Look at the pictures of this woman. She was vibrant. Hearty. Prayerful. Direct. Thoughtful. And wise — very wise.

Born poor and to tough circumstances in Canton, Ohio, Rita Rizzo grew up to become an inspiring spiritual leader and a pioneer of faith communication.

A deep believer in getting on with things, this plain-talking Franciscan nun would say to others if she thought they needed to hear it: “Get crackin’!” She would also talk to God quietly, deeply, in prayer — and emerge hours later with a serenity and peace of mind that inspired others.

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Mother Angelica, one of the world’s most famous Catholics, built religious communities as a nun but also launched the Eternal Word Television Network in 1981, when she was 58 years old. She is the only woman in broadcast history to found and lead a cable network as CEO and chair for 20 years. Today the network transmits 24-hour programming to more than 264 million homes in 144 countries. Mother Angelica was a fervent believer in living her faith and encouraging others around her to do so as well, no matter what personal sacrifices or physical challenges she faced. And there were many.

A new book by her authorized biographer and close friend of more than 20 years, Raymond Arroyo — an accomplished journalist, children’s book author, and news director and lead anchor of EWTN’s “The World Over” — reveals intimate details about Mother’s later years, and indeed, key moments from throughout her life. Born poor and to difficult circumstances in Canton, Ohio, Rita Rizzo grew up to become a pioneer of faith communication and a spiritual leader who saw God’s divine actions throughout her life. But there was much more below the surface.

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She may have left this Earth on Easter Sunday, 2016, at the age of 92, but her legacy — her words and deeds — live on. LifeZette spoke with Arroyo for insights into his friend, colleague, and spiritual mentor just as “Mother Angelica: Her Grand Silence” was going on sale.

Question: What is the main message of your new book?

Answer: Ultimately this book will be — and should be — a source of hope, a guide to those who are approaching or facing the end of life themselves, or who are dealing with loved ones in this position. We may not see angels and saints in the hallways of our homes. We may not be called to build multi-million-dollar networks — but all of us will contend with pain and suffering in our lives, as will the people closest to us. Mother taught us how to live big and dream big and to achieve things that are beyond us.

At the same time, in her last years, her lesson was how to die well and how to use every moment of the time you have left.

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Pain and suffering — and being frail and elderly — are never meaningless. That’s the real message here. We tend to devalue the last part of life because it’s too uncomfortable for us. We think, “Oh my goodness, I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to look at that for too long. It’s going to depress me. I just don’t want to do it.” But chances are, if it’s not us going through this, it will be someone we know who will endure this. It’s an important part of the life journey.

Q: You say that in Mother’s later years, after she’d suffered a stroke and was debilitated and ailing, people were very deeply affected by her witness, by her prayer. Tell us more about this.

A: The beautiful thing about Mother’s life is you could see, in real time, how people were affected by her. We saw this by the letters that poured in. I have thousands of letters to her from people from all over the world. The letters came in between 2002 and 2016 from people who were discovering her at that moment. She was new to them. They’d never seen her before, never heard her before, never read her before, never watched her before. But because of the explosive growth of her network, as well as her books and the biography, more people encountered her story and her words than during her entire 20-year broadcast history.

So it’s fascinating. This is the economy of God, as one of her sisters put it. God takes something that seems of so little value — the end of life — and multiplies it in ways you don’t expect. Mother would say that she was offering up her final days of suffering. She was very clear about this. It was intentional. She would say, “I’m offering this up to the people.” She repeatedly said, “I’m praying to God, and I’m asking Him to let me stay until the worst is over for my community and my church.”

Earlier on, she had wanted to build new foundations, new contemplative housing for the nuns, a new monastery. Then in 2001, she was felled by a stroke and yanked back into the cloister. And I would argue that after all she did, that God took her up on her very first vow as a nun. She had vowed to be a contemplative. She never vowed to be a television personality.

She vowed to be a quiet, hidden, prayer warrior — somebody who prays to God quietly, in reparation — for the monastery, for the good of the people. And that was her real vision, her life’s work. And He called her back to that. She put it all in fascinating perspective, and her vision continued. It flourished. She was yanked back to a bed she couldn’t escape, in her room in the monastery [in Hanceville, Alabama] — where she knew she was meant to be.

At one point the nuns asked her, “Mother, would you like to go out on the patio and get some fresh air?” And she looked at them and said, “No. I belong in this room. There is where I’m supposed to be.”

Q: For a previously very active woman with a strong will, wasn’t this final chapter very hard for her? A tremendous struggle — a battle?

“Mother consistently offered up her suffering to God for these people, for people she had never met and also for people she knew closely.”

A: It was really kind of brave. It was an acknowledgment that she was supposed to reign over this, that this was her work now. That this was her spiritual arena. It was like a light in front of her that she ran toward. She was so determined.

I mean, this was a woman who years earlier, to build a foundation in Japan, got on a plane with a group of nuns and went to the Far East, and looked at houses, to complete her mission. During that trip, she injured her tailbone, and that destroyed her mobility. It’s what ultimately confined her to the back room. Yet, one by one, the “daughters” in her monastery, the leaders in her house, went off. And they went off to found religious communities, in Texas, in North Carolina, in Arizona — in Troyes, France. Her leadership was so profound that they went off to follow their own lights. They were called to do it. I believe this is what she intended. Of all the things she wanted to achieve, she did — and more than that.

Q: What else did you witness as a close friend, colleague, and biographer of hers?

A: Marriages were healed. People got off drugs. There was a guy who worked for the mob and she just startled him — straightened him out. This was more than words on a page, more than television reruns of her program. I believe it was the result of how Mother consistently offered up her suffering to God for these people, people she had never met and people she knew very closely. It just shows you the power.

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There is a line she used to say: “Old age is very precious because that’s when we’re powerful.” What she meant was, This is a time when you can be with God. You can spend long hours with God. You couldn’t when you were active and running around doing so much, with all your responsibilities in life. So I think her message was: Don’t waste the time you have in old age. Sometimes God gives people this time to use. Use it for your intentions and your prayers for others.

I’ll share a personal story. One afternoon I was at the network, and there was a chapel there. And I was in there. She saw me and said, “What are you doing?” And I said, “I just ran in here. I’m praying for a little bit.” And she said, “You have all eternity to be with God. But you have just a little time to do something for Him. So get crackin’!” It’s a beautiful kind of balance that she found and not only that — she lived it.

Q: And there was humor, too.

A: When I was writing her biography, she made me promise that I would tell her full story, with no sugar coating. She had a very rough upbringing, with many wounds, imperfections, and frustrations, as we all do. And she used to say to me, “Tell it with no sugar coating.” She would add, “You’ll have 40 years in purgatory if you sugar coat my life.” So, just to avoid all those years of purgatory — I haven’t sugar-coated her life.

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