It was during a visit to St. Anthony’s Church, the church where Rizzo prayed the Stations of the Cross as a teenager in Canton, that Wolfe thought it “would be wonderful if we could take these actual stations that she prayed before and make them available to people.”
The Stations of the Cross were very meaningful to Mother Angelica. Wolfe recalled the advice she gave him when she encouraged him to pray the Stations of the Cross daily, “because she knew that I would find strength in that.”
“Life has troubles. Life has sufferings. It has difficulties,” he said. “So when we go to the Stations of the Cross, we’re reflecting on Our Lord’s sufferings but also his love and something of his strength and his love is imparted to us.”
Mother Angelica herself had a variety of sufferings from her family’s breakup, her mother’s depression, the poverty she grew up in, and her own physical problems. Due to this, Wolfe said, “Mother could relate to people because she understood their sufferings.”
“Mother said to me one time that suffering was her companion that kept her dependent on God,” he said.
Wolfe recalled an interaction with a woman who was left debilitated after surgery on a brain tumor. “She said, ‘You know, I think the most important lesson that Mother left me … is how to suffer, how to suffer well,’” he said.