Did you know that Padre Pio actually felt the pains of eternal damnation? So we've
got to ask, is that a gift? Why would God actually do this to our great saint?
Hello, my name is Edward Urban and I present the YouTube channel following Padre Pio,
the Capuchin monk and miracle worker whose intercession is still so powerful today. If
you are new to our channel, then please do like, share, and subscribe to our YouTube, but also,
the best way to become part of our Padre Pio team or apostolate is in fact to enroll your
mass pre-intentions. Just follow down to the description below. Now, there was a concern at
one point that Padre Pio was just too strict with people. This concern was in fact shared
by some of his spiritual daughters. One day, several of them gathered together and told him,
"Padre, you should not treat others so badly, otherwise they will not return."
Padre Pio responded that treating them like this is like threshing wheat, where you separate the
wheat from the straw. So one has to beat the wheat when it hits the stalk of the wheat and
the wheat falls off and the straw remains and blows away in the wind. He compared it to that.
Our saint, in fact, could not give us a better image than that of separating the wheat from the
chaff to help us understand his attention to detail in the sacrament of penance. He really
wanted to go into the detail of people's lives and separate the good from the evil so that
the good would remain through confession. That's what confession's about, of course.
We must also remember that even John the Baptist use this expression when he speaks of our Lord
Jesus, portraying him with the winnowing fork in his hand, separating once again the wheat from the
straw and leaving the straw to its own fate. Padre Pio explained his method of action in the
confessional on another occasion to another one of his spiritual daughters, that is a Maria Fusco.
He said, "I have never tried to hurt anyone and always tried to comfort souls. If I do rebuke, it
is for the good of the soul." That is his motive and his motivation. So after this consideration,
which hopefully provides an explanation for Padre Pio's rigor in the confessional, we also want to
add our own personal consideration. For this, we look to his spiritual director, Father Benedetto.
Padre Benedetto, the spiritual companion of our saint, he wrote the notes of Padre Pio, which was
intended to be the complete biography of Padre Pio in which Padre Benedetto stated the following. So
now we look at note number 45 and "Padre Pio," he says, "experienced the torments of hell in which
he saw the damned suffering." So he experienced the torments and he saw the suffering.
Padre Benedetto tells us, "About two years ago," that is in 1919,
"these tortures in fact took place every 10 to 15 days," approximately every second week. In fact,
Padre Pio experienced the complete suffering, the grief of the senses and the suffering of both body
and soul that the condemned were experiencing amongst the demons. The reason for this was in
fact that he would save himself and others from the place that would be their destiny, our destiny
if grace did not intervene in our lives to help. So it would not be far from the truth to say that
Padre Pio was affirming through the confession the consequences of hell. That is the only real
eternal misfortune, which is the result, in fact, of the violation of God's law.
Through bad habit, this can become irreversible. This was the grounds for his intervention, which
may seem to have been, at one point, excessive, but in reality, bears the maximum witness for the
careless ones who are walking right on the edge of the abyss. Padre Pio was trying to help them
or God was going to use Padre Pio to help them through visions like this. I'm sure that Padre
Pio would want us to do something with this today so the reflection does not go to waste. So perhaps
we can just spend a few minutes reflecting on the truth that Padre Pio thought was so important,
that God thought was so important that he revealed it to Padre Pio in such a way.