Padre Pio and Maraschino's Goldfinch...
Now, Maraschino was a new postulate at the monastery, and so Padre Pio was his spiritual
director.
We can ask the question, "Can love in nature, which is created perfectly by God, can this
ever be wrong?"
Let's listen to the story to find out.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this channel on Padre Pio.
And here we have a series of short stories on the life of our great saint who was a Capuchin
friar, a mystic, a tremendous miracle worker.
So do stay tuned to find out more about Padre Pio and to see what his intercession could
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Now, Padre Pio at one point in his life, he was the spiritual director of the monastery
of Saint Giovanni Rotondo.
So that means he's in charge of overseeing the spiritual life of the new recruits, the
new postulants.
And there was this post into was nicknamed Maraschino, and he arrived at the monastery.
Maraschino was a true lover of anything artistic and also of anything of nature.
He absolutely love these things, perhaps he's a bit of a dreamer as well.
Well, one day Maraschino noticed there was this little bird, a little goldfinch.
It had flown into one of the corridors in the monastery.
It was now trapped there.
So Maraschino started dreaming of how beautiful this little bird would look in a little cage,
singing and chirping away doing all sorts of displays for everyone.
And so he set about catching this little goldfinch for his little cage.
The little bird was not so keen on this, and it hopped around and flew around, zigzagging
everywhere, evading capture.
But finally, the goldfinch was cornered near the kitchen.
And then right at that moment, so Maraschino is about to get the goldfinch.
Right at that moment, the bell rang for prayer.
He had to go to the chapel, but there in the chapel, instead of praying, Maraschino continued
to scheme and to work out how he was going to catch this little goldfinch.
And he visualized all sorts of ways of doing this and of making the cage, the best place
he could put the cage.
And even after that, he went to supper, and his mind kept on thinking of how is he going
to catch this goldfinch.
So we could say he was completely preoccupied.
And before leaving the refectory, Maraschino had only this one thing in his head, how to
catch the little bird.
Padre Pio as the spiritual director, as his spiritual director, had been observing Maraschino,
wasn't so happy about this excessive preoccupation to the exclusion of prayer.
And now this started to worry Padre Pio.
And so Padre Pio called Maraschino over to him.
And then, as if reading his soul, like in a book, he told Maraschino the following,
"You are losing your senses," he said "over this little bird."
How did he even know that Maraschino was preoccupied with a bird?
That he was thinking about the bird?
But he did.
And then Padre Pio proceeded to state and to review each of the postulant's ideas one
by one, to state each idea right from prayer through supper and precisely mentioning each
one.
So Pedro Pio, as we said, knew what Maraschino was thinking.
Each of these ideas and plans and schemes, it was going on in the postulant's head.
And he was doing this, of course, to help the postulant to see the way he was going.
Now later, when Maraschino now became known as Father Vittori, he recounted this whole
story, this whole incident to Father Copobianco.
And he said, "When I heard Padre Pio revealing all of my thoughts, one by one, with such
precision and accuracy and clarity, leaving absolutely nothing uncovered," he said, "I
was bewildered."
And so through all of this, Maraschino was able to turn away from this preoccupation
that had little to do with prayer or his calling, and he now was able to refocus on what was
actually important.
Next time, on this channel, we are going to look at how Padre PIO confronts, a ferocious
dog, a vicious dog that was somehow in the monastery.
But all was not as it seemed.
There was something far more sinister at play here.
Do join us for that talk.
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