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

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

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLPLOGSPOT.COM - SUN. APR. 13/19

PADRE PIO - THE TRUE STORY BY C. BERNARD

CHAPTER 8 THE DARK KNIGHT OF THE SOUL - 104-9 - OF 448 PAGES

    "Within this mystical state, Pio was frequently visited by invisible beings from the heavenly world. Writing to Agostino in 1912, he declared, "Heavenly beings do not cease to visit me and make me anticipate the delight of the blessed." On another occasion he wrote his confidant: "At night, as my eyes close, I see a veil come down and my paradise opens to me, and, rejoicing in this vision, I sleep with a happy smile and with complete calm, expecting the little companions of my infancy [his guardian angel] to come to wake me and sing praises each morning with me to the delight of our hearts....

Now, granted that the mystical life is in some ways incomprehensible to most people, such experience nevertheless tends to fit a definite pattern. This was true of Padre Pio. Many mystics have traced several definite states through which they can pass until they attain the highest state of spiritual exaltation that can be achieved this side of heaven. Evelyn Underhill and others have distinguished five stages which the Christina mystic usually passes on the way to "divine union."

In the first stage, which Underhill calls "the awakening of the self." the individual becomes aware of the spiritual world and begins the quest for holiness....

The second state is what Underhill speaks of as "the purification of the self." For the first time the person sees the enormity of the gulf that stands between himself and the perfection of God....

The third stage is called "the illumination," in which the mystic is overcome with deep awe and a "renewed ecstatic awareness of the absolute." An excellent example of this comes from the pen of Emmanuele Brunata, who was led to Christ bu Padre Pio in 1919: ....

In the fourth stage, called by St. John of the Cross "the dark side of the soul," God purges the soul not of its carnal attachments - which have by this time long since surrendered -- but of its very selfhood...

Ultimately, the dark side gives way to the final stage of Christian growth, the stage the Eastern Orthodox call "deifiation" and Roman Catholics "spiritual marriage." Jeanne-Marie Bouvier Guuyon describes the transition this way: "The soul, after many a redoubled death, expires at last in the arms of Love but ... reduced to nought, there is ... in her ashes a seed of immortality...."

    
Thus self-will finally dies, and the soul learns to say with Job (13:15), "Though he slay me, yet will I trust Him." Thus does the soul learn to love God, not for physical or even spiritual delights or consolations; and thus does it come to rest entirely in God. Then the self, in the words of Underhill, is "wholly penetrated - as a sponge by the sea - by the Ocean of Life and Love to which [it] has attained."...

Now Padre Pio's spiritual life progressed generally along the same lines. He has lefty a beautiful description of his "awakening" on a letter that he wrote to his disciple Maria Campanile in 1922 in 1922. It is the closest he ever came to writing a spiritual biography: ...

By 1944, while Padre Pio was still suffering from his"usual trial" Padre Agostino became aware that his friend and protege live in "a habitual intimate union with God." Even as late as 1946,  when Pio was fifty-nine, Agostino commented that Pio's trial had "abated, but not disappeared." In fact, it seemed to coexist with the friar's increasing "elevation in God."...

On April 18, 1912, he writes Agostino again: "Oh, how delightful the conversation was that I held this morning with Paradise! ... things impossible to translate into human language ... The heart of Jesus and my heart were - allow me to use the expression - fused. The joy in me was so intense and so profound that I was able to contain myself no longer, and my face was bathed in the most delightful tears."

Further, on July 7, 1913, Pio describes a vision of Christ. The Lord, he wrote Agostino, "immersed my soul in such peace and contentment, that all the sweetest delights of this world, even if they were doubled, pale in comparison to even a drop of this blessedness!"...

George H. Kubeck