Seek The Intercession of St. Padre Pio
“After my death I will do more….”
Saint Padre Pio (Saint Pius Pietrelcina) is a rock star saint (with all due respect).
His feast day is Sept. 23rd. Catholics and non-Catholics alike sought his advice and spiritual guidance.
He lived from 1887 to 1968. Today’s popular Catholic influencers quote him frequently, because of his devotion to the Eucharist, the Rosary, and the guardian angel Christ assigned him.
Even as a child he was devoted to prayer, announcing to his parents at the age of five he wanted to live his life for Christ for there would nothing more meaningful.
Saint Padre Pio wasn’t a push over, didn’t patronize people, or just tell them what they wanted to hear. Sure, he was known as a lovable and humble, but he was respected as an obedient servant of God. Even until his last breath, he was also known as one who fiercely defended Christ and stood firm in convictions to cast out evil and demons ruining the lives of God’s people, the Church, and the world.
He is the only priest in history to have the stigmata – the wounds of Christ to his hands, feet, and side. He referred to his daily prayers as his conversations with God.
“In books we seek God, in prayer we find Him,” he said. “Prayer is the key which opens God’s heart.”
Ordained in 1910 and in 1916 was assigned to San Giovanni Rotondo in Apulia, Italy, where he would be for 52 years. He was so popular he would spend up to 12 hours a day hearing confessions of Catholics and non-Catholics.
He celebrated Mass with “extraordinary devotion,” leaving no doubt that the Eucharist was the Real Presence of Christ.
The stigmata happened on Sept. 20, 1918, after celebrating Mass.
In St. Pio’s words he said, “while I was giving thanks to the choir, I was repeatedly overcome by trembling. Later I became calm again and I saw our Lord as if He were on the cross…. He was showing that He was suffering and that He desired to unite souls to His Passion. He invited me to enter into His sufferings and to mediate upon them: and at the same time to concern myself with the health of the brothers. Immediately I felt full of compassion for the sufferings of the Lord and I asked Him what I could do. I heard this voice: ‘I unite you to my Passion’. And immediately, the vision having disappeared, I came to and I saw these signs from which blood was flowing. I did not have them before.”
Saint Padre Pio hid his wounds on his hands with gloves. His wounds brought pain and bled day after day.
He was so universally popular he had to have a team of friars help him with the thousands of letters written to him. Interesting to note, in 1962, Bishop Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, was one of those petitioners. He asked Padre Pio to pray for a dear friend, Dr. Wanda Poltawska, who had cancer. Miraculously, Dr. Poltawska’s cancer was found to have degenerated, and doctors could not offer an explanation. Many have said Padre Pio said Wojtyla would become Pope.
When he passed away on Sept. 23, 1968, at the age of 81, he had a rosary in his hands and said, “Jesus. Mary,” over and over. Upon his death his wounds that did not heal for five decades were no longer visible.
Ask for his intercession, before his passing he said, “After my death I will do more. My real mission will begin after my death.”
Enrich your faith and read more about him. His life was full of miracles and almost fantastical unexplained occurrences that were documented by the Church such as his wounds having the ever-pleasing odor of sanctity (the aroma of flowers), ability to know what people were going to say before they said it, bilocation (being in two places at once), visions of Jesus, Mary, and his guardian angel.
