Padre Pio: A Cure of Ars for the 20th Century
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The Angelus | November 1999
Padre Pio: A Cure of Ars for the 20th Century
He has not been canonized yet, of course, but as far as the faithful are concerned, he may as well have been. On May 2, the record crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square and at St. John Lateran in Rome proved that the sensus fidei has not completely disappeared.
Verbally assail the people with the "new saints" and the "new martyrs" like Luther and Hus as much as you will; only perverse prelates could possibly believe such talk. The "sense of the Faith" will only make the crowd turn out for truly Catholic saints. Let us take a closer look, then, at what was so Catholic about this man that, 40 years ago, like another Curé of Ars, he was able to draw hundreds of thousands of the faithful and the curious to San Giovanni Rotondo in order to convert them.
If there is any one phrase which could resume the life and thought of Blessed Padre Pio, this quote of his is the one. Padre Pio is not firstly a holy Capuchin monk—with all due respect to the Order of St. Francis; he is first and foremost a priest, and moreover, the only priest to have received the stigmata. His spirituality is essentially sacerdotal: conformity to Christ not only by his state of life of priest, but also of victim. The day of his ordination, he made the prayer: "Make me a holy priest, a perfect victim." Three months later, he offered himself to God as a victim for sinners and for the souls in purgatory. In 1912, "Jesus made me understand the full significance of what it is to be a victim... 'My son, I need victims to appease the wrath of My Father.'"
The role of the priest, in imitation of the Sovereign High Priest, is to become the intermediary between God and men, and to reconcile men to God. And this reconciliation is predicated on suffering, the cross. Such was the life's work of Padre Pio, traced out for him by divine Providence.
Two places have a capital importance in the life of Padre Pio, places that were like battlefields. In the first, he amassed his weapons and co-merited graces; in the second, he wielded these arms, and applied to souls the graces of redemption and conversion. The places: the altar and the confessional.
At the Altar
People are wont to speak of "the Mass of Padre Pio." One reason for this is the frequent ecstasies which made it longer, sometimes as long as two or (rarely) even four hours. But at the altar, like every other priest, Padre Pio was only an instrument. The fact of bearing the stigmata added nothing to the intrinsic grandeur of his function. But his whole life centered around these hours in which he would lend to Christ his mouth, his hands, his eyes, to renew the sacrifice of the Cross. He would lend them in a real, physical way. Listen to one of the numerous witnesses of "his" Mass:
The citation is rather long, but "the Mass of Padre Pio" was something so unique that a brief description is quite incapable of evoking the poignant reality. It was during the Mass that he experienced the greatest suffering of the day; it was most intense at the consecration.
Padre Pio: A Cure of Ars for the 20th Century
by Rev. Fr. Bernard Lorber
He has not been canonized yet, of course, but as far as the faithful are concerned, he may as well have been. On May 2, the record crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square and at St. John Lateran in Rome proved that the sensus fidei has not completely disappeared.
Verbally assail the people with the "new saints" and the "new martyrs" like Luther and Hus as much as you will; only perverse prelates could possibly believe such talk. The "sense of the Faith" will only make the crowd turn out for truly Catholic saints. Let us take a closer look, then, at what was so Catholic about this man that, 40 years ago, like another Curé of Ars, he was able to draw hundreds of thousands of the faithful and the curious to San Giovanni Rotondo in order to convert them.
If there is any one phrase which could resume the life and thought of Blessed Padre Pio, this quote of his is the one. Padre Pio is not firstly a holy Capuchin monk—with all due respect to the Order of St. Francis; he is first and foremost a priest, and moreover, the only priest to have received the stigmata. His spirituality is essentially sacerdotal: conformity to Christ not only by his state of life of priest, but also of victim. The day of his ordination, he made the prayer: "Make me a holy priest, a perfect victim." Three months later, he offered himself to God as a victim for sinners and for the souls in purgatory. In 1912, "Jesus made me understand the full significance of what it is to be a victim... 'My son, I need victims to appease the wrath of My Father.'"
The role of the priest, in imitation of the Sovereign High Priest, is to become the intermediary between God and men, and to reconcile men to God. And this reconciliation is predicated on suffering, the cross. Such was the life's work of Padre Pio, traced out for him by divine Providence.
Two places have a capital importance in the life of Padre Pio, places that were like battlefields. In the first, he amassed his weapons and co-merited graces; in the second, he wielded these arms, and applied to souls the graces of redemption and conversion. The places: the altar and the confessional.
At the Altar
People are wont to speak of "the Mass of Padre Pio." One reason for this is the frequent ecstasies which made it longer, sometimes as long as two or (rarely) even four hours. But at the altar, like every other priest, Padre Pio was only an instrument. The fact of bearing the stigmata added nothing to the intrinsic grandeur of his function. But his whole life centered around these hours in which he would lend to Christ his mouth, his hands, his eyes, to renew the sacrifice of the Cross. He would lend them in a real, physical way. Listen to one of the numerous witnesses of "his" Mass:
One would have to be blind not to see that the man who now goes up to the altar suffers. His step is heavy and stumbling. It is not easy to walk with pierced feet. His arms rest heavily upon the altar that he kisses. He has all the guarded reflexes of persons whose hands are wounded. Then, his head slightly raised, he looks at the cross.
Instinctively, I avert my eyes as if I had unwittingly looked on a lovers' tryst. The face of the Capuchin which a while ago had seemed jovial and mild, is now literally transfigured. Waves of intense emotion furrow it as if the debate into which he is drawn with invisible presences successively fills him with fear, joy, sadness, anguish sorrow....It is possible to read in these expressions the mysterious dialogue. Now he protests, shakes his head, awaits the reply. His whole body is frozen in mute pleading. After a moment, I continue to observe him with gripping emotion. Time seems to have stopped; or rather, let us say that it no longer counts. The priest who tarries before the altar seems to pull us into a new dimension where duration takes on a different meaning.
Suddenly, tears stream from his eyes and his shoulders, shaken by sobs, seem to bend under a crushing weight. I suddenly remember how it was during wartime with the men condemned to death. They have just heard the sentence. While the muscles of the face are immobile, the whole body, weighed down, writhes. To face the executioners, one must first pass through an agony, the hard apprenticeship of death.
Padre Pio is not acting out someone else's drama. Now there is no distance between him and Christ. "Vivo ego, iam non ego...." If the Head renews His sacrifice in an unbloody manner, are we thereby allowed to forget the price of Blood? On the contrary, does not each Mass invite the members to furnish their part of the redeeming Passion, because it is He who lives, suffers, and dies in His body? Are we not all workers of the Redemption? And is not the Mass, for each one of us, a place of transubstantiation, where our poor sufferings, assumed by Christ, acquire an everlasting worth.
But if such is the role of the simple Christian, how much more that of the priest, victim by vocation and mediator between God and His people.
I look at the face of Padre Pio, streaming with tears and think of the sins that he shoulders every day after unending hours spent in the confessional. It is no laughing matter that he confesses and absolves. The servant is not above the Master. The part of blood required of him is here, even more than in the stigmata. The soul's blood is heavier than the body's... Cloaked with the robe of Nessus,1 humiliated like a leper, alone between heaven and earth, he goes up to the altar of his God. Priest, he has no other reason for being than to make Christ appear.
After this dolorous ecstasy the Mass continues. I understand now why the crowd pressed around the altar holds its breath...what is happening at the altar moves it deeply. Between the people and the priest, lost in God, there is a secret bond. It is caught up and drawn in the wake of the drama. This Mass becomes my Mass.
Herein lies, it seems to me, one of the reasons for the extraordinary hold Padre Pio has on those who approach him. Like a sorcerer, from the desert of arid routine he is able to make the buried spring gush forth. After contact with him, souls "recognize" that they are Christians. Practices which have faded in meaning take on new savor and life. I defy anyone who has been to San Giovanni Rotondo to assist henceforth at the Mass as a mere spectator. "One might say that my eyes had been opened, someone told me, "and I discover in the Mass things I never suspected."
At the Offertory, the rhythm of the sacred drama intensifies. Raising the paten suppliantly, his eyes lost in an invisible light, Padre Pio shows the wounds of his hands, red and bloody. He remains in this attitude much longer than the recitation of the Suscipe requires. One would say that he remembers the whole world in this act of offering. His face, ravaged by tears, expresses a kind of challenge: "Behold, Eternal Father, what I offer Thee, in the name of Thy Son whom I represent: this human distress, this consuming anguish; these sufferings; these sins... Behold, I place all of this, pell-mell, in Thy Arms, on Thy Heart... Man among men, priest of men, I give Thee, O God, Creator, that which Thou dost restore more beautifully than Thou didst create it..."
The minutes flow like drops of blood. I understand suddenly that by the Mass we have access to eternity. The mystery of the Cross escapes time-duration in the exact measure that the crucified Man is God. In an ineffable way, absolutely inaccessible to the grasp of our intellects, Calvary is present in each Mass, and we are present at Calvary. Since this is a truth too obliterated in our restless, unquiet minds, isn't it necessary, from time to time, that to remind us of it, God deal us violent lessons like those at San Giovanni Rotondo?
At the Memento of the living, there is another halt, another ecstasy. There was a time when Padre Pio took such a long time to remember his children one by one to God that the Father Guardian, hidden in the choir, would mentally give him the order to continue.2
Instinctively, I avert my eyes as if I had unwittingly looked on a lovers' tryst. The face of the Capuchin which a while ago had seemed jovial and mild, is now literally transfigured. Waves of intense emotion furrow it as if the debate into which he is drawn with invisible presences successively fills him with fear, joy, sadness, anguish sorrow....It is possible to read in these expressions the mysterious dialogue. Now he protests, shakes his head, awaits the reply. His whole body is frozen in mute pleading. After a moment, I continue to observe him with gripping emotion. Time seems to have stopped; or rather, let us say that it no longer counts. The priest who tarries before the altar seems to pull us into a new dimension where duration takes on a different meaning.
Suddenly, tears stream from his eyes and his shoulders, shaken by sobs, seem to bend under a crushing weight. I suddenly remember how it was during wartime with the men condemned to death. They have just heard the sentence. While the muscles of the face are immobile, the whole body, weighed down, writhes. To face the executioners, one must first pass through an agony, the hard apprenticeship of death.
Padre Pio is not acting out someone else's drama. Now there is no distance between him and Christ. "Vivo ego, iam non ego...." If the Head renews His sacrifice in an unbloody manner, are we thereby allowed to forget the price of Blood? On the contrary, does not each Mass invite the members to furnish their part of the redeeming Passion, because it is He who lives, suffers, and dies in His body? Are we not all workers of the Redemption? And is not the Mass, for each one of us, a place of transubstantiation, where our poor sufferings, assumed by Christ, acquire an everlasting worth.
But if such is the role of the simple Christian, how much more that of the priest, victim by vocation and mediator between God and His people.
I look at the face of Padre Pio, streaming with tears and think of the sins that he shoulders every day after unending hours spent in the confessional. It is no laughing matter that he confesses and absolves. The servant is not above the Master. The part of blood required of him is here, even more than in the stigmata. The soul's blood is heavier than the body's... Cloaked with the robe of Nessus,1 humiliated like a leper, alone between heaven and earth, he goes up to the altar of his God. Priest, he has no other reason for being than to make Christ appear.
After this dolorous ecstasy the Mass continues. I understand now why the crowd pressed around the altar holds its breath...what is happening at the altar moves it deeply. Between the people and the priest, lost in God, there is a secret bond. It is caught up and drawn in the wake of the drama. This Mass becomes my Mass.
Herein lies, it seems to me, one of the reasons for the extraordinary hold Padre Pio has on those who approach him. Like a sorcerer, from the desert of arid routine he is able to make the buried spring gush forth. After contact with him, souls "recognize" that they are Christians. Practices which have faded in meaning take on new savor and life. I defy anyone who has been to San Giovanni Rotondo to assist henceforth at the Mass as a mere spectator. "One might say that my eyes had been opened, someone told me, "and I discover in the Mass things I never suspected."
At the Offertory, the rhythm of the sacred drama intensifies. Raising the paten suppliantly, his eyes lost in an invisible light, Padre Pio shows the wounds of his hands, red and bloody. He remains in this attitude much longer than the recitation of the Suscipe requires. One would say that he remembers the whole world in this act of offering. His face, ravaged by tears, expresses a kind of challenge: "Behold, Eternal Father, what I offer Thee, in the name of Thy Son whom I represent: this human distress, this consuming anguish; these sufferings; these sins... Behold, I place all of this, pell-mell, in Thy Arms, on Thy Heart... Man among men, priest of men, I give Thee, O God, Creator, that which Thou dost restore more beautifully than Thou didst create it..."
The minutes flow like drops of blood. I understand suddenly that by the Mass we have access to eternity. The mystery of the Cross escapes time-duration in the exact measure that the crucified Man is God. In an ineffable way, absolutely inaccessible to the grasp of our intellects, Calvary is present in each Mass, and we are present at Calvary. Since this is a truth too obliterated in our restless, unquiet minds, isn't it necessary, from time to time, that to remind us of it, God deal us violent lessons like those at San Giovanni Rotondo?
At the Memento of the living, there is another halt, another ecstasy. There was a time when Padre Pio took such a long time to remember his children one by one to God that the Father Guardian, hidden in the choir, would mentally give him the order to continue.2
Several times during his life Padre Pio was the object of sanctions and persecutions. The Holy Office and his religious superiors, between 1920 and 1933, and then again between 1960 and 1964, took measures against him which ran the gamut from coercion and interdiction to intrusiveness that reached the level of sacrilege. (In the last period of persecution, the superior of the convent went so far as to have microphones placed in the confessional.) —Yves Chiron, The Teachings of Blessed Padre Pio.
The Confessional
Conscious of the importance of this sacrament, he would say: "Every time I enter the confessional I tremble, because I am going to administer the Blood of Christ."
If the walls of Padre Pio's confessional could speak, they would recount volumes on the marvels of divine grace worked by the intermediary of this man of God. God had endowed him with the charism of reading hearts, and it was by this gift that he could point out to the forgetful their past sins. But his greatest effectiveness came from the fact that he could discern the actual dispositions of souls. And God knows that he was severe towards those who came without contrition; he would dismiss them drily when he knew that they would return, and that this manner of acting would be the most effective in shaking their self-love.
Padre Pio was particularly severe with those who were not well disposed (those who had no intention to renounce sin), as well as with those worldly penitents who would come immodestly dressed. According to his own remarks, the sins that tortured him the most were contraception and abortion.
The confessions did not last long at all: five minutes at the most. In vain did penitents plan their confession and prepare their list of sins:
With a word, he would upset everything. In the blink of an eye, the soul is stripped; she can see herself. She knows that she is seen: this hidden wound, forgotten, is suddenly laid bare in all its horror. Urbane apologies are silenced. Our masks, masks that finally cleave to our skin, fall away. An inexorable light probes the secret recesses of the conscience. And it is when the soul, suddenly spotlighted, sees that it is but mud and filth compared to the infinite purity of God, that it bursts into torrents of purifying tears.3
One of his penitents said: "Each time it seems that I am plunged into the blood of Christ, and then the soul emerges regenerated and restored."
One day a merchant of Pisa came to petition for the healing of his daughter. Padre Pio looked at him and said, "You are the one who is sick, sicker than your daughter. I see you dead." The poor man paled and stuttered, "Not at all, not at all, I'm fine." "You poor man," the Padre cried, "how can you be fine with so many sins on your conscience. I can see at least thirty-two." One can imagine the merchant's stupor. After his confession, he would say to anyone who would listen: "He knew everything ahead of time; he told me everything!"
This would certainly make confession easier, would it not? But it did not, for if he knew the sins, he did not spare the penitent the salutary humiliation of naming them. He would only help by correcting, rectifying, or completing the account. To a great penitent collapsed at his feet, he told her all her sins but one. After a moment of violent struggle, she finally admitted it. "Now, that is what I was waiting for, my daughter," he said contentedly, "now I can give you absolution."
Another example: A man chained by an illicit relationship accompanied his wife to San Giovanni Rotondo, with a well-laid scheme. Desiring to get rid of her, he had decided to kill her by simulating suicide, and the trip to San Giovanni Rotondo was a ploy to throw the family off the track. He believed neither in God nor the devil. Coldly, he went to the sacristy, he said, to see the case of "blatant hysteria." Padre Pio was talking with some of his spiritual sons. As soon as he saw the man, he went towards him, seized his arm and pushed him towards the exit: "Get out, get out! Don't you know that it is forbidden to defile your hands with blood? Get out!" Everyone present was stupefied. Beside himself, the unfortunate man fled as if the furies were at his heels. What happened during the night, God only knows, and Padre Pio. The next day after Mass, the man was at Padre Pio's feet. The priest received him lovingly, heard his confession, gave him absolution, and then tenderly embraced him. Before the man's departure, he said to him point-blank: "You have always wanted to have children, haven't you?" The man looked at him, dumbfounded: "Yes," he said, "very much." "Well then, do not offend the good Lord any more, and a son will be born to you." A year later the couple came back to have their baby baptized. Miracles of grace at San Giovanni Rotondo were a daily occurrence.
Padre Pio's sessions in the confessional rivaled those of the Curé of Ars: often 15 hours a day, sometimes even 19; some 200 confessions a day, and more that 70,000 a year! An almost constant miracle of grace.
Miracle Worker
The miracles of Padre Pio could not fit into a single book. Yet there was nothing pretentious or spectacular about them; everything happened very simply, as if it were natural. Above all, the physical miracles were ordered to spiritual miracles, to conversions of heart. And sometimes there was no miracle, because the patient bearing of infirmity is sometimes more beneficial to the soul than a cure. Padre Pio made of his choice souls workers in the redemption; for them, he would not ask for a miracle.
At 14, young Petruccio's eyesight began to blur. Padre Pio, who loved him very much, said to him: "You know, my little friend, that throughout the world there are very many people who sin with their eyes." "Well, then, Father, let God take my eyes: I offer them to him for sinners." Padre Pio did not ask for the restoration of his sight, as he had done for the girl without pupils, Gemma di Giorgi. (Her eyes had no pupils before or after; the only difference was that before she could not see, and after visiting Padre Pio she could and did until the end of her life: a perpetual miracle, enough to unsettle the most anticlerical doctor!) He kept the blind Petruccio near him as a very precious treasure.
And there was no need to ask him for something ten times, even mentally! A good country woman's husband was very sick. She hastened to the convent, wondering how on earth she would be able to approach Padre Pio. To see him in the confessional would take three days at least! During the Mass the poor woman fretted and fidgeted, crossing from right to left and back again, and all in tears confided her trouble to our Lady of Grace by the intercession of her faithful servant. During confessions it was the same routine. Finally, she managed to slip into the famous corridor where it was possible to catch sight of Padre Pio. As soon as he noticed her, he rolled his eyes: "Woman of little faith, when will you cease badgering me and ringing my ears? Am I deaf? You have already asked me five times, on the right, on the left, in front, behind. I understood, I understood..." Then he added with a smile: "Go quickly home. Everything is all right." In fact, her husband had recovered.
Special Graces
Theology distinguishes several types of graces: sanctifying grace, actual grace (a passing help of God), and lastly graces gratis datae, which are special gifts or privileges conferred on a soul not for his own sanctification, but for the edification of the Mystical Body (true apparitions, the power to work miracles, bilocation, etc.). Padre Pio was abundantly endowed with these last graces.
He is well known for bilocation. The friends of Padre Pio were well acquainted with the instances where suddenly he would become "absent" and be transfigured, operating elsewhere. That could come upon him anywhere, often in the confessional. Then he would "appear" somewhere else, to some soul far away from San Giovanni Rotondo, warning, converting.
He apparently had something like the "gift of tongues": French, Germans, Americans, Spanish all came to go to confession to him in their own language. Padre Pio only knew Italian. But no one every complained of not having been understood or of not having understood Padre Pio. Now, if one tries to understand what actually happened, that is a completely different ball game.
All these astonishing facts should not make us lose our prudence. For the devil enjoyed spreading a number of tall tales at Padre Pio's expense, in order to discredit either his own works, or other works of the Church.
One example that touches close to home is the interview between Archbishop Lefebvre and Padre Pio. The enemies of Archbishop Lefebvre say that Padre Pio remonstrated with the Archbishop, reproaching him for "disobedience." To these calumnies it is very easy to reply that Padre Pio died in 1968, and so the Society of Saint Pius X was not yet even founded. Archbishop Lefebvre spoke of the respect and affability that Padre Pio showed him. Similarly, the same enemies assert that Padre Pio said the New Mass; it was effectively imposed in Italy ad experimentum in 1965. They forget that Padre Pio personally petitioned Pope Paul VI to not be constrained to participate in the experiment, and his plea was granted. Padre Pio never said the New Mass.
In 50 years of an extraordinary life, the most extraordinary deeds and graces accumulated. It is inspiring to see—even seeing only a small part—the immense good accomplished by this soul. But it is true that the good was the result of his cooperation with grace, his conformity to the Crucified by means of suffering that went uninterrupted night and day.
Translated by Angelus Press from Pour qu'il Règne, monthly bulletin of the Society of Saint Pius X in Belgium, May-June 1999. The original author, Rev. Fr. Bernard Lorber, is superior of the Society of Saint Pius X's autonomous house in Belgium. He attended seminary at Ecône, Switzerland, and was ordained there in 1988.
Footnotes
1. A poisonous cloak that kills the one wearing it. Allusion to a character from Greek mythology.
2. Maria Winowska, Le vrai visage du Padre Pio (Ed. Le livre de poche chétien), pp. 33-34.
3. Winowska, op. cit.
The Confessional
Conscious of the importance of this sacrament, he would say: "Every time I enter the confessional I tremble, because I am going to administer the Blood of Christ."
If the walls of Padre Pio's confessional could speak, they would recount volumes on the marvels of divine grace worked by the intermediary of this man of God. God had endowed him with the charism of reading hearts, and it was by this gift that he could point out to the forgetful their past sins. But his greatest effectiveness came from the fact that he could discern the actual dispositions of souls. And God knows that he was severe towards those who came without contrition; he would dismiss them drily when he knew that they would return, and that this manner of acting would be the most effective in shaking their self-love.
Padre Pio was particularly severe with those who were not well disposed (those who had no intention to renounce sin), as well as with those worldly penitents who would come immodestly dressed. According to his own remarks, the sins that tortured him the most were contraception and abortion.
The confessions did not last long at all: five minutes at the most. In vain did penitents plan their confession and prepare their list of sins:
With a word, he would upset everything. In the blink of an eye, the soul is stripped; she can see herself. She knows that she is seen: this hidden wound, forgotten, is suddenly laid bare in all its horror. Urbane apologies are silenced. Our masks, masks that finally cleave to our skin, fall away. An inexorable light probes the secret recesses of the conscience. And it is when the soul, suddenly spotlighted, sees that it is but mud and filth compared to the infinite purity of God, that it bursts into torrents of purifying tears.3
One of his penitents said: "Each time it seems that I am plunged into the blood of Christ, and then the soul emerges regenerated and restored."
One day a merchant of Pisa came to petition for the healing of his daughter. Padre Pio looked at him and said, "You are the one who is sick, sicker than your daughter. I see you dead." The poor man paled and stuttered, "Not at all, not at all, I'm fine." "You poor man," the Padre cried, "how can you be fine with so many sins on your conscience. I can see at least thirty-two." One can imagine the merchant's stupor. After his confession, he would say to anyone who would listen: "He knew everything ahead of time; he told me everything!"
This would certainly make confession easier, would it not? But it did not, for if he knew the sins, he did not spare the penitent the salutary humiliation of naming them. He would only help by correcting, rectifying, or completing the account. To a great penitent collapsed at his feet, he told her all her sins but one. After a moment of violent struggle, she finally admitted it. "Now, that is what I was waiting for, my daughter," he said contentedly, "now I can give you absolution."
Another example: A man chained by an illicit relationship accompanied his wife to San Giovanni Rotondo, with a well-laid scheme. Desiring to get rid of her, he had decided to kill her by simulating suicide, and the trip to San Giovanni Rotondo was a ploy to throw the family off the track. He believed neither in God nor the devil. Coldly, he went to the sacristy, he said, to see the case of "blatant hysteria." Padre Pio was talking with some of his spiritual sons. As soon as he saw the man, he went towards him, seized his arm and pushed him towards the exit: "Get out, get out! Don't you know that it is forbidden to defile your hands with blood? Get out!" Everyone present was stupefied. Beside himself, the unfortunate man fled as if the furies were at his heels. What happened during the night, God only knows, and Padre Pio. The next day after Mass, the man was at Padre Pio's feet. The priest received him lovingly, heard his confession, gave him absolution, and then tenderly embraced him. Before the man's departure, he said to him point-blank: "You have always wanted to have children, haven't you?" The man looked at him, dumbfounded: "Yes," he said, "very much." "Well then, do not offend the good Lord any more, and a son will be born to you." A year later the couple came back to have their baby baptized. Miracles of grace at San Giovanni Rotondo were a daily occurrence.
Padre Pio's sessions in the confessional rivaled those of the Curé of Ars: often 15 hours a day, sometimes even 19; some 200 confessions a day, and more that 70,000 a year! An almost constant miracle of grace.
Miracle Worker
The miracles of Padre Pio could not fit into a single book. Yet there was nothing pretentious or spectacular about them; everything happened very simply, as if it were natural. Above all, the physical miracles were ordered to spiritual miracles, to conversions of heart. And sometimes there was no miracle, because the patient bearing of infirmity is sometimes more beneficial to the soul than a cure. Padre Pio made of his choice souls workers in the redemption; for them, he would not ask for a miracle.
At 14, young Petruccio's eyesight began to blur. Padre Pio, who loved him very much, said to him: "You know, my little friend, that throughout the world there are very many people who sin with their eyes." "Well, then, Father, let God take my eyes: I offer them to him for sinners." Padre Pio did not ask for the restoration of his sight, as he had done for the girl without pupils, Gemma di Giorgi. (Her eyes had no pupils before or after; the only difference was that before she could not see, and after visiting Padre Pio she could and did until the end of her life: a perpetual miracle, enough to unsettle the most anticlerical doctor!) He kept the blind Petruccio near him as a very precious treasure.
And there was no need to ask him for something ten times, even mentally! A good country woman's husband was very sick. She hastened to the convent, wondering how on earth she would be able to approach Padre Pio. To see him in the confessional would take three days at least! During the Mass the poor woman fretted and fidgeted, crossing from right to left and back again, and all in tears confided her trouble to our Lady of Grace by the intercession of her faithful servant. During confessions it was the same routine. Finally, she managed to slip into the famous corridor where it was possible to catch sight of Padre Pio. As soon as he noticed her, he rolled his eyes: "Woman of little faith, when will you cease badgering me and ringing my ears? Am I deaf? You have already asked me five times, on the right, on the left, in front, behind. I understood, I understood..." Then he added with a smile: "Go quickly home. Everything is all right." In fact, her husband had recovered.
Special Graces
Theology distinguishes several types of graces: sanctifying grace, actual grace (a passing help of God), and lastly graces gratis datae, which are special gifts or privileges conferred on a soul not for his own sanctification, but for the edification of the Mystical Body (true apparitions, the power to work miracles, bilocation, etc.). Padre Pio was abundantly endowed with these last graces.
He is well known for bilocation. The friends of Padre Pio were well acquainted with the instances where suddenly he would become "absent" and be transfigured, operating elsewhere. That could come upon him anywhere, often in the confessional. Then he would "appear" somewhere else, to some soul far away from San Giovanni Rotondo, warning, converting.
He apparently had something like the "gift of tongues": French, Germans, Americans, Spanish all came to go to confession to him in their own language. Padre Pio only knew Italian. But no one every complained of not having been understood or of not having understood Padre Pio. Now, if one tries to understand what actually happened, that is a completely different ball game.
All these astonishing facts should not make us lose our prudence. For the devil enjoyed spreading a number of tall tales at Padre Pio's expense, in order to discredit either his own works, or other works of the Church.
One example that touches close to home is the interview between Archbishop Lefebvre and Padre Pio. The enemies of Archbishop Lefebvre say that Padre Pio remonstrated with the Archbishop, reproaching him for "disobedience." To these calumnies it is very easy to reply that Padre Pio died in 1968, and so the Society of Saint Pius X was not yet even founded. Archbishop Lefebvre spoke of the respect and affability that Padre Pio showed him. Similarly, the same enemies assert that Padre Pio said the New Mass; it was effectively imposed in Italy ad experimentum in 1965. They forget that Padre Pio personally petitioned Pope Paul VI to not be constrained to participate in the experiment, and his plea was granted. Padre Pio never said the New Mass.
In 50 years of an extraordinary life, the most extraordinary deeds and graces accumulated. It is inspiring to see—even seeing only a small part—the immense good accomplished by this soul. But it is true that the good was the result of his cooperation with grace, his conformity to the Crucified by means of suffering that went uninterrupted night and day.
Translated by Angelus Press from Pour qu'il Règne, monthly bulletin of the Society of Saint Pius X in Belgium, May-June 1999. The original author, Rev. Fr. Bernard Lorber, is superior of the Society of Saint Pius X's autonomous house in Belgium. He attended seminary at Ecône, Switzerland, and was ordained there in 1988.
Footnotes
1. A poisonous cloak that kills the one wearing it. Allusion to a character from Greek mythology.
2. Maria Winowska, Le vrai visage du Padre Pio (Ed. Le livre de poche chétien), pp. 33-34.
3. Winowska, op. cit.