A Living Image of Christ, Suffering and Risen

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - September 21, 2007

Of all recent saints, the one who has inspired the most devotion is Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, the 39th anniversary of whose birth into eternity the Church marks on September 23.

One reason for his popularity is that he was a saint who prayed and called others to pray. He once described himself as a "only a poor friar who prays" and encouraged people to get together with friends, family members and fellow parishioners to pray in small groups. Tens of thousands of such prayer groups now exist across the globe under his celestial patronage. "In books we seek God," he said. "In prayer we find him. Prayer is the key which opens God's heart."

Another explanation of his renown is his fame as a thamaturgus, a saint through whom God works miracles. That reputation was already strong during his lifetime and has only grown since his change of address to the heavenly mansion. One of the most well-known of his miracles while on earth was the one obtained for a future Pope. In 1962, when Dr. Wanda Poltawska, a psychiatrist who was a good friend of Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, was dying of terminal cancer, the future Pope John Paul II wrote to Padre Pio asking for his prayers. Padre Pio responded by a letter saying he had prayed for her. A few days later Dr. Poltawska received word she was completely cured. That grateful Polish bishop had the joy of canonizing Padre Pio in 2002.

Perhaps the greatest reason for Padre Pio's enormous cultus, however, is that for 50 years he bore, with undeniable visibility in our modern skeptical age, the five wounds of Christ in his own body. These wounds would ooze with blood during the celebration of the Mass. Due to the power of television and video, the reality of what was occurring in his hands, feet and side was broadcast through the world. Countless teams of doctors described, after examination, how they defied medical explanation. And those wounds were a tangibly irrefutable reminder to everyone of Christ who bore those wounds first and mysteriously allowed Padre Pio to share in his own excruciating pain.

St. Paul was the first to share Christ's stigmata. He wrote to the Galatians, "I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body." That's why he was able to tell them truthfully, "I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." Because life with Christ can only come through crucifying in us whatever is not of Christ, St. Paul indicated that his sole glory came from the Lord's Cross: "May I never boast of anything except the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world" (Gal 2:19-20; 6:14, 17).

Padre Pio was a living commentary of the reality of union with Christ on the Cross to which St. Paul referred. Pope John Paul II called him a "living image of Christ suffering and risen" whose face "reflected the light of the Resurrection" and whose body, marked by the stigmata, showed the sole path to resurrected glory.

Two years before his priestly ordination, Padre Pio referred to this unique pathway of the Cross when he wrote, "In order to succeed in reaching our ultimate end we must follow the divine Head, who does not wish to lead the chosen soul on any way other than the one he followed; by that, I say, of abnegation and the Cross."

Christ does not call everyone to bear the stigmata, but he does call everyone to pick up his cross daily and follow him along the way of the Cross. It is under the Cross, Padre Pio said, that "one learns to love." It is for that reason, "Calvary is the hill of the saints."

Padre Pio was united to Christ on the Cross in more ways than by the stigmata. For decades he suffered from the suspicions and calumny of many in his order who were confused by and perhaps envious of his divine predilection. He bore all these hardships humbly, with religious obedience, as a "crucible of purification."

He was also united to Christ on the Cross through his word in the confessional. From dawn until dusk, his immobile cross was the wooden box of the confessional, where he would mercifully seek to forgive the sins that led to the Lord's crucifixion. To all who flocked to him, he held up the ideal of holiness, repeating to them: "Jesus has no interest outside of sanctifying your soul."

Pope John Paul II, who as a young priest himself went to San Giovanni Rotondo to confess to him, prayed at his beatification that priests today would imitate Padre Pio's example of availability and zeal at the modern Calvary of the confessional where sins are taken away.

"The life and mission of Padre Pio," John Paul II reminded all believers, "prove that difficulties and sorrows, if accepted out of love, are transformed into a privileged way of holiness, which opens onto the horizons of a greater good, known only to the Lord."

May Padre Pio intercede for us that we might follow him along that privileged way to such horizons.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.