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

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

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - THURS. JUNE 21/18

Padre Pio, The True Story  by C. Bernard Ruffin

Chapter 4 - Heavenly Secrets - 61- 65

    "From the beginning of his seminary studies, Fra Pio heard voices and experienced visions. The modern reader, even the modern Christian reader, may tend to be somewhat skeptical about alleged visions and supernatural voices, preferring to pass over this aspect of Padre Pio's life. One cannot do this and still understand Pio, since his contact with the invisible world was an essential aspect of existence....

     Padre Pio had numerous bodily visions of celestial as well as infernal beings who were as vividly present to him as were his flesh-and-blood colleagues. As we will see, he claimed that he was actually beaten and bloodied by demons and that he actually kissed the hands of Christ....

 

    Then he speaks of the bodily, or "human," manifestations. He says that they are usually visions of the Lord in human form - at the Last Supper, in the Garden, bound to the column and being scourged. or glorious and resplendent in the Resurrection and the Ascension. There are also visions of the Virgin Mary and "other exalted heavenly beings." Although these were "in human form and appearance" and he could describe them more accurately than visions without from, he preferred to remain "in perfect reticence, because we do wrong when, in expressing ourselves, we see the great distance between the thing that is perceived within our consciousness and that which we are able to express in words."...

 

    "I come forth from them always more penetrated by a sense of my own unworthiness. In this light I realize that I am the most miserable of the creatures that have ever seen the light. I feel greatly detached from this wretched world. I feel myself to be in the land of exile .... and I suffer immensely to see how few among my companions in misery aspire as I do to the Promised Land. I always feel ever more full of the goodness of God, and I groan that there might be at least few who love him wholeheartedly. I suffer in seeing myself so poor, for no other reason than that not being able to offer anything as a sign of gratitude to so excellent Benefactor."

 

       "Another result of these "locutions" was a great, continuous peace. "I feel myself strongly consumed by an exceedingly powerful desire to please God." he wrote, "The Lord who favored me with this grace causes me to look with immense revulsion upon that which does help me to drawn near to God." Fra Pio was totally reluctant yo discuss his "heavenly secrets" with anyone, but through "Holy Obedience," he was bound to do so with his superiors, who decided it was advisable to assign him a "Spiritual Director." St. John of the Cross  believed that every committed Christian should have a spiritual guide to make plain the will of God in every circumstance of life. The disciple makes a commitment of obedience to his spiritual director....

 

    "A spiritual director is supposed to be learned and holy, and Fra Pio's superior settled on a man who was considered to be one of the holiest and most learned in the province. He was a young professor of philosophy and physics, Padre Benedetto Nardella of St. Marco in Lamis. Fra Pio had studied under him from 1905 to 1906, and Benedetto had been very much impressed by the young man's spiritual precocity. He felt a great affinity with him because he, too, was a mystic and, at least to some extent, was favored by visions and locutions....

 

    When Padre Pio of Benevento died in 1908, Padre Benedetto was elected to replace him as minister provincial. Photographs revel Benedetto to have been an impressive-looking man of stout build whose regular features were almost obscured by a gigantic black beard and a profusion of black hair.... At times he seemed almost tyrannical, and was characterized by Pio as hardheaded. Nonetheless, Pio always held the man he called "Dear Daddy" in utmost reverence and respect. Daddy insisted that Pio describe in detail all of his mystical experiences.... Padre Benedetto warned that there was also the danger that such apparent revelations cam from  nature, from the devil, or from "the very propensity or fondness we have for believing what we consider to be revealed." ... Padre Pio was later to write that in his various spiritual trials he could find calm only in the counsels of Padre Benedetto.

 

    Around the same time, Fra Pio formed a deep and lasting relationship with another teacher, Padre Agostino of San Marco in Lamis, under whom he had first studied sacred theology at Serracapriola in 1907.... Agostino, who was also to become renowned as a preacher, studied French and Greek in state universities and eventually earned a laureate in philosophy.... George H. Kubeck