Padre Pio had a great love of and devotion to Our Lady, especially of Our Lady of Graces which the Friary of San Giovanni Rotondo is dedicated to. He spent long hours in conversation with her and her Divine Son, Jesus. To him, Mary was the best way to approach Jesus and there is no better prayer than the Rosary to connect with her and the mysteries that comes from the life of Christ. You may have heard some of the stories of Padre Pio and his devotion to the Rosary which he called his ‘weapon’.
Padre Pio always wore the Rosary around his arm at night. A few days before his death, as he was getting into bed, he said to the friars who was in his room, “Give me my weapon!” And the friar, surprised and curious, asked him: “Where is the weapon? We cannot see anything!” Padre Pio replied, “It is in my habit, which you have just hung up!” After having gone through the pockets of his religious habit, the friars said to him: “Padre, there is no weapon in your habit! . . . we can only find your rosary beads there!” Padre Pio immediately said, “And is this not a weapon? . . . the true weapon?!” Padre Pio instructed: “Recite the Rosary and recite it always and as much as you can.” To Padre Onorato Marcucci, grabbing the Rosary that he had just placed on the nightstand he said: “With this, one wins the battles.” He prayed many rosaries each day and people, including friars, were amazed at the number of rosaries he recited. In February 1954, at 9:00 p.m., speaking to Father Carmelo he said: “I still have 2 rosaries to pray today. I said only 34 so far. Then I will go to bed.”
Padre Pio is a saint for our time. He was photographed, he was recorded in film and in voice. I have lived with Capuchin friars who met him personally and recalled to me conversations they had with him. One Friar, Fr. Peter Dempsey, now gone home to God, told me that during WWII when the friars studying in Rome couldn’t travel home, they would be sent to San Giovanni Rotondo or some other Italian friaries. There Fr. Peter, who was a post graduate theology student, would sit beside Padre Pio and he said Padre told him speaking in Italian that he often prayed for the Irish Church and for the great missionary endeavour of the Irish who travelled to distant lands to spread the gospel.
When we think of saints, naturally we remember the saints our parents introduced us to like Saint Anthony, Saint Therese the little flower, or Saint Francis of Assisi, St. Rita of Cascia etc. Let’s not forget the Saints of Ireland too, and Irish Diocese. Many of these lived centuries ago and perhaps its hard to identify with them today. But remember, Saint John Paul II reminds that we are all called to sanctity. It is the vocation of all of us to aspire to holiness. Pope Emeritus Benedict once said we are not made for comfort, we are made for greatness! Sanctity! But we can identify with saints who lived closer to our time and as we see how they lived, perhaps we can see ourselves that we can do it, we can imitate Christ in our time, in our families, and in our communities. Sanctity is the art of the possible.
Padre Pio suffered most of his life. He endured misunderstanding for a time while the Holy See investigated the spiritual phenomena associated with his life, yet he remained obedient to the church and the Holy Father throughout. He also suffered because he was famous in a sense. Many people wanted to see him, and to go to confession to him. Often to the point of exhaustion would he have a word of challenge or of encouragement for someone or a prayer for an intention. Again, always with Mary’s rosary between his fingers.
He bore the stigmata, the bleeding wounds of our Lord on his hands, feet, and on his side for 50 years. The friars and his doctors dressed them daily with a bandage and covered them with a fingerless mitten. The pain was bad enough, and horrific especially on Fridays. But the experience was excruciating and humiliating all the time because he was an object of curiosity. He said himself “I only want to be a poor friar who prays.”
Padre Pio often suffered from bad health and once about 10 years before he died, he was very ill, and it coincided with the visit of the Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of Fatima to some diocese in Italy. It wasn’t scheduled to visit San Giovanni at all, instead Our Lady was scheduled to stop in the large city of Foggia. While the friary in San Giovanni Rotondo is within the Foggia diocese, it is a good distance from Foggia. Padre Pio was severely ill with pleurisy, unable to even celebrate Mass from May 5 let alone go to Foggia. The statue of Our Lady was to arrive at the beginning of August and Padre Pio remained bedridden. Somehow the scheduled got changed. The statue would not go to Foggia now but go to San Giovanni Rotondo instead. Joy filled the air as people gathered by the friary. With the help of a loudspeaker, Padre Pio was able to prepare them for their ‘mother’s’ arrival on August 6. That morning, Padre Pio struggled to get down to the church. He managed to get before the statue of our Lady — “but had to sit down because he was exhausted — and he gave her a gold rosary,” observed Bishop Carta. “The statue was lowered before his face, and he was able to kiss her. It was a most affectionate gesture.”
That same afternoon. Between two and three o’clock, Our Lady of Fatima was again in the helicopter ready to travel to the next stop. Taking off from the Casa for the Relief of the Suffering the helicopter circled three times around the monastery before flying away to its next stop. Afterwards, the pilot could never explain why that circling happened. Bishop Carta described how “From a window Padre Pio watched the helicopter fly away with eyes filled with tears. To our Lady in flight Padre Pio lamented with a confidence that was all his own: ‘My Lady, my mother, you came to Italy, and I got sick, now you are going away, and you leave me still ill.’” But as the helicopter was circling, he felt a shudder, a jolt, through his body. The bishop repeated what Padre Pio would say for the rest of his life: “In that very instant I felt a sort of shudder in my bones which cured me immediately.”
As I said, Padre Pio had a filial devotion to Our Blessed Lady. He was always communicating with her. The main reason is that she it is who brings us to her son Jesus. Mary always points to Jesus. This has always been Mary’s mission; she turns to us, and she says, as she said in few words at the wedding at Cana; “Do whatever he tells you.”
Our Blessed Lady came here to Knock in 1879, eight years before Padre Pio was born, to bring hope to a suffering people. She came with St. Joseph, and St. John the Evangelist. On the Altar was the Lamb, the Eucharistic Lord who gave himself totally for us. On that wet August evening, as she appeared to give hope, she also reminded us that her Divine Son, Jesus comes to us bearing the message of eternal life. That night, Mary appeared in silence. She never said a word but as Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, who was here in 2018, and after that elevated Knock Shrine to an International Sanctuary of Special Eucharistic and Marian Devotion said; “…in her apparition at Knock, the virgin says nothing. Yet her silence is a language; indeed, it is the most expressive language we have. The message that comes from Knock is that of the great value of silence for our faith.”
Padre Pio is with us today. He has been praying to the Blessed Virgin for us during the pandemic. He knows suffering and he helped to build the Casa Sollievo Della Sofferenza. He reminds us today that he continues to pray for us to Our Lady of Knock for all our needs. But he asks us to listen to Mary because in silence she points to Jesus, her Divine Son. Because he alone has the message of eternal life. Amen.
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