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Friday, September 29, 2023
Thoughts on Angels
Saturday, September 23, 2023
Thoughts on Padre Pio
Saint Pio of Pietrelcina
Image: Saint Pio of Pietrecina | San Sebastian Cathedral of Tarlac, Philippines | photo by Ramon FVelasquez
Saint of the Day for September 23
(May 25, 1887 – September 23, 1968)
Saint Pio of Pietrelcina’s Story
In one of the largest such ceremonies in history, Pope John Paul II canonized Padre Pio of Pietrelcina on June 16, 2002. It was the 45th canonization ceremony in Pope John Paul’s pontificate. More than 300,000 people braved blistering heat as they filled St. Peter’s Square and nearby streets. They heard the Holy Father praise the new saint for his prayer and charity. “This is the most concrete synthesis of Padre Pio’s teaching,” said the pope. He also stressed Padre Pio’s witness to the power of suffering. If accepted with love, the Holy Father stressed, such suffering can lead to “a privileged path of sanctity.”
Many people have turned to the Italian Capuchin Franciscan to intercede with God on their behalf; among them was the future Pope John Paul II. In 1962, when he was still an archbishop in Poland, he wrote to Padre Pio and asked him to pray for a Polish woman with throat cancer. Within two weeks, she had been cured of her life-threatening disease.
Born Francesco Forgione, Padre Pio grew up in a family of farmers in southern Italy. Twice his father worked in Jamaica, New York, to provide the family income.
At the age of 15, Francesco joined the Capuchins and took the name of Pio. He was ordained in 1910 and was drafted during World War I. After he was discovered to have tuberculosis, he was discharged. In 1917, he was assigned to the friary in San Giovanni Rotondo, 75 miles from the city of Bari on the Adriatic.
On September 20, 1918, as he was making his thanksgiving after Mass, Padre Pio had a vision of Jesus. When the vision ended, he had the stigmata in his hands, feet, and side.
Life became more complicated after that. Medical doctors, Church authorities, and curiosity seekers came to see Padre Pio. In 1924, and again in 1931, the authenticity of the stigmata was questioned; Padre Pio was not permitted to celebrate Mass publicly or to hear confessions. He did not complain of these decisions, which were soon reversed. However, he wrote no letters after 1924. His only other writing, a pamphlet on the agony of Jesus, was done before 1924.
Padre Pio rarely left the friary after he received the stigmata, but busloads of people soon began coming to see him. Each morning after a 5 a.m. Mass in a crowded church, he heard confessions until noon. He took a mid-morning break to bless the sick and all who came to see him. Every afternoon he also heard confessions. In time his confessional ministry would take 10 hours a day; penitents had to take a number so that the situation could be handled. Many of them have said that Padre Pio knew details of their lives that they had never mentioned.
Padre Pio saw Jesus in all the sick and suffering. At his urging, a fine hospital was built on nearby Mount Gargano. The idea arose in 1940; a committee began to collect money. Ground was broken in 1946. Building the hospital was a technical wonder because of the difficulty of getting water there and of hauling up the building supplies. This “House for the Alleviation of Suffering” has 350 beds.
A number of people have reported cures they believe were received through the intercession of Padre Pio. Those who assisted at his Masses came away edified; several curiosity seekers were deeply moved. Like Saint Francis, Padre Pio sometimes had his habit torn or cut by souvenir hunters.
One of Padre Pio’s sufferings was that unscrupulous people several times circulated prophecies that they claimed originated from him. He never made prophecies about world events and never gave an opinion on matters that he felt belonged to Church authorities to decide. He died on September 23, 1968, and was beatified in 1999.
Reflection
Referring to that day’s Gospel (Matthew 11:25-30) at Padre Pio’s canonization Mass in 2002, Saint John Paul II said: “The Gospel image of ‘yoke’ evokes the many trials that the humble Capuchin of San Giovanni Rotondo endured. Today we contemplate in him how sweet is the ‘yoke’ of Christ and indeed how light the burdens are whenever someone carries these with faithful love. The life and mission of Padre Pio testify that difficulties and sorrows, if accepted with love, transform themselves into a privileged journey of holiness, which opens the person toward a greater good, known only to the Lord.”
Learn more about Padre Pio!
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Friday, September 15, 2023
Thoughts on resentment
John Kavanaugh, a wonderful Jesuit preacher and lover of the Gospel, used to say that there is such a thing as “Irish” Alzheimer’s: You forget everything but your resentments. Even though he was joking, he touched on something that anyone, Irish or not, can identify with-- the difficulty to forgive, especially when one has been hurt or betrayed in some way. It is easy to say that we need to forgive others. (Jesus tells Peter that we need to forgive over and over (seventy times seventy.)
It is not as easy to do what it takes to forgive or let go of our resentments. (A resentment has been described as an acid that poisons its own container.) We cannot always just “forgive and forget.” We need grace from God to follow the teaching and example of Jesus—sometimes we have to ask God to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves!
The first reading for this Sunday’s liturgy speaks of God’s covenant. The fulfillment of that covenant is the pouring out of Jesus’ life for us: “the new covenant in His blood.” We want our journey in life to be one of companionship with him, letting Jesus bring us to where we need to be.
There is a beautiful South African hymn, Ukuthula, that expresses so well this mystery of love:
Peace in this world of sin the blood of Jesus brings…. Redemption in this world of sin the blood of Jesus brings…
We continue to pray for the freedom to love and forgive as Jesus does.
-Fr. Len Kraus, SJ
Saturday, September 9, 2023
Thoughts on worrying
Pray, Trust, and Don’t Worry
“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”—Matthew 6:34
Occasionally someone will share with me their fears—about the economy, the direction of our moral standards, the aftermath of the pandemic. So many things seem out of our control. The apostles of Jesus were in a boat with him and panicked when a huge storm arose at sea threatening to sink them. They awakened Jesus, who immediately calmed the sea and wind and told them, “I am with you—I care—where is your faith and trust in me?” Their fear was gone. God was there and clearly in charge. The most repeated phrase in the Bible—over two thousand times—is “Fear not.” God’s messengers can confidently say, “Be not afraid” because they know that God is in charge of history; God is always present and loves us. Jesus said, “Fear is useless, what is needed is trust.” And I love the counsel of St. Padre Pio: “Pray, trust, and don’t worry!” When we are fearful, we need to trust in God’s loving presence and power to help. He cares!
Lord, help me to live in this present moment, for it is in the present that you reveal yourself to me. Let me have the wisdom to leave the past to your mercy and the future to your Divine Providence. Amen.
—from the book Three Minutes with God: Reflections and Prayers to Encourage, Inspire, and Motivate
by Monsignor Frank Bognanno
Saturday, September 2, 2023
Thoughts on summer
Good morning. Labor Day Weekend marks the unofficial end of summer. But we don’t have to be so doctrinaire about it. |
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Holding on |
This weekend, while you’re working the grill or attending a parade or sitting in traffic, conversation will turn, inevitably, to the end of summer. How fast it’s gone by, someone will remark, always incredulous. You’ll nod along and say something wistful about how you could smell a crispness in the air this morning, or how few weeks are left of good tomatoes. Someone will wail about having seen silos of candy corn looming large and in charge at the supermarket and the next thing you know, it’s fall. Time to put on long pants and real shoes, time to straighten up and fly right. |
Labor Day, nominally a holiday celebrating the industriousness of the American worker, also serves to remind the worker that they haven’t been quite as industrious as they might have been these past three months. All summer, deadlines and dentist appointments were easily waved off until After Labor Day, a time that felt far enough in the future that you’d be sufficiently rested to confront whatever unpleasantness these obligations entailed. |
In his eulogy for summer’s lazy days in The Times today, my colleague Stephen Kurutz mourns the vestiges of truly unmonitored working from home that this fall seems to augur: “Will we forget the small pleasure of sitting on a porch and looking at the yard?” he writes. “Of taking what some might consider to be too much time over a morning coffee? Of trading the daily commute for an aimless drive?” |
Why must there be such an austere demarcation between before Labor Day and after, between summer and not-summer, between enjoying our lives and enduring them? Why have we so internalized the back-to-school dread of childhood that it’s become a permanent feature of adulthood? |
I know there are people (many of them! and so vocal!) who enjoy the ramrod posture of fall, who find the post-Labor Day realignment invigorating. I’m not immune to the appeal of a unified buckling down, of the tacit understanding that we’ll put away our childish things and finally set a date for the catch-up lunch we’ve been gesturing at since May. But let’s ease into it. |
I challenge you, this year, to own every last day until the equinox (Sept. 23 at 2:49 a.m. Eastern in the Northern Hemisphere). Sure, the first day of school has come and gone, the vacation people have returned from their vacationing, rested and restive, muttering about Q4 and getting a jump start on Christmas shopping. But there are still three weeks left of summer, plenty of time both for nimbu pani and pumpkin spice alike. Plenty of time to integrate your summer self — looser, less fretful — into the incipient and inevitable enterprise of fall. |