra, Spiš, the Parish of Saint Michael in Bajerov, as well as the group of deacons from the Archdiocese of Košice. Brothers and sisters, the Rosary is for us a school of prayer. I hope that your pilgrimage in this month of the Rosary, October, will help you discover the beauty of this prayer, so simple yet effective. With this desire, I bless you and your loved ones. Praised be Jesus Christ!

With great affection I greet the Hungarian faithful, especially those who have arrived from Miskolc, Tesmák, Göd, Dány, and Kisléta. I remember in my prayers the inhabitants of Kolontár, who had to leave their homes, and all those who have been affected by the toxic mud, especially those who have lost their lives. Gladly I impart the Apostolic Blessing to you and also to all who come to the aid of those affected. Praised be Jesus Christ!

I address a cordial greeting to the Ukrainian pilgrims, and while I urge them to bear a generous Christian witness everywhere, I invoke upon each one the Apostolic Blessing. Praised be Jesus Christ!

* * *

I offer a cordial welcome to the Italian-speaking pilgrims. In particular, I greet the participants in the pilgrimage promoted by the Franciscan Sisters of the Lord, led by the Bishop of Caltanissetta, Monsignor Mario Russotto, and, in joining in their joy for the jubilee anniversary of the religious institute founded by the Servant of God Angelico Lipani, I hope for each one a renewed outpouring of heavenly favors, so that their generous resolutions of evangelical witness may be strengthened. I greet the group \"Friends and Benefactors of Telepace,\" who are commemorating the 20th anniversary of their presence in Rome: may your praiseworthy broadcasting station continue to grow under the maternal gaze of Mary. I greet the faithful of Piani d'Imperia and urge them to live the Christian faith with enthusiasm, in the awareness that it is the fully valid answer to the hopes and expectations of every person and every society.

I now turn to the young people, the sick, and newly married couples. My thoughts go to Our Lady of Fatima, whose last apparition we remember precisely today. To the heavenly Mother of God I entrust you, dear young people, that you may generously respond to the Lord's call. May Mary be for you, dear sick persons, a comfort in your sufferings; and may she accompany you, dear newly married couples, on your nascent family journey.