Our Lady, Queen of the Franciscan Order,
St. Joseph,
St. Pio Petrocina,
St. Linus,
our patron saints and guardian angels,
may the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
And for those of you who are liturgical historians,
St. Linus is also being celebrated today in the church's calendar,
but St. Pio Petrocina has kind of become such a popular saint in our days
that it's kind of clouded over the second pope after St. Peter.
But today is St. Linus as well as St. Pio Petrocina's feast day today.
Two priests, one a successor of St. Peter,
another a priest made in the image and likeness of Christ,
literally in his body, conformed to Christ and him crucified.
St. Pio Petrocina, Padre Pio as he was more popularly known,
truly was a marvel of our modern age.
And maybe God raised him up,
and gave him the stigmata at the same time that, you know,
in the 20th century where science was being exalted and, you know,
everybody thought they could explain everything, you know,
with the modern sciences and especially psychiatry and physics and that,
that they could not explain how this man had the wounds of Christ.
And St. Pio had a sense of humor because one day a psychiatrist came to him and said,
he had the stigmata because he was meditating too much on the passion of our Lord.
And it was psychosomatic that he was inducing these wounds in his body because he was psychologically
creating them because he was meditating too much on the passion.
And Padre Pio said to him, if you meditated on a picture of a bull, would you grow horns?
He said to the doctor in sarcasm.
But, um,
he definitely was a man of great holiness and everybody knows, of course,
his great love and care for souls in the confessional.
But he also, and many people maybe are not aware of it,
started a house for the relieving of suffering,
a hospital right across from the friary.
And much of the money and gifts that he was given because people started to come
and visit him,
he saw that that must be an opportunity that he can also use that charity that he's being
given to the friars and to him because God has given him this gift of the stigmata and
the gift to help souls in the confessional that he wanted to also relieve the suffering
of people in their bodies and their bodily afflictions.
So he started this hospital, which my understanding is that it, you know, it's a big hospital,
it's a big place, it's a big place in the world.
And he started this hospital, which my understanding is that it, you know, is a very big hospital,
but it's not a big one.
It is open to anybody who needs care and offers the care either free of charge or
only whatever person can pay for the care they receive.
And it's one of the better hospitals in Italy.
And that's saying a lot for hospitals in Italy because it could be, it's a lot different
there than, than here.
I would say that his hospital is following the house of the hospital that Padre Pio founded
is probably more like one you would find in the United States with the use of technology
and, and the care given there.
It is truly a monument to St. Pio's charity that he wanted to take care of everybody who
came to him.
Even the sick and suffering.
He also is a model for us of, of the greatest sufferings that Padre Pio endured may not
have been the physical suffering of the stigmata, but the spiritual suffering that came with
it.
He said that he was always in a constant agony when he was marked with the wounds of Christ,
that interiorly his soul was in a constant agony.
Experiencing the pain.
Experiencing the pain.
Experiencing the, not just the physical sufferings of Christ, but the interior sufferings that
our Lord suffered in the Calvary.
That abandonment maybe that our Lord experienced where no one came to his aid, of course, except
his mother.
But just that interior suffering that our Lord experienced was one of the greatest sufferings.
And also for St. Pio, the suffering of having the stigmata.
And feeling so unworthy of having it.
And I think that was the one, another great suffering was he didn't want the stigmata.
And wanted our Lord, at least he didn't want the visible stigmata.
He said many times in prayer to our Lord and said to his spiritual director that he had
asked our Lord to take away the visible stigmata and leave him with the interior, invisible
stigmata.
Because he didn't like being.
He didn't like it.
He didn't like it.
He didn't like a spectacle.
He just felt so unworthy of being compared to Christ crucified.
Even though he was, and we all are called to be conformed to Christ and him crucified.
He just saw how unworthy he was of being even associated with that, that great love of Christ
for us to be crucified.
And that was a big suffering for him.
That was a big suffering for Padre Pio.
Many times it would bring him to tears to think that God gave him, unworthy as he was,
of such a gift.
And at the same time, he would maybe find himself complaining at times about the cross
that God gave him.
So we know that the saints, you know, at times may have lamented.
But he took up his cross.
He took up his cross.
And followed Christ.
Another one of the greatest sufferings of Padre Pio was when he was falsely accused of
some immoral behavior of enemies of Padre Pio.
And people who were jealous of him, you know, accused him of sins in the confessional.
And he was deprived of the opportunity to celebrate mass publicly.
And hear confessions.
And that was another.
That was another great suffering for him to be, of course, thought of doing evil.
But being deprived of saying the mass and doing the priestly duties that he loved so
much.
I had the great opportunity while I was staying in Italy to spend a night at the friary of
Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo.
And hospice.
And he was there.
He was there.
He was there.
He was there.
He was there.
He was there.
He was there.
And he took some hospitality there with the friars.
And every evening they go at night after the Shrine is closed.
And they, when his body was in the old church.
Or the new church that was there.
Down on the crypt.
They would open it up and they would all pray the rosary around the tomb of Padre Pio.
And I remember there was an old friar there who lived with Padre Pio.
And, and I guess he was suffering from something.
And was praying for Padre Pio to, you know, multiply.
And, you know, that was pretty hard.
to assist him and he smacked the tomb
and he says Padre Pio answer my prayer
he was kind of fiery like Padre Pio
the Italians can be very
expressive but one thing that I was able to
do while in the friary was I got to go and
spend a little time in the
chapel that Padre Pio when he was
not permitted to say mass publicly
he would say mass in this little chapel
during that time of being
under censure and so I got a chance to spend
some time in prayer in that little chapel in the friary
where he was where he said mass
during that time period
but it truly is a great grace
to visit the shrine of Padre Pio
it's become the most popular shrine in the Catholic world
it even receives more visitors than Lourdes and Fatima
so many people come to see this priest even after
his death this priest who was marked with the wounds of Christ
this living crucifix of the 20th century
is although one unknown except holy we ask him to come and ask Padre Pio to assist us
and so then we came close to our San Marco they
then to the Aralean discovered
him leap inside the Th鉄ral
we asked Padre Pio to assist Priests in
their work of confession as Pope Francis has done so
who has a Gemara of the Holy Mercy which is of Catholic significance on that day and here I would like for a記得 to ask Padre Pio to attend Sunday service on throwing assembly to come and ask Padre Pio to lead us as he was so generous and so helpful to people in their needs during his earthly life as he was in Heaven people come to him and ask him to intercede for them both spiritually and physically and especially
reminded us that the church's mission of mercy must be there as forefront, you might say, in
speaking to souls about the mercy of God. We have an excellent example of the mercy of God and
encouraging people to make frequent use of confession, to go and receive the mercy of God,
the absolution of their sins, and to be restored to the friendship of God
is the greatest mercy that we can receive when we go to confession. And so Padre Pio, the great
patron of that sacrament, we ask him to assist priests in the confessional, that they will
see the importance of it and spend more time in the confessional and see it as an
opportunity to do that. And so Padre Pio, the great patron of that sacrament, we ask him to
opportunity to one-on-one bring souls closer to Christ in that great sacrament and that the
faithful will see that this sacrament is truly a treasure and that we should make use of it much
more often maybe than we do. I think that as Father John Hardin says, the church
encourages us to go to confession every two weeks at least because that seems
to be the desired time period for obtaining plenary indulgences and confession has to be a
part of that. And of course Our Lady encourages us to go every first Saturday of the month as one
of her devotions of the five first Saturdays. Let us pray and ask Padre Pio today also to
intercede for the Franciscans of the Immaculate.
Padre Pio is our special patron and protector. That's why we celebrate him today as a
solemnity, that he will assist us from heaven, that we will truly, you know, during these times
live out our vocations faithfully in service of Our Lady and her divine Son. In the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Amen.