Mother Angelica is known for her wit and wisdom, and the new book compiling her advice from EWTN Publishing, Mother Angelica Talks It Over, is no exception. 

Some excerpts, in honor of her birthday:

Reflect Jesus

So, don’t forget: your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Let Jesus just breathe out of you. Let Him radiate so that the image of Jesus grows brighter and brighter in your soul and everyone who sees you sees God. That is your dignity. And you and I don’t want to do anything to mar the beauty of His image in our soul.

God bless you, and may your image of Jesus grow brighter.

Market Jesus

Today everything is marketed, isn’t it? You go into the grocery store, and the brightest things are what you see first. Well, in the world, we have to market. That’s maybe a very poor term to use, but that is all I got. We have to market Jesus. How? By being like Jesus. By using all your talents.

A Word on Prayer

Now, it’s true — the best way to pray is the way you pray best. But that means just you. Some people love to say the Rosary. They love to say prayers over and over, the same prayer, and they meditate and do all these wonderful things. And some people can’t do it at all.

Remember, the way you pray best is the way you pray best, and don’t worry about anyone else. Because Jesus loves you in a very special way.

The Law of Love

... when we speak of Holy Mother Church, we’re speaking about a relationship that is warm. When we speak about the law, we speak about love.

You obey because you believe that your Father, the One in Heaven and the One the Lord has given us on earth, has the right and the love and the concern to tell us some things to do, those things we don’t particularly want to do.

St. Paul had the same problem. He said, “The things I want to do, I don’t. The things I don’t want to do, ah, those I do” (see Rom. 7:15). So we’re all in good company.

Look at the Church as a Mother and remember that the Church enfolds you always in Her arms.

Perspective on the Present

And living in the present moment to me has been one of the greatest helps in my entire life because it kind of takes away the anxiety of yesterday.

St. Paul said one time, “I put aside everything in the past, and I strain forward for what is to come” (see Phil. 3:13). He’s straining forward to what is to come. To me, God evolves the present moment.

Some people say, “How do you know God’s will?” Well, if it’s happening, I got news for you. It’s God’s will. Whatever is happening — now you may not like it, you may have been the victim of someone else’s wrong decision — but there you are. And God wants you to react to that in a most beautiful way. He wants you to react to that in the same way He would and did in His life. And that is what we mean by living in the present moment, watching God like a child. We were asked to be children by the Lord, and God wants us to react to the present moment as a child would, with wonder. ...

You lose someone you love very much. There’s nothing to do but to go on. You make a decision on something, and you think it was the wrong decision. But if God permitted it, you know He’s going to bring good out of it. There’s nothing to do but to go on.

It’s that going on when you’re not sure. That, we call faith. It takes a lot of faith to live in the present moment. It takes a lot of hope and an awful lot of love. God bless you.

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