Mother Angelica always, tenderly and with deep affection, kissed the pierced side of Jesus on the Cross when I held it up for her to kiss on Good Friday. She was there. This is something that remains engraved in my memory from the many times I witnessed this during her life.

The last Good Friday of Mother Angelica’s life, March 25, 2016, I was asked to come to her room immediately after the celebration of the Passion of the Lord at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama. Mother had been bedridden for years, her bones becoming fragile. She was suffering intensely as I prayed, and, taking the crucifix off the wall in her room, I touched the pierced side of Jesus to her lips for the last time.

Throughout her life, Mother Angelica suffered, often intensely, in several ways: the abandonment by her father and the insecurity and poverty this brought about for her and her mother; being shunned because of her parents’ divorce; a chronic illness as a teenager and chronic pain as a nun as well as the weight of starting and continuing a television enterprise that would grow throughout her life.

A woman who regularly visited the shrine and suffered from a brain tumor and the limitations that followed her surgery told me that she thought the most important legacy Mother Angelica left us was her example and teaching on the value of suffering.

Recently, I gave a presentation on Mother Angelica’s mini-book The Healing Power of Suffering. A doctor who was present wanted a copy of the presentation, which she found beneficial  and was certain would also be helpful to her patients who come to her in their sufferings.

Indeed, Mother Angelica transformed her suffering into an act of love for the One who suffered for love of her. That, dear friends of Mother Angelica, is her word to us. Yes, offer it up — but more than that, offer it with love for Jesus and, united with his open and pierced Heart, offer it with him for the salvation of poor sinners.

I also learned from the nuns who suffered with Mother Angelica during the last years of her life. Sister Michael, Sister Regina and Sister Gabriel especially shared in Mother Angelica’s suffering in their sleepless nights and continual care for her. They were her companions (co-panis, “with-bread”). They shared with Mother the Bread of Life and now they were showing compassion in sharing in her suffering (co-passio, “with-suffering”).

That Good Friday of Mother Angelica was the last, for she died two days later on Easter Sunday, during which we celebrate that glory is the end of the story for Jesus and for us:

“When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:15b-18).