Praised be
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
Today, if it were not a Sunday, is the Feast of St. Padre
Pio, a Franciscan friar who lived in our lifetime and who was known as the
priest who bore the sacred wounds of our Lord in his own flesh for 50 years.
There are many devotees to this saint today because they consider him as a
great miracle worker. But very few realize that this man taught us to love the
Cross of Christ and embrace it in our own bodies.
As in last Sunday’s gospel, the Lord teaches us, “The Son of
Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and 3 days after his
death, the Son of Man will rise.” At the very heart of the mystery of Christ is
the mystery of the Cross. It is Christ who is the Just One referred to in the
Book of Wisdom – the One whom the wicked find obnoxious because “he sets
himself against our doings, reproaches us for our transgressions, and
challenges us with violations of our training.” Jesus is the Just One who is
put to the test “with revilement and torture…so that we may have proof of his
gentleness and patience.” And indeed, he
was put to test. On the Cross, in the face of much cruelty and revilement, the
Lord was the perfection of gentleness and patience. He is truly the Wisdom from
above, as the Apostle St. James said: “pure, peaceable, gentle, compliant, full
of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity.” On the Cross,
Jesus truly manifested himself as the Son of God. His gentle compliance to the will
of the Father was the fulfillment of the 1st reading: “If the just
One be the Son of God, God will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his
foes.” On the Cross, Jesus truly became the last of all and the servant of all.
He manifested this when on the night he was betrayed, he washed the feet of his
disciples. He, who is the first born of all creation, lowered himself to wash
his disciples’ feet.
It is the simplicity of the Son of God on the Cross that
Padre Pio emulated. Even though he was famous on account of the stigmata on his
body, Padre Pio continued to be a very simple man: “I am only a friar who wants
to pray.” Padre Pio says: “Jesus
likes to give Himself to simple souls; we must make an effort to acquire this
beautiful virtue of simplicity and to hold it in great esteem. Jesus said: Unless you turn and
become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. But before He taught us
this by His words he had already put it into practice. He became a child and
gave us the example of that simplicity he was to teach us later also by his
words. Let us empty our hearts and keep far from us all human prudence. We must
try to keep our thoughts pure, our ideas upright and honest and our intentions
holy." (From a letter to Padre Agostino from Pietrelcina,
July 10, 1915. Diflumeri, Father Gerardo, ed. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina,
Letters, Vol. 1, Correspondence with His Spiritual Directors (1910-1922). 2nd
ed. Vol. 1. San Giovanni: Our Lady of Grace Capuchin Friary, 1984. 677-678.)
As on
the Cross, Jesus lowered himself to become last of all, so should we go with
him into the depth of his self-abasement. "In order to succeed in reaching our ultimate end we
must follow the divine Head, who does not wish to lead the chosen soul on any
way other than the one he followed; by that, I say, of abnegation and the
Cross." (August 14, 1914, Epistolario II, p. 155.)
Jesus, I trust in you. O Mary
conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!
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