Saint Pio of Pietrelcina
By
Agnes the Postulant
A Biographical Sketch
Padre Pio was born in
1887 in a small town of Pietrelcina in southern Italy. He entered the novitiate
of the Capuchin Franciscan Friars in 1903 and was ordained a priest in 1910.
Soon after his ordination, he received the invisible stigmata and bore it for
eight years. In 1918, while he was making thanksgiving after a Mass, he
received the visible stigmata and bore it for fifty years. Through his gifts of
prophecy, reading hearts and other charismatic gifts he was able to attract and
convert thousands of souls separated from God. Padre Pio was painstakingly
faithful to the ministry of confession to the very end of his life. It is
estimated that Padre Pio heard about five million confessions in his lifetime.
He frequently heard confessions fifteen to nineteen hours a day. On the morning
of September 22, 1968, he heard his last seven confessions and passed into
eternity during the following night.
A Model Capuchin Franciscan Friar
Padre Pio has received
wide publicity throughout the world by reason of the extraordinary aspects of
his long life: stigmata, bilocation, ability to read hearts, etc. However, if
it is God’s will to propose him to the world as a model of Christian life, it
will be for the high degree of virtue he showed at all stages of his religious
life. Throughout his religious life he allowed himself no halfway measures.
Self-denial, mortification, perseverance and sacrifices even in small things
expressed his great love for God and souls. On one occasion he spoke of his
mission on earth: “I, a friar and a priest, have a mission. As a friar, as a
Capuchin, it is the perfect and devoted observance of my Rule and vows.” He
loved St. Francis of Assisi with great veneration and devotion. For sixty-five
years he was a son of the Poverello of Assisi and lived the perfect observance
of the Holy Rule. He died after renewing the professions of his vows a final
time. Indeed, he is considered by many as the 20th century St.
Francis.
A Priest, a Perfect Victim
Padre Pio knew very well
that to become a priest one must also be a victim as well. He offered himself
totally, without holding back in any way. Padre Pio’s life was one painful
passion, a succession of trials and sufferings in his body and soul. Padre Pio
was fully aware of what it cost Christ to redeem men from sin. He freely paid
the price for sin and ransomed countless sinners, suffering in union with the
redeeming Passion of Jesus. His ardent desire to save souls was a powerful
practical force that pushed him to action. His terrible sufferings of every
kind – physical and moral, the interior torments, calumnies of the worst type,
loss of blood, the apostolate of the confessional – poured an immense good into
Christ’s mystical body.
The Three Loves of Padre Pio: Christ,
the Church, and the Blessed Mother
These are Padre Pio’s three great loves.
These loves are intimately connected; they constitute one love reciprocally
strengthening each other.
His whole life bore out his heroic submission to lawful authority out
of love of God. For him the Pope was the gentle Christ on earth. The most
sincere proof of his fidelity to the Church stood out above all when obedience
cost him much. There were serious calumnies against Padre Pio’s doctrinal
soundness, his morals, and his mental competence. Form 1931 to 1933 he was
secluded in his friary suspended from hearing confessions and forbidden to have
any contact with the faithful. Through it all, he would say, “Sweet is the hand
of the Church, even when she strikes, for it is the hand of the Mother.” Padre
Pio was very severe with those who attacked authority because they felt unjust
restrictions had been placed on him. The mayor of San Giovanni Rotondo had
prepared an article which he intended to have printed in defense of Padre Pio.
But when Padre Pio read it, he took the author by his neck and shouted at him,
“Satan, go and throw yourself at the feet of the Church instead of writing this
foolishness. Don’t oppose your Mother.”
Padre Pio’s attitude towards the Blessed Mother was not only
devotional. He saw the Blessed Mother in the light of God’s saving plan. She
introduced him to the mystery of the Cross and helped him enter ever more
deeply into the mysteries of God’s plans for eternal salvation, which had been
carried out by Jesus on Calvary in the presence of His sorrowing mother. Padre
Pio had the extraordinary gift of being able to pray always, and his favorite
private prayer was the Rosary. He is known to have prayed forty to sixty
rosaries a day. He encourages all men to walk behind the Mother of the Church.
“Let us make an effort to always walk close to the Blessed Mother, because
there is no other road that leads to life.”
Padre Pio is a man who believed in the mystery of the Church and who
abandoned himself to the love of Our Lady. Indeed there is one light that
envelops these two realities – motherhood. Stretching out his two hands to the
Holy Mother Church and to Our Lady, the Mother of the Church, Padre Pio walked
toward perfection, and in this infallible way he cooperated in the building up
of Christ’s mystical body.
Conclusion
In the life of Padre Pio we meet a St. Francis who
lived in our time. Both bore the stigmata – a visible manifestation of their
intimate union with the crucified Jesus; both showed an utmost honor and
submission toward the Church and a profound recognition and love for the Mother
of God in the light of God’s saving plan. With great strength and power Padre
Pio endeavored to accomplish the mission of “rebuilding the Church” which had
been entrusted to St. Francis by our Lord at the Church of San Damiano almost
eight centuries ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment