Sunday 16th July 2023

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the EWTN studios in Birmingham, Alabama recently to tape an episode for the programme ‘Life on the Rock’ hosted by the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word. The episode I taped is going to be broadcast tonight at 6 p.m PST, 9 p.m ET and I'm really excited to see it :) You can see it too…just check your local schedule with this handy link https://www.ewtn.com/tv/shows/life-on-the-rock

I still remember back in 1997, when I first moved into my apartment in the back bay area in Boston, (during my years studying at the Berklee College of Music), and I switched on this old second-hand TV that another student had passed to me. I was moving the antennaes around and dialling from my channel to the next when I came across the image of a motherly-looking nun in her brown habit, seemingly, speaking directly to me from the TV screen. I found out later that this was Mother Angelica, and that she had single-handedly started this EWTN television network, way back in the 1980's.

Some years later, I purchased my first car after moving to Los Angeles upon graduating from Berklee. It had satellite radio on it, and I dialled in to a station that I came to love for its programming, only later realising that it was the radio programmes run by EWTN! It seems that Mother Angelica is never too far away, even if she is now with the Lord. It was through programmes such as Catholic Answers etc. that I came to know more and more about the Catholic faith and grew in my love for God and His Church.

So I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to not only visit the studio that Mother Angelica started, but also to tape an episode with the friars of an order that Mother Angelica helped to found. 

Mother Angelica was a nun inflamed with the love of God and that love gave her the courage to do many things that others would have thought impossible to accomplish. How inspiring to know that we are all called to take that leap of faith at various moments in our lives, and that we can accomplish things beyond our wildest imagination.

Yours,