Her [Mother Angelica's] love affair with Scripture began in dramatic and unorthodox fashion. [In reality, it began in a very theologically orthodox way as she experienced a New Pentecost.] Though she had been a religious for twenty-six years, absorbing a daily diet of Scripture at Mass and through the reading of the spiritual classics, she had never studied the Bible with any serious attention. [I think that's true of many good Catholics.] Then in 1971, after repeated requests, Mother agreed to allow Father Robert DeGrandis, a charismatic Birmingham priest, to pray over her. [Arroyo means here "charismatic" as in Catholic Charismatic Renewal.] He prayed that she would receive the "baptism of the Holy Spirit." Now, Angelica was extremely suspicious of this "baptism"and of the many charismatic Christians who espoused its virtues. These believers pursued the "gifts of the Holy Spirit": prophecy, speaking in tongues, healing powers, and so forth. They maintained that no gifts could be received without first being baptized in the Spirit. [A better way to put it is this: no gifts can be received without an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in whatever way God chooses to bring that outpouring about in your life.] Angelica dismissed much of this talk, and only submitted herself to the laying on of hands to get Father DeGrandis to stop badgering her. [She must have trusted him all the same.]

When it was over and nothing happened, she smugly stared at the priest and asked, "Is that it?" But there was more to come.

About a week later, while reading the introduction to Saint John's Gospel ("In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God"), Mother found herself unable to speak English. When she tried to converse with her nuns, a language not her own spilled from her mouth. DeGrandis assured her that there was no need to worry, she had merely received the gift of tongues. The "gift" didn't last very long [For many, it does last quite long.], but as she told me in an interview for my biography Mother Angelica, The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles, the event had an important lasting effect on her: "I got initiated into the New Testament through this little experience . . . I think the Lord used it to reorient my soul, and the Sisters toward the Scriptures, so that we talked about them, read them, and we discussed them. It was really the beginning."

Following this experience, Mother's daily lesson to her nuns became spirit-led riffs on the Scripture.