Saint Angela of Foligno and "Lady Poverty

Born into a prominent family in 13th-century Italy, Angela of Foligno radically changed her life around the age of forty, realising that she had neglected God and the sacraments for too long. After having a vision of Saint Francis of Assisi, who had died some twenty years before she was born, she accepted to consecrate her life to Christ, who was also appearing to her. She gave away all her possessions and entered the Franciscan order in 1291. She died in 1309, after a new life of serving the sick and needy. Her feast day is 4 January.

Unsplash / Chase Kennedy

Reasons to believe:

The life of Angela of Foligno is well known: it was written down by her spiritual father, Brother Arnoldo, in the Book of Blessed Angela of Foligno. The second part of the Book, that of the teachings, is made up of letters, doctrinal documents, texts dictated directly by the saint, and mystical revelations.

Angela's conversion was total, definitive, and also radical, in the image of Saint Francis of Assisi: at the age of forty, she abandoned her social position and, to the dismay of her family, distributed her material possessions to the needy.

On the face of it, her conversion caused her nothing but trouble and reproach: there was no psychological reason, conscious or unconscious, to explain such a reversal of priorities and such a sudden commitment to a way of life unknown to her until she was 37.

Her meeting with Brother Arnoldo, who was to become her confessor and help her in her spiritual development, was providential: she met this Franciscan priest on the road between Assisi and Foligno, precisely the day after her first vision of Saint Francis.

Angela led a mystical life punctuated by visions, ecstasies, apparitions and inner locutions. However, you couldn't say that she was a dreamer or detached from the world. On the contrary, she was a woman with solid human experience, leading a rich social life based on charity: caring for lepers, helping the needy, and so on.

Knowing that the Christian life consisted above all in imitating Jesus, she was extremely cautious about extraordinary, mystical phenomena, speaking about them only to her confessor, who trusted her completely.

None of the many messages received by Angela contains the smallest doctrinal error. Her humility and obedience were infallible: right up to her last breath, she never paid the slightest attention to the private revelations she received from God, entrusting them entirely to the ecclesiastical authorities.

The Italian Franciscan Ubertino of Casale called Angela a "true angel on earth". The poverty she embraced an served was a concrete and fruitful spiritual path, similar to Jesus'.

Angela was beatified by the Church in 1701, then canonised in 2013 by Pope Francis, but she had already been recognised as an exceptional mystic at the beginning of the 14th century by Pope Clement V. During the general audience of 13 October 2010, Pope Benedict XVI spoke highly of her life, saying that she reached the heights of the mystical life through constant prayer.

Summary:

Born into a rich and noble family in Umbria (Italy), near Assisi, with a Catholic tradition completely foreign to mysticism, Angela initially led a worldly, life, reveling in luxury and sensuality, where the spiritual life was nearly absent. She married young and had children, and organised her daily life around walks, receptions, reading and various frivolities, until her conversion in 1285.

During that year of 1285, she became aware that "something" was wrong. The veneer of her existence was cracking, and she felt she was wasting her time on futile activities. She felt conceited and, for the first time, in order to atone for her sins, she wished to receive Communion. As the Church demands, Angela went to confession to a priest at a convent near her home. But thinking that she had committed an infinite number of sins since her youth, she carefully selected the ones she would confess. Then she went to Mass and received Communion.

The next night, she couldn't sleep, tormented by the idea that she had committed a sacrilegious communion. Suddenly, an extraordinary light illuminated her entire room. At its centre, she saw the silhouette of a man wearing a Franciscan habit. She went closer, despite her fear, and discovered that his hands and feet were pierced: it was Saint Francis of Assisi himself, bearing the stigmata. The saint beckoned to her and asked her to follow him on the path of self-denial. He explained that, despite her incomplete confession, she had found grace before God. Then the vision disappeared. This encounter was earthshaking for Angela. From that day on, nothing would be the same. Her conversion had begun.

The next day, she ran to the shrine of St Francis in Assisi to give thanks. On the way back, she met Arnoldo, a Franciscan priest who was to become her confessor, and thanks to whom we know the writings and extraordinary experiences of the saint. A few weeks later, in front of the crucifix in her room, she made a commitment to chastity and "unfailing fidelity". "What should I do?" she asked herself. By this time, she had become a widow. She decided to follow Jesus to the end.

She was still living in the world, but already removed from it. Her emotional and psychological attachment to people and material possessions steadily diminished. She no longer sought to seduce or to maintain her social standing. She realised that she was gradually detaching herself from all that, with joy and happiness. The passage of time and the future no longer frightened her: she had blind confidence in divine providence. She now organized her life around prayer, reading the Scriptures, receiving the sacraments, and helping the poor and the sick. In 1291, she became a member of a Franciscan third order, whose rules required her to follow the liturgical offices every day.

Christ manifested himself to her in the form of visions and locutions, which she took care to communicate to her confessor. She saw Jesus in different guises (crucified, in his glory, etc.) and experienced mystical raptures. After giving her money and possessions to the poor, she was labeled a "mad woman". The public opinion in no way diminished her definitive choice to serve Jesus in the poor. In particular, she cared for lepers, who were not only incurable at the time, but also veritable social outcasts.

It was at this time that she began to speak of her inner journey - an ascent towards God in 35 stages or "steps" (the first 8, the next 20 and the last 7).

Her visions, at first corporeal at the beginning of her conversion, became "imaginative", then "intellectual". Angela saw neither shapes nor colours, nor even the faces of heavenly beings, but she knew that they were at her side, and that she was united with them, beyond all sensory modalities. One Holy Thursday, she had a transformative experience: Christ appeared to her, with the wounds of his Passion. He looked very sad. He said to her: "My daughter, my love for you wasn't a joke!" This vision gave her ineffable peace for the rest of her life.

Angela returned to God in 1309, without ever having stopped helping the sick and needy. Just as the cross is made from the intersection of two beams, her faith was a union of mysticism (the vertical part) and charity (the horizontal part).

Patrick Sbalchiero

Beyond reasons to believe:

More than seven centuries after her death, Angela continues to exert a strong influence in the Catholic world and, beyond all denominations, on many people in search of God.

Going further:

Angela of Foligno: Complete Works by of Foligno Angela (Author), Paul Lachance (Translator, Introduction), Romana Guarnieri (Contributor), Paulist Pr; abridged edition (January 1, 1993)

More information:

The Book of Divine Consolation of the Blessed Angela of Foligno by Mary Steegman, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (February 9, 2015)
The Visions, Revelations and Teachings of Angela of Foligno: A Member of the Third Order of St Francis by Margaret Gallyon, Liverpool University Press (October 1, 2000)
On the Vatican website, Benedict XVI's general audience of 13 October 2010 on Blessed Angela of Foligno.