Eternal Perspectives

Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality
by Raymond Arroyo

Are you unsure of your purpose in life? Stuck in the past and worried about the future? Hamstrung by fear, failure, or trials? Mother is here to help.

For more than twenty-five years, Mother Angelica has dispensed spiritual wisdom and practical advice to millions around the globe through her lively broadcasts on EWTN. Now she shares with you her personal life lessons and hilarious counsel as never before. Raymond Arroyo, author of the bestselling biography of Mother Angelica, has assembled an inspiring collection of her powerful insights, comic musings, and no-nonsense guidance for everyday living. Culled from never-before-seen interviews, private conversations, and recorded lessons not heard in over thirty years, to which Arroyo had exclusive access, these selections capture Mother Angelica's spunky spirit and profound wisdom at their zenith.

In Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality, the beloved nun is your personal mentor. Together you'll discover:

• How to find God's Will in your life
• How to pursue inspirations fearlessly
• How to make sense of pain and suffering
• How to spiritually overcome personal faults and trials

Created in cooperation with Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, this devotional treasury is accompanied by original prayers from Mother Angelica's private collection. Within are the meditations, personal beliefs, and pithy life lessons that transformed a disabled child of divorce into Mother Angelica, founder and CEO of the world's largest religious media empire. Packed with real-world hope, this little book is sure to transform your life in a big way.

A portion of the proceeds of this book goes to support the work of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery.

Chapter 1

The Beginning of the End

Mother Angelica fervently believed in maintaining an eternal perspective for everyday living; a constant awareness that we must account for our actions in this life, and that a final judgment awaits each of us. Of course she put it more succinctly:

Everyone drags his own carcass to market. So be careful.

God Loves You

I didn't know God loved me for a long time. Many feel that way. Because we are so aware of our faults, our weaknesses, our sins, we have an impression that God couldn't love us. Well that's not true. God is infinite. There is no end to His love. He doesn't love you for anything you possess. He loves you because He is love. We're all imperfect. We're all sinners, and many of us would be much worse than we are given the opportunity.

Seeing God

It is easier to see God in the sinner because I must make an effort to do so. It is one of the paradoxes of life that I run the risk of losing sight of God in those who are easy to love, because I begin to seek my own good in them.

Little Things

God chooses little things to do big things.

God Chose You

God knew you, loved you, and chose you before there was an angel, before there was a world, a universe or a star.

This Life

You have to enjoy life without resting in it. You have to have zest for life but a desire for heaven. And you must see God in all things, realizing that He transcends them all.

Humility

Ask yourselves: How little am I before God? Am I poor in spirit? Do I accept my weaknesses, my past, my sins, my idiosyncrasies, my eccentricities, and my failures? Do I accept them cheerfully? To accept one's miserable self, cheerfully, is humility.

The Way to Heaven

You must laugh your way to heaven, because tears won't get you there.

Cracked Pots

The Scripture says, "We are only earthenware jars" (2 Cor. 4:7). Cracked pots! That's what you are, a cracked pot that holds this great treasure. We are, all of us, imperfect, but we must remember that God is inside each of us.

Mystery and Faith

St. Augustine, one of our greatest minds in the Church, was walking on the seashore and he saw a little child. While he was walking, he tried to comprehend the Trinity: how there could possibly be three persons in one God. Further down the shore, this little child kept scooping a bucket of water and pouring it into a little hole on the beach. St. Augustine watched the child run back and forth, trying to fill the hole with water. Finally he said, "Son, what are you doing?"

The boy just looked at Augustine and said, "I'm trying to put the ocean in this hole."

"You can't. That's impossible," Augustine said.

"Neither can you understand the Trinity," the child responded. Then he disappeared.

So remember when you come upon a mystery--either in your life, or in Scripture, or in the life of Jesus--your mind can't accommodate all that is contained in the infinite, Holy God. Kinda like trying to put the entire ocean in a small hole, isn't it?

Sunken Treasure

The riches of heaven are the things we should be desirous of--not the things of the world. The only treasures we know are the sunken variety. We've all seen those movies where the pirates open the trunks filled with diamonds and rubies, and we know there is tons of stuff buried at sea. It shows you what God thinks of them--they're down at the bottom! God's concept of treasure is a soul that deeply loves Him and deeply loves its neighbor. That invisible reality is far more valuable than the passing trinkets of this world.

God's Choice

God is not hindered if He wants to use you, whether you are holy, perfect, imperfect, good or bad. He can speak through an ass if He wants to. And He did. Remember, that's how He spoke to Balaam the prophet (Num. 22:28-30). So there is hope for all of us.

Speaking the Truth

We don't like to speak the truth about evil because we're going to hurt somebody. Let me tell you, you are going to hurt somebody, but that Somebody is God. If you would rather hurt God than your neighbor, there is something wrong with your spirituality. It's your obligation to speak the truth and everyone can either take it or leave it. But truth must be in us. We live in such poverty of the truth today.

That Other Commandment

Boldness should be the eleventh commandment!

Making Deals With God

In 1957 Mother Angelica faced a hazardous spinal operation. The night before the procedure, the surgeon informed Angelica that she had only a fifty-fifty chance of ever walking again. She prayed zealously that night and made a pact with God. She told Him, "If You allow me to walk again I will build a monastery to Your glory in the South." With the aid of crutches and several braces, she did walk again. From then on she would advise:

"When you make a deal with God be very specific."

Copyright © 2007 by Raymond Arroyo.

About the Author

Raymond Arroyo, author of the New York Times bestseller Mother Angelica, is the news director and lead anchor of EWTNews. As creator and host of the news magazine The World Over Live, he is seen in more than 100 million households each week. He has worked at the Associated Press and the New York Observer, and for the political columnist team of Evans and Novak. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and many other publications. He lives in northern Virginia with his wife and three children.