Pointing to a passage from the day's Gospel from John in which a nobleman, after learning that Jesus healed his son, "believed through the Word what Jesus had spoken to him, and he went his way."
"I think that is beautiful to reflect on Mother Angelica's life with this expression," Fisichella said. "She believed through the Word that Jesus spoke to her, she believed and there is no other reason."
"She believed and all that she created was a consequence of this faith, of this encounter of faith. And then she went her way, and her way is what today millions of people can watch, can listen to, can reflect on."
EWTN, he said, is not just a television network, but "a work and consequence of this vocation, of this encounter of Mother Angelica with Christ."
"This was her vocation, this she understood as the gift that Jesus himself gave to her. And she did it in a very strong way," he said, noting how she was able to communicate the Gospel on TV "sine glossa," meaning "without adding" or interpreting.
At times Mother even caused trouble with people, he said, explaining that "every time we announce the Gospel, we give trouble to someone." But what Mother did was offer "a challenge."
It was above all a challenge "to find the sense of your life, especially in a culture in which indifference and atheism is, it seems to be, in first place for many people," he said.
Referencing another passage from Isaiah that says "'they shall live in the houses they build, and eat the fruit of the vineyard they plant," the archbishop said Mother Angelica continues to live through EWTN's witness.
"Mother Angelica's vocation continues to give witness to the world of today, with your ability, capacity, will, to announce the Gospel of the Lord," he told employees of the organization attending the Mass.
Fisichella closed his homily with another quote from Mother, who said that "everything starts with one person. I don't care if you are five or 105, God from all eternity, chose you to be where you are at this time in history, and he chose you to change the world."
"We keep these words in our hearts and in our minds, like a new challenge one year after her death, to remember the task that everybody should have in this service to the Church," he said. "It doesn't matter if you are five or 105, what is important is that God, from all eternity, chose you."
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After the Mass veteran Vatican journalist Joan Lewis, Rome Bureau Chief for EWTN and former employee of the Holy See Press Office's Vatican Information Service, recalled the moment when she was "commissioned" by Mother Angelica after accepting the job as bureau chief.
While Mother was already speechless after suffering a debilitating stroke, Lewis told CNA that she approached Mother, who was in a wheelchair, and knelt down so the two could look each other in the face.
"It was very moving for me because although she couldn't talk, she blessed my ears, my mouth, my hands and my eyes, so that I would use all of those to do what she had done for so many years, which was to bring the Word of the Lord, the teachings of the Church to the world," Lewis said.
"So it was her example, even when she couldn't speak, that really infused in me the desire to go ahead and do her work," she said, explaining that Mother Angelica was particularly inspiring for what she did as a woman.
"What a wonderful woman courage she was, of vision, of foresight, a person who just didn't let obstacles get in her way," Lewis said, noting that at the time, women in the United States often still hit "a glass ceiling."
"If you were a woman, you couldn't go any higher – you would hit this glass, but un-seen ceiling," she said, but recalled that with Mother Angelica, "she never sensed that. There was never a barrier to whom or how she could tell the truth, and I try and remember that when I write."