Notes from my “Handful of wildflowers”
Saint Padre Pio perhaps gave the eternal Father a clearer image of His Son’s redemptive humanity and intercession than does any person in history. He lived a crucified, selfless, holy life in deep union with Christ. He had the gift of reading souls, and of bilocution when his presence was required for souls distant from his monastery of San Giovanni Rotondo. Through his intercession, God permitted spiritual and physical healings that are well documented in our times. For 50 years, Padre Pio bore deep wounds in hands, feet and side. The chest wound was four inches long, with a smaller transverse cross-wound. These bleeding wounds remained unchanged until his death at 94 years of age, on September 23, 1968, when, having served their intercessory purpose for countless souls on earth and in Purgatory, the deep, painful wounds disappeared.
Padre suffered continually for souls and was known to say—“If you knew the value of suffering, you would never give it up.” Nevertheless, he prayed for healing for others, and advised anyone in their difficulties to seek divine assistance.
*“It is not a loss of patience if one asks Jesus to take away pain, when this becomes insupportable to us and beyond our strength, nor does one lose the merit of the suffering which is offered, by asking this of God.” *
“*Pray that God will console you when you feel the burden of the Cross, for in doing so you are not acting against the will of God, but you are placing yourself beside the Son of God who asked His Father during the Agony in the Garden to send Him some relief. But if He is not willing to give it, be ready to pronounce the same ‘fiat’ that Jesus did.”
“When least you are expecting to be liberated, Jesus, who cannot bear to keep you long in affliction, will come and relieve and comfort you, giving you new courage.”
“He is the Father of all; He is so in a very special manner for the unhappy.” “The Cross will not crush you; if its weight makes you stagger, its power will also sustain you.”
“What does it matter whether Jesus wishes to guide you to heaven by the way of the desert or by the fields, so long as you get there by one way or the other? Put away excessive worrying which results from trials by which the good Lord has desired to test you; and if this is not possible resign yourself to the divine will.”
“Each soul…is a stone destined to build up the eternal edifice…it has to be polished with the blows of hammer and chisel…these hits of the chisel are the shadows, the fears, the temptations, the afflictions of the spirit, the spiritual tremors with some aroma of desolation, and also physical illness.” *“Be certain that the more a soul loves God, the less he feels it…God is incomprehensible…so that the more a soul enters into the love of this Supreme Good…this sentiment of love towards Him seems to diminish, to the point of seeming to love Him not at all…Say rather that you love, and that you wish to love with a perfect and consummate love. This good cannot be obtained in its completion except in the next life!”
Surely, Padre Pio has something of the total self-giving of the Saviour. He wrote, “*If I know that a person is afflicted in mind and body, what would I not do to see him freed from his ills, I would willingly take on all his afflictions in order to see him freed, giving up in his favour… the fruits of such suffering if the Lord would permit me.” *[Letters 1, no. 184]
