Mother M. Angelica established Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Birmingham, AL, in 1961. Twenty years later she founded EWTN (Eternal World Television Network). Raymond Arroyo (EWTN Newslead anchor) edited this gift book.

The book’s flaps are similar to the 4-pp Introduction by Raymond Arroyo. I provide my comments to this how-and-what-to-pray book after the following quotes from the book’s flaps: “For the first time, you can pray with a woman who has transformed the lives of millions around the world.

“This precious collection gives readers a chance to experience the personal daily spiritual practice of Mother Angelica. Seen by the millions each day on the television network she founded, Mother Angelica is one of the most trusted and beloved religious figures of our time. Her words of wisdom about the spiritual life have been broadcast throughout the world on EWTN and have become New York Times bestselling books. For Mother the act of prayer is an unceasing daily conversation with the divine – one that has been a source of inspiration and solace for nearly seven decades. Now Mother Angelica shares a lifetime of her private prayers and devotions so that you can experience and utter the very words that have shaped her incredible life.

“This treasury of material, much of it never before published, includes:

• A complete prayer journal composed during Mother’s personal dark night of the soul.
• Handwritten meditations offered to her sisters.
• Two moving versions of the Stations of the Cross composed for her community.
• Devotions and petitions from her early religious life.

“Throughout this book, Mother Angelica’s humor, warmth, and wisdom shine through. More than a collection of prayers, this special volume is an intimate portrait of one of the world’s great women of faith. For devoted fans of Mother Angelica as well as for those just coming to know her, this inspiring guide will be a cherished companion along each path to holiness.”

The four topics above briefly describe the book's contents. But my reaction to this book is quite different to what I can imagine is needed by sisters (and maybe also to brothers) in a monastery. I feel that it is to such people that the description of this book’s flaps is primarily directed and also to secular Roman Catholics who desire the type of prescribed readings that go with their spiritual worldviews.

I felt great sympathy for Mother Angelica’s dark night of the soul and her response to it. During such a time it is natural for one’s focus to be mainly on one’s self, but even after she had recovered, her prayers seemed to swing widely in mood between the extremes of being very hard on herself to such a height of joy that she seemed to see herself as almost at the level of God, Mary, Jesus, and the Spirit. (Perhaps a psychologist would classify such behavior as bipolar, but I’m not a psychologist.) The near godlike level she places Jesus' mother Mary is not unusual for Catholics, especially those in monasteries.

I couldn’t but see the short handwritten notes she offered to her sisters as similar to the notes in a Chinese fortune cookie – I felt that a few minutes of one-on-one private conversations of abbess with sister would have been far better. As for the Stations of the Cross, the first version consisted of brief statements by her followed by the sister’s response of Hail Mary prayers at each of the fourteen stations. The second version was much longer, including Mother Angelica’s detailed thoughts on what Jesus must have felt at that station. As I went along that path myself in Jerusalem in 1982, what I overheard from sisters and others following the path was more like this book’s first version, but there were many, who, like me, said our own silent prayers.

I felt rewarded by one section of this book – the prayers for the seven gifts of God’s Spirit: Reverence, Piety, Fortitude, Counsel, Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom. What made these seven pages of insight rewarding for insight on these seven gifts was that she asked key questions without giving answers. Instead of giving answers, these prayers and questions are such as to lead one further along one’s spiritual path, to induce deeper thought that is needed to ‘grow’ deeper insight. But in most of this book she gave answers, often as detailed instructions on what the sisters were to do and what to pray. I feel that the continual repetition of such actions tends to lead one to a standstill in one’s spiritual journey – some would say that without such ‘growth’ one has only spiritual stagnation instead of spiritual progress.

Thus my impression of this how-and-what-to-pray collection was mainly negative. This book might receive a higher rating from those who feel the need to be told what to do and pray, but for me it was a great disappointment. I suggest, instead of this book, greater progress on one's spiritual understanding is available in books by Sister Joan Chittister and former sister Karen Armstrong or former minister Barbara Brown Taylor.