12 OF 25 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO

#12 OF 25 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - MON. JUNE 4/18

PADRE PIO, - THE TRUE STORY - BY C. BERNARD RUFFIN

Chapter 3, 'An Example To All' p. 52-58

    "Another religious who knew Padre Pio as a novice recalled that when Padre Pio prayed, "He would weep many tears, so that very often the floor would be stained."

    Fra Pio appreciated the need for mortifying the flesh. A few years later, writing to a "spiritual daughter,"quoting Galatians 5:24, in which St. Paul declares. "Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,"he wrote: "From this it is apparent that anyone who wants to be a true Christian... must fortify His entire body on the cross. The mortification must be constant and steady, not intermittent, and it must last for one's whole life...." In later years he would modify his position somewhat, at least to the extent that he became aware that few people were capable of the degree of ascetical rigor that he imposed on himself....

  Extreme severity of this sort is a thing of the past. Moreover, If half of the stories told about him are true, Padre Tommaso had to be excessive even for his time and place. Most modern Capuchins, however suggest that not everything about modern traditional community was bad. After all, at least one very positive thing can be said for the old ways: they produced Padre Pio....

    Finally on January 22, 1904, Fra Pio went to the altar and knelt before the minister provincial, Pio of Benevento. He folded his hands between those of the older men and declared, "I, Fra Pio of Pieltrecina, vow and promise to the omnipotent God, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to St. Francis, and to all the saints, and to you, Father to observe for three years the Rule of the Friars Minor, confirmed by Pope Honorius, living in obedience, without property, and in chastity." Pio of Benevento answered" "And I on the part of God, if you observe these things, promise you eternal life."...

    Although knowledge of the Sacred Scripture was stressed somewhat less in Roman Catholic than in Protestant Seminaries, it was still considered essential. The numerous letters Padre Pio wrote over the years to his spiritual directors and spiritual children made it clear that he had virtually memorized the entire Bible - though he never quotes chapter and verse, and sometimes he gets his quotations slightly inaccurate as if the passages were flowing "off the top of his head." His letters are simply series of Bible quotation or paraphrases.... A statement from Scripture was for him"as sure and infallible argument."

    Long before Vatican II, Padre Pio insisted that his disciples study Scripture. "As regards your reading matter ," he wrote there is little contemporary literature that is admirable and nearly nothing that is edifying. It is absolutely necessary for you to add to such reading that of the Scriptures, so recommended by all the Fathers of the Church... On almost equal plane with Scripture was tradition.... In Fra Pio's early years, the popes and the bishops, who proclaimed the official interpretation of Scripture, virtually to a man, held what would today be considered a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible...

    Besides the Scriptures and the early Church Fathers, Fra Pio studied thoroughly the teachings of Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan St. Bonaventure,whose writings centered on an inner spirit of prayer and devotion, and whom Pope Leo XIII described as "the prince par excellence, who leads us by the hand of God." He was most deeply influenced by the two Spanish Carmelite mystical theologians, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross. Their teachings about prayer, contemplation, self-detachment, & the inner life embodied the spirit of the Capuchin Order at that time.

    Through his reading of St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, Fra Pio was reinforced in two principles: total commitment and the embrace of suffering. So total must a Christian's commitment be to God that he that he should be able cheerfully to renounce everything else in life, even innocent pleasures; identification with Christ means identification with his cross. Suffering, when joined with Christ's, is beneficial. Indeed St. Paul writes, "Now, I rejoice in my suffering for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the  sake of his body, that is, the Church..." Col. 1:24) 

    St. John of the Cross tells us to "strive always to choose, not that which is easiest, but that which is most difficult; not what is most delightful, but what is most unpleasing; not what gives the most pleasure, but what gives no pleasure." p.58 - George H. Kubeck