Holy Week 2025: 5 Mother Angelica tips to live it well

Mother Angelica, founder of the Ewtn Catholic Canal, a company to which ACI Press belongs, offered some tips to live intensely Holy Week, which maintain all their news.

In March 1994, in A program broadcast days before Easterthe American religious offered 5 tips to get well prepared to the Holy Triduo Pascual, recommendations that retain all its actuality.

1. Repent yourself and change your life

At the beginning of her reflections, Mother Angelica referred broadly to Marian appearances and said that they all have the call to “repentance, and the Metanoiathat is a change of life. ”

When the message of the Virgin Mary is followed, the person must be “a better Catholic, a better Christian, has to make you a better individual, more friendly, more loving, more merciful. It has to make you appreciate Jesus more, and appreciate more from our mother, your family.”

“You have to become more loving in your family and more compassionate. We are Christians!”

Then he referred to the Bible, and said that “This book is to be lived, not only read”.

Speaking of the mercy of God and the passage of the adulterous woman, Mother Angelica recalled that Jesus says: “Go and not little more.” “There is a condition for her to be forgiven,” he said.

2. Remember that hell exists

“Many theologians say that hell does not exist. When you are down there” with any of them, “you can look at it and say ‘you got me here.’ Is it going to do that good? Do not pay attention to that. It is better to be in heaven and tell ‘I told you that it did exist, but you did not listen,” said the religious.

Mother Angelica indicated that the Virgin Mary does not want her children to go to hell, but to save themselves.

“Our mother is trying to tell us: ‘You cannot always challenge God, you cannot kill children always (with abortion), you cannot always teach great apostasies, mistakes and lies, you cannot always ruin your children, God sees how you advance towards that cliff that is eternal and he rescues us.”

3. Forgive your enemy

Mother Angelica explained that people’s great wounds originate “when we cannot forgive.”

“Next week (Holy Week) is the week in which we must forgive. None of us went through what Jesus happened that, however, forgave. Can that imagine? On Good Friday you go to the Church and imagine our beloved Lord hanging in that way so long.”

This week, said the religious, “I would like you, before Good Friday, call your favorite enemy, that is, to whom you speak most and who you want terrible things to happen to him. Call it and tell him: ‘I forgive you’. And if the answer is ‘Don’t bother me’, something I could say, you don’t need to worry because you already forgiven it. ”

4. Pray the Rosary every day

Mother Angelica stressed the need to pray the Rosary daily, since “there is nothing more powerful than prayer.”

Responding to a woman who called the program, asking for prayers and advice to face a family problem, the religious recalled that “our dear Lord said ‘do not let the sun set and remain annoying’ (…). What they need to know and what I want to tell you is this: you and your sister pray the rosary every day and are at peace.”

“All my life I have thought that when a person dies, there is that space of less than a second between the trial and the moment in which there are no more opportunities, when everything is established forever. I think that time of time is one in which by the prayers a person can see Jesus for a moment. I think that vision could make them say: ‘Oh God, forgive me! ‘ It’s all they need to save themselves”.

“Then, don’t discourage yourself looking for results. Pray with confidence. I can tell you that if you trust the Lord, he never, but never fails. He is like that,” said the religious.

“God will respond to your prayers as he responded to those of (Santa) Monica by (San) Agustín,” he said.

5. Learn to listen to the problems of others

At another time of the program, Mother Angelica listened to a man who suffers depression and shared that she did not feel like anything.

“Many people suffer from depression. Sometimes it is physical, I know, but sometimes it happens that we think too much about ourselves, in the future,” said the religious.

“Sometimes those who suffer depression do not pray, they say they can’t, but you must force yourself to do it, ‘Jesus I love you, help me. I don’t want to feel like that.’

The religious then proposed a concrete action, not only for those who suffer depression: “You need to feel the love and gratitude of other people and thus we leave ourselves, of our minds.”

“Remember, someone needs you somewhere. Someone needs your prayer, your smile, your attention, ”he said.

“There are people in resting houses who have nine or ten children and none visit them. Why don’t you go? Why don’t you look around and see your neighbor? Why don’t you look for it and listen to their problems for a while? You suddenly end up saying: ‘And I thought I had a problem.”

“You have to do something: you have to pray, you have to trust and then do something to get out of yourself and get out of depression. And ask others to pray for you,” the Angelica mother encouraged.

To conclude, the religious encouraged everyone “to have a blessed, full of grace and prayer Holy Week: forgive your worst enemy, love your family and have a very blessed Easter. God bless you.”

Originally published in March 2023. Updated for republication.