# 54 OF 80 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO

# 54 OF 80 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://CINOPSBEGONE.BLOGSPOT.COM - TUES. JUNE 30, 2020

 

CHAPTER 26 - A DAY WITH PADRE PIO P.  289 - 293

 

"Padre Alessio described Pio in his prime "a stout, strong man." A reporter from the New York Times described Padre Pio in his sixth decade as "a hale and hearty looking, with a clear skin, a bushy beard and head of hair, a tendency to corpulence, a pleasant smile, [and] twinkling brown eyes." His most striking physical characteristic was, however, his eyes. Nearly everyone who met him was struck by Pedro Pio's "beautiful," "luminous," and bright eyes which seemed to penetrate his very depths of the soul. Those meeting him for the first time, who expected a pale, emanciated man, booming voice and hearty laugh, and extroverted character...

 

He never ate breakfast, occasionally had a cup of coffee during the morning, and, seldom if ever. had anything more than a few cookies and a glass or two of cold beer or fruit juice in the evening... Padre Pio consisted of but a few mouthful of vegetables and a few sips of lemon juice, wrote, "He also eats macaroni. cheese, peas, beans, fruit, liver, etc. and, as all good Italians, he drinks a glass of wine....

 

"Very well," said the physician. "These are spiritual things. What does the spirit have to do with the body." Padre Pio went on to say that he was nourished solely by the Eucharist. "It is the Lord who does this and not I. It is the Lord who is working in me."...

Padre Pio likewise needed very little sleep... However, he seldom slept for more than three or four hours in twenty-four nor had the desire to do so... In his fifties and sixties, Padre Pio's health was generally good. Father Dominic usually, in his letters to his relatives, describes his friend as being in excellent health... Padre Pio's day begun usually at 3:30 A.M. when his alarm clock sounded and he rose to prepare for Mass through nearly two hours of meditation and prayer...Father Dominic had been up for fifteen minutes, outside, at the Church doors, a huge crowd of people --- waiting for the sanctuary to open at 4:30 -- had been queuing up for hours... would be under attack by the "Pious Ladies."...

 

These wild women were the dismay of Padre Pio and everyone around him. Don Giorgio Pogamy recalled,..  All to no avail. The Pious Ladies crowded into the seats to the front of the church and the rest of the throng had to pack in ahead of him... the most impressive of his ministry was his Mass, which according to one Italian journal, made worshipers feel as if he were at the foot of the cross.

A Salesian priest observed that when Padre Pio celebrated, "the most intimate fibers of my being vibrated with feelings of emotion and sweetness which I have never experienced."... Padre Gerardo Di Flumeri described Padre Pio's Mass as "a supernatural Mass."...

 

Other observers went further, Paola Carna, Archbishop of Sessani, declared, "At the altar Padre Piop was transfigured. His face was deathly pale, radiant, and sometimes bathed in tears... Great silent sobs shook him from time to time.Everything about him told us how intensely he was living the Passion of Christ. One had the impression that time and space had been canceled between that altar and the Hill of Calvary....Father Clement Naef noted that Padre Pio seemed to spend ten to fifteen minutes adoring both the consecrated bread and wine. As he did so, his head jerked sharply from time to time, "as though he had been struck on the face..."

 

As he prayed the word of consecration, nearly everyone observed that Padre Pio seemed to be suffering intensely. Many he thought he looked like Jesus on the cross... When he received Communion, his face, which had been pale and taut, in the words of a priest who assisted him for several years was immediately "transformed and became beautifully radiant." It was at this point that Padre Pio once admitted that he felt all over his being the "kiss of Jesus -- all one mercy, all one embrace." ...

 

Sometimes Padre Pio reacted in good humor. Once, when a woman grabbed his arm and refuse to release it, he said, "All right, take it! You can have it! But let me go!" Another time, when a group of adoring nuns screamed, "Padre, give us a relic!" he shouted back, "Sisters, go back to your convent and make your own relics.!"

George H. Kubeck