Homily: September 23 - Saint Padre Pio, Stigmatist

Today’s saint was one of eight children in a poor peasant family in the small Italian village of Pietrelcina. His parents named him Francesco in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. Francesco was very devout even as a child, and at an early age felt drawn to the priesthood. He became a Capuchin novice at the age of sixteen, and took the name Pio in honor of Pope Saint Pius V, the patron Saint of Pietrelcina. and after seven years of study was ordained a priest.

Padre Pio’s love for the Eucharist was experienced as a burning fire; He said, “it would be easier for the earth to carry on without the sun than without Holy Mass.”

On September 20, 1918 Padre Pio was kneeling in front of a large crucifix when he, like his namesake, St. Francis, received the marks of the crucifixion on his hands. The doctor who examined Padre Pio could not find any natural cause for the wounds—they neither healed nor became infected, but would ooze blood continually until his death fifty years later.

The wounds of the stigmata were not the only mystical phenomenon experienced by Padre Pio. The blood of his stigmata had an odor described by many as similar to that of perfume or flowers, and he had the gift of bilocation. Padre Pio had the ability to read the hearts of the penitents that came to him in the confessional in ever-increasing numbers. He, like St. John Vianney, heard confessions for ten or twelve hours a day. Sin caused Padre Pio great suffering, as he realized its horror and how it offended God. Often when he absolved a penitent from mortal sins, his face would become contorted in great pain; afterward, the grave sinner who had just been absolved would sometimes feel as though he were literally walking on air or floating.

When asked if the stigmata were painful, Padre Pio replied, "Do you think that the Lord gave them to me for a decoration?"

So why did the Lord give Padre Pio the stigmata?

At Padre Pio's canonization Mass in 2002, Pope John Paul II said ,”The life and mission of Padre Pio testify that difficulties and sorrows, if accepted with love, transform themselves into a privileged journey of holiness, which opens the person toward a greater good, known only to the Lord.”

And to quote Padre Pio himself, "The life of a Christian is nothing but a perpetual struggle against self; there is no flowering of the soul to the beauty of its perfection except at the price of pain".

May the example and intercession of Padre Pio help us in our sharing in the suffering of Christ, may we know his love for service and for the poor, may we know his love of the Eucharist and the Blessed Mother and his perseverance in prayer, for the Glory of God and Salvation of Souls.