The Secret of St. Padre Pio’s Stigmata

Zenit has the goods:

These revelations have been released in a book titled “Padre Pio Sotto Inchiesta: l”Autobiografia Segreta’” (“Padre Pio Under Investigation: The ‘Secret Autobiography’”). The volume is prefaced by Vittorio Messori and edited by Father Franceso Castelli, historian for the beatification cause of Pope John Paul II and professor of modern and contemporary history of the Church at the Romano Guardini Institute for Religious Sciences in Taranto, Italy.

Until the publication of this book, many assumed that Padre Pio — whether for reasons of modesty or because he thought himself unworthy of the charisms he had received — had never disclosed to anyone what happened on the day he received the stigmata.

The only known reference to these events was in a letter Padre Pio sent to his spiritual director, Father Benedetto da San Marco in Lamis, in which he speaks of the appearance of a “mysterious person” but does not offer any details.

The new book, which contains the first complete version of the report penned by Bishop Raffaele Rossi of Volterra, (later cardinal), apostolic visitor sent by the Holy See to secretly investigate Padre Pio, clarifies that on the occasion of the reception of the stigmata the saint had a conversation with the crucified Christ.

The book also contains a number of statements that Padre Pio made under oath, which provide an interpretive key to Bishop Rossi’s report.

Asked to swear on the Gospel, Padre Pio for the first time revealed the identity of the one from whom he received the wounds.

It was June 15, 1921, and in answer to a question posed by Bishop Rossi, Padre Pio said: “On Sept. 20, 1918, I was in the choir of the church after celebrating Mass, making the thanksgiving when I was suddenly overtaken by powerful trembling and then there came calm and I saw Our Lord in his crucified form.

“He was lamenting the ingratitude of men, especially those consecrated to him and favored by him.”

“Then,” Padre Pio continued, “his suffering was apparent as was his desire to join souls to his Passion. He invited me to let his pains enter into me and to meditate on them and at the same time concern myself with the salvation of others. Following this, I felt full of compassion for the Lord’s pains and I asked him what I could do.

“I heard this voice: ‘I will unite you with my Passion.’ And after this the vision disappeared, I came back to myself, my reason returned and I saw these signs here from which blood flowed. Before this I did not have these.”

Padre Pio then said that the stigmata were not the result of a personal request of his own but came from an invitation of the Lord, who, lamenting the ingratitude of men, and consecrated persons in particular, conferred on Padre Pio a mission as the culmination of an interior mystical journey of preparation.

Christ is the Founder of Christianity

From Asia News Italy:

Christianity “was not born from a myth or an idea, but from meeting Jesus of Nazareth, the risen Christ,” i.e. from the human events that Saint Paul sought to know and which he had already talked about in the 30s AD. In today’s general audience Pope Benedict XVI focused on the importance Saint Paul ascribed to tradition and the events in Jesus’ earthly life before some 15,000 faithful present in St Peter’s Square in this beautiful autumn day. For the Pope the importance and attention the Apostle gave to what Jesus said and did “on the roads of Galilee” is evidence of the “error” made by those who view the former as the “founder of Christianity.”
“Before he began to evangelise, he met Christ on the way to Damascus,” the Pontiff said, “He spent time in church, observing him in the life of the Twelve Apostles and those who followed him on the roads of Galilee.” Indeed Paul “never met Jesus, which is why he felt the need to consult the first disciples.”

In Galatians he talks about his contacts, “first and foremost with Peter, chosen as the rock upon which the Church was being built.

He met Peter in Jerusalem “where he stayed for 15 days to consult him, get information about the earthly life of the Risen who,” after Damascus, “was changing his life,” said the Pope, “transforming him from a persecutor of the Church into an apostle.”

In view of “the kind of information he got in Jerusalem,” with Paul writing several times that he “faithfully related what he received,” the Pope stressed that in this information one can see “the constitutive elements of the Church, namely the Eucharist and the resurrection,” elements “already formulated in the 30s AD.”

“For Paul the words of the Last Supper are the core of the Church’s life as it was built around this centre,” and around which “it is continuously born.”

“On the one hand,” words of “great impact [. . .] are a sign that the Eucharist shed light on the curse of the Cross whilst turning it into a blessing [. . .]; on the other, they illustrate the Resurrection.”

The roll of apparitions to the Apostles Paul made “ends with Damascus [when] “Last of all [. . .] he appeared to me.”

Here the emphasis is on “his unworthiness in being considered an apostle like those who preceded him. But divine grace was not in vain. [. . .] So I and they preach the same faith, the same Gospel of Jesus.”

Paul “focused on the fact that He gave himself to the Father to free us from our sins and from death.”

“For your sake,’ he wrote in Corinthians, “he became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

“It is worth noting how the verb was used,” the Pope said, for “He is risen, not was risen” because “the Resurrection has touched the lives of believers until the present.” Hence, “we can consider ‘He is risen’ to mean he continues to live in the Eucharist.”

My Two Favorite Columnists

One writes about life, the other about sports.

Anyone who knows me will understand why I readily related to Craig Wilson’s piece in USA Today–in fact, I’ll bet I’ve already made two or three errors in this sentence. What most readers don’t know, is that many writers (most) can’t (and don’t care to) punctuate a sentence correctly. Read some of Thomas Merton’s unedited journals for a great example of this. Behind every great author, there is an even better editor (or in some cases a couple–someone who edited the substance, and another who edited for grammar and spelling). So it is with great joy that I present Craig Wilson’s piece:

Today is National Punctuation Day, a day set aside to reflect on the fact a semicolon is not a medical problem. At least that’s what NPD founder Jeff Rubin, a former newspaperman, wants to impart.
I hesitate to write about punctuation since it has never been my strong suit. Commas especially. Or is it commas, especially?
I have long held the belief that I must have been sick the day commas were taught. Where to put them. When to use them. When not to use them. Do you put one before the conjunction in a simple series of three or more items? (The answer is yes. I just looked it up on Rubin’s website, nationalpunctuationday.com)
Because of my comma condition, I have driven more than a few editors crazy, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
“Weren’t you ever taught about commas?” one editor barked at me early in my newspaper career.
“No,” I answered. “I was sick that day.”
“Obviously,” he said.
And so he would insert commas where commas belonged, and we went to press. After that, I would put commas most everywhere. Like, after, every, word. Just for good measure.
Then another editor would bark at me.
“Was there a sale on commas somewhere?” she would ask.
“I guess there was,” I would reply.
And then she would go back, remove most of them, and we went to press. I would then go back to never putting a comma in any sentence no matter how long laborious lovely or lively.
Correct punctuation, like good conversation, has become a lost art. That’s why Rubin began NPD a few years ago.
E-mail has not helped any, mainly because it’s often communication through sentence fragments. Dashes and ellipses galore. Maybe that’s why I use lots of exclamation points in my e-mail. It’s not that my sentence fragments are exciting. I’m just trying to make them so. Like this!
My journalism professor, who loathed exclamation points, is rolling in his grave, and if he’s not there yet, I’m sure an e-mail from me could send him there.
His rule: Never use an exclamation point unless the sentence is about the end of the world, and the end of the world is tomorrow. Example: The end is near!
F. Scott Fitzgerald understood the exclamation point. He said, “An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.”
I’ll try to remember that. I’ll also try to remember the rule about semicolons. I’ve used them on occasion, but once an editor removed one from a story. He called it pretentious. He said a period worked just as well.
He was right, of course. We hate nothing more (please insert exclamation point).

The other great columnist of our era, writes for the Orlando Sentinel now, but started out writing for the Gainesville Sun, then later for the Florida Times Union (the Jacksonville daily).Mike Bianchi loves college football and the passion that fans have for the game. He writes in his blog Open Mike:

Once when I was a columnist in Gainesville, I picked the Gators to lose a big game against Tennessee. The following week, I received an aromatic letter in the mail. One disgruntled reader, upset with my prediction, literally used my column as toilet paper, stuck it in an envelope and mailed it to me with this message: “I have to put up with your $#!#! Now you have to put up with mine!”

He always finds a way to bring humor and insight to his writing. Take this quip about the Florida-Tennessee match-up that took place last Saturday (that Florida won 30-6). From the Orlando Sentinel:

Maybe it’s appropriate that there’s a checkerboard pattern in Tennessee’s end zone. Fulmer is indeed playing checkers. The problem is Meyer is playing chess.