The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - What I Learned from Mother Angelica

Episode Date: January 11, 2018

Jeff Cavins worked with Mother Angelica for years, and he is often asked, “What was Mother Angelica like?” This week, Jeff shares some of his personal encounters with and stories about a nun who revolutionized media evangelization. More Great Resources from Jeff Find free blogs, videos, and resources about Scripture and the Catholic faith at http://biblestudyforcatholics.com/. Learn more about The Great Adventure Bible Timeline and preview any study for free. For an easy way to transform your approach to reading Scripture, check out Jeff’s Bible Timeline Chart. For an illustrated resource introducing God’s love story to children while helping them to understand how the Catholic Church is the body of Christ on Earth try The Great Adventure Storybook. We’d Love to Hear from You Do you have comments or questions for Jeff? Use the comment box below, or email Jeff at [e-mail]. You may hear your question or comment in an upcoming podcast episode!

You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show, Episode 47, What I Learned from Mother Angelica. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavins. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven show.

Hey, thanks for joining me again this week on the show where we talk about things relating to being a better disciple of Jesus Christ and things that interest me in my life and would like to share with you. Today's show is going to be a little bit different. One of the most common questions that I get on the road as I travel and people come up to me at book tables or wherever it might be as they say, well, you work with Mother Angelica, what was she really like? What was Mother Angelica like? And I'd like to take the time on today's show to talk to you about Mother Angelica and some of the things that I learned from Mother Angelica over the years. I had the privilege of doing a show on EWTN for six years, Life on the Rock. I started

that show back in the 90s. And then for almost six years, I was a substitute for mother on her show or I accompanied her on her shows for nearly six years and did a lot of other types of programming. Needless to say, EWTN has had a big impact on my life. And I'm eternally grateful for mother and for all of those at EWTN who have have contributed to all that I have done over the years, Mother taking the prime place there. For those of you that are not familiar with Mother Angelica, maybe you've had a conversion experience over the last year or so. I'd like to introduce her to you. She is the founder of EWTN.

She passed away a number of years ago and just had a major impact on modern Christianity, like very few have. and she has certainly changed my life and gave me the opportunity to teach the Bible timeline on air with Scott Hahn. We did Our Father's Plan back in the 90s, and I was invited on her show back in the 90s, and that's where it all began for me. I'll tell you a little bit about that in a moment. But as I share on today's show, I'm going to talk about some areas where she impacted me, and I'd love to hear your stories too. You know, if you want to email me, you can email me at The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. My story with Mother Angelica really begins when I was a Protestant pastor, like a year

and a half before I came back into the Catholic Church. I was sitting in my quiet apartment in Dayton, Ohio. I was a pastor of a Protestant church had not come into the Catholic Church as yet. And I was starting to watch EWTN on a daily basis for most of 93 and 93. And I was being drawn back to the church. At that point, I wasn't sure that I would end up back in the Catholic Church, but I was being fed on a regular basis by Mother Angelica, Father Pacqua, and the cast of characters at EWTM. And I was thinking, should I return to the Catholic Church or remain a Protestant pastor? You know, which should I do?

And Mother Angelica helped to tip the scale towards Rome for me. and I am very grateful for that. Little did I know that in two years I would be with her on her own set and first as a guest and then as her co-host for a number of years and my own show, Life on the Rock. And so EWTN had such an impact on me

and I often asked, what was Mother like before I went there? Then I got to know her and then people started asking me that question, what is she like? So let me tell you a little bit about her. Mother Angelica was a woman of prayer and intense devotion to Jesus. And I'll tell you a few stories as we go on here. She was a woman of prayer, first of all,

and had a very, very intense love relationship and devotion to Jesus. She'd rather spend a day in the presence of Jesus in a quiet chapel than stand in the limelight. If you have watched Mother on her many, many shows, you know her. because she was the same on TV as in the halls of EWTN. So if you met her in the halls of EWTN or you had a meeting with her as part of the staff, you were hearing the same Mother Angelica that you saw on television. She was courageous, she was tenacious, and she was holy.

And her insistence on giving Jesus her best was really, I think, at the center of every decision that she made. And her unwavering faith provided a remarkable example to others on how a modern-day disciple can live. And so I learned so much, you know, in those six years. I remember standing in the production room, she was taping something. Scott Hahn and I were standing in the production room, listening, over-listing to her in what she was teaching. and they were, I think they were actually editing a show that she just did, not that she needed much, much editing.

But we were listening to her talk about the Book of Revelation, and then Scott looked over and he goes, wow, man, she knows this. You know, it's deep. She had a way of giving profound truths in a very simple manner, and I think that comes from this relationship that she had with the Lord. You know, I would have many experiences where she would just totally rely on the Lord and she trusted God under pressure. You know, I remember when I was accompanying her on her show, I only lived about an hour away from EWTN, and she would either call me or her producer would call me and say, you're doing the show tonight. I don't feel good.

Or I'm a little under the weather. Do the show with me. And it was kind of funny because I remember one time I was mowing the lawn and it was probably 640 or 620 in the evening. And her show goes on at 7. And I was mowing the lawn and my wife, she opens the door and she yells out the window. Honey, it's Mother Angelica. And I went, uh-oh.

And I went inside and I hear this voice, honey, I think we're going to do the show together tonight. And so I said, okay, all right. So I quickly jump in the shower, get all ready, and get dressed, and drive up there real quick. It's 20 minutes to the show, and we're getting makeup on. And I look over at her. I remember this one time, I looked over at her, and I said, so what's the topic tonight? What are we going to talk about?

And she looked at me, and she goes, I don't know. And I said, what do you mean you don't know? I don't know. What do you want to talk about? And I'm like, this is not my show. This is your show. What do you want to talk about? I don't know.

And it left me kind of feeling like, uh-oh. I'm not sure what we're going to be talking about, but it didn't bother her. She felt like the Lord's going to show us. We're going to talk about what the Lord wants us to talk about. So, with a studio audience there in great preparation in awe of Mother Angelica, we're getting makeup on with only minutes until we're live on the air around the world. I would ask again, what are we going to talk about? And she had responded with such a casual, we'll just see what the Lord wants.

and I'm like, okay, all right. So being nervous and going into the show with no theme, we proceeded in 3-2-1, we're live and boom, she was calm and confident and everything worked out just fine. Sure enough, when we went live is like gold. And that's the way she worked. She just had this way of trusting God that he would give her the words that she needed to say on that show that night. And of course, there were shows where she had an agenda. You know, she knew what she wanted to talk about for sure. I remember one show where she called me in to do

the show with her. I asked her before the show, what's going to be the theme tonight? She said, I don't know. And she said, what do you want to talk about? And I said, well, let me ask you all the tough questions that nobody wants to ask you. She goes, okay, so we did a show on that. That's just the way she was. She wasn't afraid to tackle any topic at all. Let me back up just a moment and tell you how I actually met her. I actually met her. I got an invitation to come on to her midweek show as a guest. And it was just after my conversion. I was teaching at Franciscan University. And I got the call from her that she wanted me to come on the show. And I was a little nervous, to be honest with you. I mean, it's Mother Angelica. And I flew

down to Birmingham and we're getting ready to go on the show. And I'm going to tell my testimony for the first time on television. And so we got into the testimony of how I came back. And I came back to the Catholic Church, and she's laughing her head off. She just thinks this thing's so funny. And in the middle of the show, she says, will you pray about starting a 13-week show for us? You know, people need to hear this from you. And I said, sure, I'll pray about it. And I paused for two seconds with my eyes closed, opened them, and with excitement, said, yes, I'll do it.

And she started laughing. And that show actually became Life on the Rock. as she tasked me with coming up with that show and developing the show, the set, the guests, the format, and the whole thing. It became Life on the Rock. And so that was a real gift from her. And then as we were walking off the set, you know, as we were walking off the set, oh, let me back up for a second, just a sec. I made a mistake there. That show, when she asked, well, you do a 13-week show, that show actually became our father's plan with Scott. on. Because I thought, nobody knows who I am. People know who Scott is. We'll do a show together.

That ended up becoming our father's plan, which is one of the longest running shows on EWTN now. And as we were leaving the set, she grabbed me and said, would you pray about moving here and starting a show? She said, I've been praying about a show for young adults for a long time, and the Lord told me tonight, you're the one. I went, wow, wow. And I said, I got to pray about that. And I went back to, I went back home, you know, to Dayton, Ohio. or to Steubenville, Franciscan University, where I was studying and teaching. And through prayer with my bishop, Bishop Paul Dudley, we decided this was God's will. I'd move to Birmingham and start Life on the Rock.

That's how that show got going, and that's how our father's plan got going with Scott Hahn. And it all happened, really, as a result of that one show. And that's one of the things, honestly, that I learned about Mother Angelica is that When she made decisions, they were fast and they were certain. And when she had her mind made up, she was going to do it. She was absolutely going to do it. Now, when you worked at EWTN back then, Mother would walk the halls and you could hear her coming from a long ways away

because she had a body brace on and two braces under her arms and the metal of those braces made a considerable noise. And so you could hear her coming. And she talked a lot about her suffering, you know, and talked about the pain that she had experienced as a result of this accident years ago, up in Ohio, where her back was thrown out. And one of the great highlights was most certainly

the day after that she was healed at EWTN. For those of you that don't know, for years she had braces. And then there came a time where she didn't. That was January 28th, 1998. And I remember that night so well, the night before that, I should say, January 27th, I guess it was, the night before. Mother was doing her show. I was supposed to meet a priest at one of the houses over at EWTN, and I was at home.

Then I went over to EWTN to meet this priest. He wasn't there, and I went back home. And then later on that night, I got a call from this priest, and he said, did you hear? And I said, hear what? And he said, did you hear that mother was healed tonight? And I said, what? He said, yeah, mother was healed tonight. And I'm thinking, okay, spiritual healing or something.

I don't know. She had a headache or whatever. And he said, no, she was totally healed. Some lady came and prayed the rosary with her in her office, an office that we met in many, many times. and suddenly in an instant mother was healed of these back problems and all the braces were off. And I said, are you kidding me? And I got together with a priest that night and then I was thinking about calling mother that I waited.

And then early the next morning, mother called me. She called me the next morning. It was a Thursday. And she called me and she said, come down. I want to talk to you. I said, sure. So I went down to what's called the parlor, where you visit with the nuns through bars there at the convent. And I got down there, and all the sisters were with her behind the bars.

And there she's standing looking at me, and almost like a prom queen with a joy on her face, she spun around in a circle. And I looked at her and she said, to me, what do you think? And I just went, wow, wow. I was blown away. I was speechless that she was healed. completely healed, as a result of praying with this woman after the Wednesday show. And when I met with her that morning, with the nuns, early that morning, she asked me, she said, do you think I could come on your show tonight and tell the world?

She asked me, Mother Angelic asked me, can I come on your show, Life on the Rock, that evening, to tell the world. and I said, Mother, it's your network. You can do anything you want. And that evening, she came on, Life on the Rock, and I'll never forget that evening. She was standing off to the side of the set, and I do it like what's called a tease at the beginning of the show, and to introduce the theme of that night's show. And I said, I held up her braces, and I said, earlier yesterday, one of the nuns was wearing these braces. Today, she is not. We'll talk about that next on Life on the Rock, and the phones lit up in record numbers from all over the world.

And she came on the show, and she told us what happened. And she gave glory to God. And she asked me to do something on that show that if you know me, and my wife, if she's listening, would be laughing her head off right now. She asked me to do something that I don't do. She said, let's dance. I'm thinking, this is not happening. I'm on live television around the world. Mother Angelica is on my show, and she wants to dance with me, and she doesn't know that I don't know how to dance.

And so I got up and we danced live on television together. What if you do? What do you do if you're a layman on TV and a cloister nun, particularly Mother Angelica, asks you to dance? You dance. And we did. And I'll never forget that day. And it was interesting because after that, she taught me something about, and this is one

of those topics of redemptive suffering that she taught me about, is that it was months after she was healed, she was talking to me in her office, and she said, you know, Jeff, she said, I miss some of the pain that I had. And I said, I miss it. And I said, how could you miss it? And she said, it was a daily gift to God. I had something to give him every day. and I miss some of that.

And that told me about her heart, that she has this heart of humility and that she understood redemptive suffering. I'm going to take a break when I come back. I'm going to tell you a story about redemptive suffering and what happened one time when we were actually on the road together at a conference and a few more points about what she has taught me about humility and redemptive suffering and trusting in God. You're listening to the Jeff Kaven Show. The Great Adventure Catholic Bible Study program is the most popular and acclaimed Catholic Bible study out there,

and it has helped hundreds of thousands of people find new meaning in their lives. If you want to encounter the power of God's Word and better understand how your life fits into the story of salvation history, consider participating in a great adventure Bible study. To preview the first session of any TGA Bible study for free, create an online account at ascensionpress.com. Thanks for coming back. We're talking about Mother Angelica and some of the things that I learned from her in my six years of working with her at EWTN. And I was sharing with you about the day she was healed back in 98, totally healed, and it really transformed her life. It transformed EWTN's life to

one of the ways was we never knew when she was coming after that. She'd sneak up on you. She didn't have those body braces anymore. But that was really a a highlight and it left me speechless, to be honest with you. She was acquainted with suffering in many ways and the body braces were indicative of the suffering that she experienced for many, many years, but she also suffered with asthma. And I remember one time we were together in California and we were doing a conference in Oakland, California. And I got in late that day in the flight and I was the last speaker.

There were four. one and I was one. And I was done at about, I don't know, 9.30 at night, 10 o'clock at night. I was so tired. I went to my room and everybody was staying at the hotel and she had an external, a couple of extern sisters with her, which she always would travel with the extern sisters. And she was a very popular conference speaker. And I was, I got up to my room and I was dead tired, the phone rang and it was mother and she said, and she said in a funny way. You got to understand. She said, do you want a party? And I'm like, what? And she said, do you want a party? And I said, what are you talking about? She goes, well,

we ordered wings and pizza. You want to come on up? There's a whole bunch of us up here that are going to have wings and pizza tonight. And I said, oh, sure. So I went up and we were all having wings and pizza and talking, you know, and there's a lot of, there's different people there and there's a lot of fun. And in the middle of it, she had an asthma attack. And her asthma attacks were not small. They were very serious. And as I watched her, I saw a trooper. I saw a soldier of Christ dealing with suffering in such an admirable way that it stuck with me. And I, to this day, see her as one of the leading teachers of what it means to know redemptive suffering. I was also with her when she had her massive stroke. And I went to the hospital over

in Birmingham and she had her massive stroke. And she was kind of a real mother to me in some ways. And in some ways I felt like a son to her and the talks that we had. And when I spoke to her in that intensive care, she couldn't speak. She couldn't really even move hardly, but she could blink her eyes and I would ask her questions and she would give me yes and no answers with her eyes. But there was a communication there that was beautiful. I treasure it and I keep it in my heart. She is a woman who knows how to suffer.

She knows how to suffer. And so that's one of the things that I've learned from Mother Angelica is redemptive suffering and her ability to take that and to offer it up as a gift to God, and in fact, to delight in the suffering that she experienced for the Lord. A lesson that we can all learn from Mother is that God can do amazing things with five loaves and two fish if we trust him. And that is one of the things that I learned about Mother is trust. And she didn't have much money to begin with.

She didn't have a lot of degrees and talents and things like that in television, but she did trust Jesus. And she had an ability to bring five loaves and two fish to the table, whatever they needed. And God seemed to come through. And I remember talking to Mother and Bill Steltemeyer, who was a real assistant to her throughout the years and very instrumental in the growth of EWTN, particularly in the early days. And the stories that were shared about mother trusting for satellite equipment and coming down to the very day when equipment would be delivered, and she was supposed to have hundreds of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in a check and didn't have it, and calmly trusted God,

even on that day. And sure enough, the money came through on that day. She had a real trust in God, a simple trust, a childlike trust in her Heavenly Father. And that was an inspiration to me, and I've taken that from her life, and I've put those good things into practice in my life as well as I can. And if you have been the beneficiary of EWTN, then you have benefited from her gift of trust in the Lord. She was not afraid. She didn't run from conflict. She didn't run from adversity. She didn't run from disparaging remarks or people coming against her, she remained faithful and trusted. And so to work with this great woman is really counted as one of the great highlights of my life. Her generosity became one of the most

significant pivotal points in my life. And from me and my family, we say thank you to Mother Angelica. A couple other things that she really helped me learn. Trust was one. Redemptive suffering, I mentioned that. Humility. Humility. Becoming. known on television at that time was actually more difficult than you might believe. When you are on television and suddenly everyone wants to talk to you, you go through a period of why. I have not changed in the last year, but suddenly my relationship with other people has changed, and it did for mother as well. Her notoriety would change your life. And when she would go out, it would change how people related to you.

And that is sometimes hard to deal with because you wonder why people want to be with you or talk to you, because you know that you're the same old guy you've always been, but people might not look at you that way. And I was able to observe her many times when we went out to, for example, Detroit, Michigan to the Call to Holiness Conference. She was a guest speaker there several times. and we went there several times together and spoke. And just watching her around crowds

and the way she interacted with people was inspiring to me because she had a way of not taking any praise or any glory to herself, but always passed it on to Jesus and she always passed it on to the good people and the workers at EWTN, which is something to this day

that I still do when people come up to me and they say, we love the great adventure, We love the work that you've done. It's changed our life. I say, thank you, praise God. And we've got an amazing team at Ascension Press that has put that whole thing together, and I will let them know. When I say that, that comes from Mother Angelica.

She taught me that. I remember coming to her one time five, six months into my period of time at EWTN, and I told her, I was honest, and I said, I'm struggling, struggling because when I go out, I don't know why people want to talk to me, because I'm the same person that I've always known, but they don't see me that way, and I'm struggling with it. And she said something to me. She said, honey, I always say honey.

Honey, she said, you just got to remember that people are seeking Christ. And you need to let that praise. You need to let that thanks go straight through you and give it to Jesus. And I remember that very, very clearly. She prayed with me and she gave me that advice. And she was always rich in advice. and then finally I'd say I learned about integrity from Mother Angelica as I mentioned at the top of the show she was the same off the air as on the air she was the same off the air and on the air and she was not

she did not favor people of status she had integrity she treated everybody the same much like the same way that Mother Teresa treated everybody pretty much, you know, the same way. Father Groschelle told me about this one time. He said that Mother Angelica and Mother Teresa have one thing. You really have a lot of things in common, but the thing we were talking about that day when Father Groshele and I were talking was that Mother Angelica treats people the same. She will spend extra time with a homeless person while some dignitary is waiting in the outer room. She has no problem doing that and neither did Mother Teresa.

She had integrity, she was blind to people's status in society and saw people with the eyes of Jesus. Now the last thing that I want to share with you is this, is that one of the great things of the virtues I think that Mother Angelica had that contributed to her great success at EWTN was her decision-making process. namely, she was not afraid to cut losses and to move on and not dwell on the past. She never, that I knew of, dwelt on the past. She was always looking forward to what God is telling her to do. And if she started down a path, she went down with it with a dogged tenacity. But if she felt that she needed to change it, she didn't have a problem changing it right then. And that takes a certain level of humility and trust and integrity and flexibility.

And I saw her do this several times and that has always been a lesson to me. So those are some of the things I've learned from her. There's a lot of other stories I could share with you, but maybe we can talk later at another time, some of the other things that I was able to do with Mother Angelica and to learn from her, but in a nutshell, she taught me about trust, redemptive suffering, humility, integrity, decision-making, laughter and seriousness. She was a complex woman who was a holy woman and will go down in history in America as being one of the most influential Catholics in American and world history, I might add. And for me, thank you Jesus for giving me

privilege of not only working with her, but getting to know her. A little tribute to Mother Angelica. Thanks for going on iTunes and ranking the show and giving me some feedback. If you have any other questions or you have some ideas for shows, please feel free to send them to me. The email address that you can use is The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. Let's close in prayer. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord, as the Apostle Paul says, I thank you for individuals who had an impact on my life. And Mother Angelica certainly is up there near the top of people who have really influenced my life. And I thank you in remembering her. And I pray, Lord, for the work that she started and is continuing today. And I offer

up my prayers for EWTN today. And Lord, I pray that you will prosper them and you will speak to them and you'll keep them, Lord, exactly in the middle of your will and what you want them to do to reach the world. I pray that every person there will be blessed and prosper in their work and that you will send their way even greater gifts that will be a blessing to their network. And, Lord, we nurture all the fruit, with all the fruit of Mother Angelica by praying, Lord, continue on and bring people to continue with her work. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. God bless you, my friend. Have a great week.