And this is part two on the 10 spiritual tips from Padre Pio.
Hello friends, and welcome to this channel on Padre Pio.
And here we have a series of short stories on the life of our great Saint, Padre Padio.
He was a Capuchin friar, a mystic, a tremendous miracle worker.
Do stay tuned to find out more about his life and also to see what his intercession can
still do for you today.
We do encourage everyone to be part of this Padre Pio apostolate.
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friends and with your colleagues.
Reminder that we bring your intentions every Friday in a mass dedicated to Padre Pio.
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your intentions.
These points are taken from memoirs and letters to his spiritual children.
In the fourth point, we must always pray Padre Pio advises to God and say in every single
circumstance thy will be done.
So this is on Jesus as well.
Padre Pio wrote to one of his spiritual daughters.
"In all human affairs, learn above all to recognize and to adore the will of God in
everything."
He said, "Repeat often the divine words of our beloved master, 'Thy will be done, on
earth as it is in heaven.'
Now may this beautiful counsel always be in your hearts and on your lips, and throughout
all the uncertainties of life," he advises.
So thy will be done, he counsels to repeat this in all of our temptations and trials,
whatever trials that it may please our Lord to send our way.
Repeat this also when you are immersed in the oceans of love of Jesus.
It'll be your anchor and your salvation.
Now we can ask are distractions in prayer also part of the will of Jesus?
In answer to this, a spiritual son once asked Padre Pio, "When I'm praying and I get distracted,
does that mean I have to stop and to go back to the beginning and to repeat everything
again?"
Padre Pio said, "No.
Just keep praying because you will be distracted again."
Padre Pio believed that pray changes things in such a way that from a human perspective,
it's almost as if God ends up changing his mind as a result of our prayers.
Here's an example or two.
When Giovanna recovered from a severe illness, Padre Pio wrote this letter to her.
"That you were saved from the very clutches of death, there was this conditional intention,"
Padre Pio said, "that you would in fact, join your parents upstairs in heaven."
And he says, "It was only the many prayers that intervened in the fulfillment of that
intention."
Another time, and this happened during the initial months of the great war, of World
War I. Apparently these sorority sisters, they were on vacation in Savona.
That's Northern Italy.
When Padre Pio sent them this urgent message, asking them to leave that area immediately.
So they promptly responded.
They did exactly that.
Then later on, they asked, what was the reason for this from Padre Pio.
And he replied, "A great tragedy was about to occur, particularly under the beautiful
skies of Savona.
Victims and prayers have succeeded," he said, "at least for the time being in withholding
the divine wrath."
And similarly Padre Pio said, "It is true that the power of God triumphs over everything
overall, and yet humble and suffering expiratory prayer," he said, "prevails over even God
himself."
What if we don't know what the will of God is?
Then, are our prayers somehow wasted if the situation perhaps changes?
In answer to this, in keeping with church teaching, Padre Pio recommended that we wholeheartedly
pray for the departed, for the souls of the departed.
And in fact, when the Pope, the Holy Pope, Saint Pius the 10th passed away, Padre Pio
said, "I believe that his holy soul has no need of our intercessory prayers.
However, let us pray in the same way for his eternal rest since our prayers are never wasted."
So the idea is that our prayers will be applied somewhere else.
He advised the spiritual daughter as well.
"Even if your parents are in heaven, one should always pray.
If they no longer need our prayers," he said, "then they end up being applied.
Our prayers end up being applied to other souls.
So they're never wasted."
He even recommended this praying for those who are long dead.
He said this to a friend.
"Perhaps you do not know that even now I can pray for the happy death of my great-grandfather.
The reason he gave: 'For our Lord, the past and the future, they somehow just do not exist.
Everything is the eternal presence.
And so, because of this, these prayers that we offer after the situation have already
been taken into account."
And Padre Pio said, "And so I insist that even now I can pray for the happy death of
my great-grandfather."
So if something's happened previously, some tragedy, we can still pray for that and God
can take it into account.
And so that is the part on thy will be done, always asking thy will be done.
In the fifth point, love of the cross.
That is suffering.
And Padre Pio here illustrates what our attitude towards suffering, towards the cross should
be.
According to Padre Pio, suffering can in fact be a special sign of divine love for us.
"Without a love of the cross however," he wrote, "we cannot achieve much in the Christian
life.
It's an important ingredient in the Christian life."
And he often reminded people that our heavenly father desired that we should resemble his
son's life, even in the anguish of the garden and calvary.
And he declared, "It's like this."
Religion is a hospital.
And this hospital is for the spiritually sick who want to be healed.
But to do so, we have to submit to these sufferings.
All the sufferings include things like, if it was a real hospital like losing blood and
the lance and the blade, the scalpel, all of that, the bitterness of medicine.
And so to be spiritually healed, we must submit to these tortures of the divine physician.
Now, if things are not going right in our life, we seem to have many crosses, then what
should our attitude in this situation be?
Here we look at what Padre Pio advised that we must not grumble.
"Complaining is a voluntary habit," he said, "that kills God's love."
He told this to a spiritual daughter.
In his correspondence, he more than once quoted how with the Ancient Israelites, they were
prevented from entering the Promised Land because of their murmurings scripture tells
us.
So he said, "Keep your eyes fixed on high, on him who is your guide to your destiny,
the heavenly homeland."
Padre Pio said, "And why bother whether your way passes through the desert or passes through
the meadow, as long as," so this is what's important, "as long as God is always with
you, and you come to the possession of eternal bliss.
That's what's important.
Now Padre Pio used to explain the need to pause through suffering with the example of
a woman who finds herself, she's making a beautiful embroidery.
So she can see the pattern on the top and she's perfecting it.
But her son is sitting in a lower chair.
And so he's kind of looking up.
He sees the embroidery, the reverse.
He sees the little stitches and threads and everything from below.
And the son says, "Mommy, what are you doing?
I don't understand what you're doing."
Until the mother puts the embroidery down, and now he sees it from the other side, from
the correct side.
In the same way, we are seeing the reverse of the embroidery because we are sitting in
the lower chair that's on earth.
And here's an example of someone who's suffering, the cross, going through the cross, how they
should react.
And he writes this to a seminarian.
"I know my son that you are suffering," but Padre Pio says, "I counsel resign yourself,
for when suffering is born with a Christian spirit, it ends up sanctifying you.
And so suffer, but also rejoice," Padre Pio says, "because this suffering will one day
be turned into joy.
You will suffer, but never fear," he says, "with the prophet.
I am with you in your tribulation.
Suffer, but believe that Jesus himself suffers in you and suffers through you and with you.
And Jesus has not abandoned you and will not abandon you."
And he also wrote to the same seminarian.
"What do you think of this holy cruelty, suffering of Jesus towards you?
Do you think that he loves you?
Yes, my dear one, I know you will understand in paradise, and fear not then and let him
do with you as he pleases."
So that's on the cross and suffering and the attitudes we should have towards that.
The next point is offering up every single action to God.
Now, Padre Pio urged his spiritual children to perform brief mental prayers in which we
offer up every moment of our lives, no matter how trivial they may seem, we offer them up
to Christ.
He said, "Turn everything to God.
Live and move in him."
And in particular Catholics must offer their sufferings as a sacrifice to be joined to
Christ's sacrifice, to become part of his sacrifice on the cross.
Since Christ is God, his saving work included his sufferings.
It wasn't just confined to the first century of the martyrs, the early church martyrs,
but extends beyond time, throughout time.
And people of all centuries must in fact, unite their suffering, their experiences to
the saving work of our Lord Jesus.
So obviously not everyone is called to be a victim soul as Padre Pio was, but everyone
should still use these sufferings towards a good purpose, offering these sufferings
to God.
And of course, as Padre Pio would always do, we offer our sufferings through the blessed
Virgin Mary.
And then finally to Lucia Campanile, the Saint wrote the following.
He said, "Physical and spiritual ills are in fact the most valuable offerings you can
make to the one who saved you by his suffering."
Okay.
And then next time on the channel, we are going to complete the 10 spiritual tips that
Padre Pio had for our lives.
So please do join us for that talk next time.