My name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
You know, I was thinking this week here in Minnesota, we've been celebrating a bunch of saints' days last week,
the week before, this week.
When it comes to St. Thèrése, when it comes to Padre Pio,
when it comes to like all the angels and stuff.
You know, last month in August, we celebrated Saint John Vianney.
When I think of like two of those guys, Padre Pio and St. John Vianney,
I just think of like their remarkable lives.
And Padre Pio is just an example. You know, Saint Pio, I think they call him now St. Pius of Pietrelcina,
this man's life was just marked with all of these miraculous things that had happened.
And sometimes, when we hear about the saints,
we just we can focus on the miraculous stuff that happened in their lives,
like Padre Pio bilocating or Padre Pio, you know, his prayers like healing people not even just immediately,
he'd lay hands on people and they'd be healed or he would say a word and they'd be healed
but he was just even pray for them.
He got a letter and he'd prayed for that person and they'd be healed like on the other side of the Atlantic.
And just ridiculous, incredible.
Not only that, but Padre Pio, you know, had these these mystical experiences with our crucified Lord Jesus.
I mean, just where he had the spiritual and physical stigmata, the wounds of Christ, in his very body
and sometimes we can look at this and we can think, "That's incredible but that's not my life.
Like, I can never do that."
Well, yes. Probably not because it's all grace, right? It's all gift.
But like that's not in my life so what does that mean for me? Does it mean that I can't be a saint?
Does it mean that I'm not as great?
I'd point this out, especially when it comes when it came to like someone like Padre Pio.
Padre Pio was not great because of those miracles. He wasn't great necessarily because of the stigmata.
There was one moment in Padre Pio's life as a Capuchin friar as a Franciscan,
where these miraculous things were happening to him and his superiors said
that he would no longer be able to either say Mass in public or preach in public, that kind of a thing,
and Padre Pio rather than saying, "Wait a second. I've got all these great amazing things happening to me.
Don't tell me what to do,"
in humility and obedience, he simply did what he was told to do.
and I would say if there's anything anything at all that marked the holiness of Padre Pio,
it wasn't the bilocation and it wasn't the miracles and it wasn't the healings and it wasn't the stigmata.
What marked the holiness of Padre Pio were those two simple things: obedience and humility.
Now my guess is this:
Whereas none of us can create and none of us can be committed to, you know, gifts of healing
or the gift of bilocation or to gifts of any other thing like stigmata,
all of us can be humble.
And humility isn't saying "I'm so bad. I'm so bad."
Humility is simply saying the truth.
The truth of me is I've got certain gifts and I've got certain weaknesses.
My gifts come from God. My weaknesses, I need to hand over to God.
Simple. Super simple.
And the virtue of obedience,
to be able to say all of us, all of us have someone to whom we answer.
Someone whom we serve. Someone that gets to tell us what to do.
And all of us can exercise those two virtues of humility and obedience
and that was, essentially, you could say the secret of the holiness of Padre Pio
and essentially is the secret of holiness for every saint
because to be holy, to be a saint, is to simply do the will of God at every moment.
And all of us, no matter what your state in life, no matter where you're at in life, whether you are a Capuchin friar
or whether you're a mom or a single-person husband and dad, a priest, whatever you're doing,
all of us can do the will of God, which means this:
All of us,
by God's grace,
can live like a saint today.
From myself, Father Mike Schmitz, and from Ascension Presents,
God bless.