# 31 of 45 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO!

# 31 OF 45 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO!

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONE.BLOGSPOT.COM - FRI. AUG. 9/19

 Padre Pio - The True Story By C. Bernard

Chapter 12 - The Stigmata   -  146-150

"Finally freed from military service, Padre Pio, during the spring and summer of 1918, continued his work as teacher at the high school and as a spiritual director to the boys there. As his reputation as "holy man"grew, more and more miracles were attributed to him. With some of them there are problems as they have been reported. An example of this is the famous story of General Cadona...

Around the same time, Padre Pio told Fra Alberto of another apparition of a soul from purgatory which also occurred around the same time. He said:

"One evening, when I was absorbed in prayer in the choir of the little church .... I was shaken and disturbed by the sound of footsteps, and candles and flower vases being moved on the main altar. Thinking that someone must be there, I called out., "Who is it?"

    No one answered. Returning to prayer, I was again disturbed by the same noises. In fact, this time I had the impression that one of the candles, which was in front of the statue of Our Lady of Grace, had fallen. Wanting to see what was happening on the altar, I stood up, went close to the grate and saw, in the shadow of the light of the Tabernacle lamp, a young confrere doing some cleaning, I yelled out,    

 "What are you doing in the dark?" The little friar answered, "I am cleaning."

    "You clean in the dark?" I asked. "Who are you/"

The little said, "I am a Capuchin novice, who spends his time of purgatory here. I am in need of prayers," and then he disappeared.

The friary had in fact been a novitiate before the suppression of the religious orders in 1886. Since the "little friar" did not give his name, Pio did not attempt to try to verify his existence from archival records. He did say a Mass for the "little friar" and never saw him again.

Padre Paolino, in a notebook he kept at the time, recorded another extraordinary incident. He was sitting in a chair in Padre Pio's room, speaking to his friend, when both of them, exhausted, fell asleep there in their chairs. Around midnight Paolino woke up to find Pio "half lying on the bed with his right elbow raised up on the pillow, his head propped up in the palm of his hand, his usual position for meditation. He was panting ... strenuously ...

By the dim light of the oil map, Paolino noted that Pio's face, normally florid, was pale, and his eyes seemed to be fixed on something, although Paolino could see nothing unusual in the room. At the same time, Pio spoke in the fashion that Agostino had overhead at Venafro, saying, "Yes, Jesus ...give me the grace ... I can't remain here on earth any longer without obtaining it from Thee."

There followed a deep silence. Then Pio's face brightened as he exclaimed: "Why Mary, it's you!" Silence again. Then Pio smiled and said. "It seems as if you are mocking me!" A few more moments of silence were broken when Pio exclaimed: "Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Mary!" Then he came to himself.... During 1917 and 1918 Padre Pio spoke increasingly about God being hidden from him by what he likened to "those mists which tend to rise certain mornings around a river." He recounted to Benedetto that, while the mists hindered his soul from "fixing his gaze" on Christ, his desire to gaze upon the Lord grew in proportion to his yearning.

Benedetto wrote back: "The mists are an indication of the nearness of God. Moses found the Lord in the midst of Sinai. The Hebrew people saw him in the form of a cloud, and as a cloud He appeared in the Temple. Christ, in the Transfiguration, was at first visible and then became invisible because He was immersed in a luminous cloud. God's hiding in a mist signifies that He is growing greater in your gaze and transfiguring Himself from the visible and intelligible into the pure divine."

Although Padre Pio did not feel intellectually or emotionally relieved, he resigned himself. "I  pray Thee, O my good God," he wrote, "be Thou my life, my ship, and my port."... George H. Kubeck 

P.S.Traditional America needs the intercession of St. Padre Pio.