Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #407 Padre Pio and the Miraculous Journey of the American Soldier Who Met Him During The War

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#407 Padre Pio and the Miraculous Journey of the American Soldier Who Met Him During The War · Claymore: Become Who You Are

0:09
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, the production of the John Paul Touring News Center.
0:14
Speaker 1: I'm Jack Rigorger, host, and I'm glad you're with me in this crazy world, trying to make sense of this crazy world.
0:20
Speaker 1: I don't know, have you heard of Neil Tyson?
0:23
Speaker 1: Neil Tyson, so Neil Tyson.
0:26
Speaker 1: They refer to him on a bio from a site listing tickets for his live events which can go for well over $100 or more.
0:34
Speaker 1: And they say sensational astrophysicists.
0:38
Speaker 1: Neil de Gracie Tyson uses his charisma and scientific knowledge to make the study of space fun and exciting for audiences.
0:46
Speaker 1: And it goes on to say witness a live talk from this legendary scientist with Neil de Gracie Tyson tickets and prepare for a highly informative, fun journey into the natural world.
0:59
Speaker 1: Into the natural world?
1:01
Speaker 1: Huh Well, I think of natural world, I think of nature's laws, don't you Immutable things like gravity, things like the reality that we revolve around the sun, and the sun exposes itself to us every day, and if that ever stopped, we'd all be gone in an instant.
1:17
Speaker 1: When we, I think about natural law, the moral law written into human beings' hearts, how should I live Looking out at a philosophical kind of a stance on the world?
1:28
Speaker 1: You know what's the meaning of purpose in life, and all starts out with awe and wonder of everything around us.
1:34
Speaker 1: And we have God's revelation.
1:36
Speaker 1: And here we have.
1:38
Speaker 1: We come to discover ourselves right, our identity as sons and daughters of God, the meaning of purpose of our lives to give ourselves away, right To be a gift to others.
1:49
Speaker 1: That's why we're created male and female.
1:51
Speaker 1: And if we didn't figure that out yet, from the moral law and just nature's laws and just from looking at how human beings produce and reproduce, we think about happiness, we think about love.
2:06
Speaker 1: What is love Right?
2:07
Speaker 1: And yet there's so much confusion out there today with all this actual information that we have and we're given and all these gifts we're given.
2:16
Speaker 1: So here's Neil Tyson, this famous astrophysicist, and he comes out on a talk show, on a podcast, and he says well, the X and X Y chromosomes are insufficient because when we wake up in the morning now, don't forget now what I just said, this is a scientist, is looking at the science, right.
2:33
Speaker 1: So they're insufficient because when we wake up in the morning, we exaggerate the gender we feel like expressing that morning Today I feel like 80% female and 20% male.
2:43
Speaker 1: I wonder what that's really like to feel 80% female and 20% male, but any guys he goes.
2:48
Speaker 1: So I'm going to make, I'm going to put on makeup, put on a dress today, tomorrow, I may feel different.
2:55
Speaker 1: I'll feel 80% male and only 20% female and I'll remove the makeup and put on a muscle shirt.
3:01
Speaker 1: What does anybody care?
3:02
Speaker 1: What businesses of anybody's is it?
3:05
Speaker 1: Am I required to fill your inability to think of gender on a spectrum?
3:09
Speaker 1: My point is this is all about style.
3:12
Speaker 1: What you wear, the trends, it's how we establish gender.
3:15
Speaker 1: There may be some people want to be fluid within that gender identification, or maybe we just mix and match gender looks.
3:21
Speaker 1: Maybe I wear a beard and put on a dress in high heels today.
3:25
Speaker 1: They're expressing freedom in a free country and of course he's right.
3:30
Speaker 1: They're expressing you can, you can dress anywhere you want.
3:34
Speaker 1: You know, the problem, of course I have with this, if you're following me, is the stolen innocence.
3:39
Speaker 1: It's what we're doing to culture, is what we're doing to young children.
3:42
Speaker 1: With all this confusion, there's a woman that that wrote.
3:46
Speaker 1: Today I took my 14 year old daughter to the doctor and he and and if the renewed mask charades she writes wasn't bad enough.
3:56
Speaker 1: Halfway through the doctor asked me to leave over my dead body.
4:00
Speaker 1: I said this is my child and anything can be discussed with her, can be discussed with both of us.
4:05
Speaker 1: The doctor then proceeded to ask if there are any questions about gender identity, and she's looking at my daughter.
4:12
Speaker 1: Nope, I stopped it right there.
4:15
Speaker 1: We're not going to continue to fuel this madness, doctor.
4:19
Speaker 1: And she goes on to write don't let your child fall prey to a manufactured identity crisis that ends with us or it continues to lay more claim to more children until the family and our children literally become unrecognizable.
4:32
Speaker 1: Don't fall for the love narrative.
4:34
Speaker 1: This is a political path that only leads to pain and suffering for everyone involved, especially the child.
4:41
Speaker 1: There's a breaking news story from Libs of Tic-Tac, where a boy was crowned homecoming queen, beating out four girls in a Missouri school in Kansas.
4:52
Speaker 1: Missouri just got a.
4:53
Speaker 1: It's got sent a message loud and clear boys are just better at things than girls are, even at being a girl.
4:59
Speaker 1: Tristan Young, a male student who identifies as female, was crowned the homecoming queen this week.
5:05
Speaker 1: He beat out four lovely female candidates because actually identifying as the gender that you are is like so 2010, you know.
5:15
Speaker 1: So the insanity goes on and on and on and you just wonder where's it going to stop, right?
5:19
Speaker 1: Where does this insanity stop?
5:21
Speaker 1: And and it doesn't until until we actually start to come to grips with what sex means.
5:28
Speaker 1: Is there a meaning of purpose to sex?
5:29
Speaker 1: And of course, we've been explaining that and talking about that for a long time.
5:33
Speaker 1: But today, today, I want to just get away and just say I want to talk about the reality of Padre Pio.
5:40
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the reality of sergeant columbin, who met him, who saw him, who saw him and was his altar boy at mass, who my dad got to meet personally, and all the gifts that Padre Pio has brought into our lives since then.
5:58
Speaker 1: Sometimes you just have to walk away from the madness, look at the actual sun and the stars and see them and and dream, meditate on them.
6:07
Speaker 1: Huh Actually, walk into the world with the innocence of a child and just the joy of playing outside and skipping rope and throwing a football around the, the, the joy of being human when somebody hasn't put a target on your back and trying to steal your innocence right, the natural law written on the heart.
6:26
Speaker 1: Huh that, that this quest for truth, for meaning, for purpose and and to choose the good, to be good, and the peace that brings us right.
6:35
Speaker 1: God's revelation of male and female as this icon of trinitarian love, of of his own love itself On the child.
6:43
Speaker 1: That comes out of this that we have now put targets again on our backs and all of this craziness that we hear, and then we meet someone like Padre Pio, who has the stigma out of the wounds of christ, and we go, whoa, let's just pause and think about that for a few minutes.
6:59
Speaker 1: So I'm going to tell you that story.
7:01
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a little scripture about that, some meditations on Padre Pio From different people, and, and, and the way he asks us to pray himself.
7:09
Speaker 1: So buckle up and get ready for the rest of today's episode.
7:13
Speaker 1: So glad you're with me.
7:24
Speaker 1: So Padre Pio's feast day was on september 23rd.
7:27
Speaker 1: That was a saturday.
7:28
Speaker 1: This is the first chance I get to, uh, to record a podcast since then, um, so thank you for joining me.
7:34
Speaker 1: True story here, a true story.
7:36
Speaker 1: So it's exciting, uh, to tell you this story, and when I say true story, it's a true story that my father experienced personally.
7:43
Speaker 1: So, um, I've told this story before.
7:46
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to tell that every feast day of Padre Pio.
7:49
Speaker 1: You know the young people, uh, that I meet today.
7:51
Speaker 1: A lot of them don't know Padre Pio, and it's too bad, because he died in 1968.
7:56
Speaker 1: You know, I was 11 years old when Padre Pio died, so, uh, it was amazing when my dad was telling me the story that I'm going to tell you.
8:04
Speaker 1: I was, I was a little boy listening and of course, that had an effect on my life and and Padre Pio had since, uh, done some marvelous things for me.
8:13
Speaker 1: Before I dig in To today's the rest of today's episode, let me just remind you that we launched love ed.
8:19
Speaker 1: Probably, if you guys get my newsletters, you'll know a little bit about love ed already, but, uh, let me just remind you what it is.
8:26
Speaker 1: Uh, fathom of visionary.
8:28
Speaker 1: St Lucía Santos wrote the final battle between our lord and satan will be over marriage and the family.
8:33
Speaker 1: And this is the.
8:33
Speaker 1: This is the brutal battle we're seeing Today.
8:36
Speaker 1: In the focus of that battle, nobody Is got targets on their backs more than our children do, and the younger the better for the these, you know these cultural Marxists.
8:46
Speaker 1: It's amazing what's happening to our children in the school systems, in libraries and and just all over the place, right?
8:54
Speaker 1: So, love ed, love ed.
8:56
Speaker 1: What does it do.
8:56
Speaker 1: It helps children get love right.
8:58
Speaker 1: It it doesn't just tell them no, you know an abstinence program, a chastity program it's.
9:03
Speaker 1: You know all those things are important, but you got to fill them, you got to fill young people.
9:08
Speaker 1: So love ed is more than a program.
9:10
Speaker 1: In fact it's a mission to empower parents to stand up against a culture that seeks to rob children of their innocence.
9:15
Speaker 1: So we aim to equip parents to effectively teach their children about the beauty of love and sexuality within the context Of our christian faith, while protecting their innocence.
9:26
Speaker 1: So we're going to go on the parishes and help with that.
9:28
Speaker 1: So Parents and their children are going to have to pay for the books, the resources, but we don't want it to be more than that.
9:36
Speaker 1: So that's going to cost them about $50 a family, and so we want to be able to go in and present and facilitate this program without additional costs to them.
9:45
Speaker 1: And so we're looking for donors and so hopefully those of you listening if you know anybody or you yourself could could send something in to help us with this program, really appreciate it.
9:56
Speaker 1: And what really helps us if you could even send a small amount every month, that really helps us a budget, as we're bringing more people on, to bring this out throughout our diocese and then hopefully Throughout the country is really what we'd like to do, so pretty ambitious thing.
10:11
Speaker 1: Okay, so the story right.
10:13
Speaker 1: So many confused people.
10:14
Speaker 1: So while we were given a high school retreat, I had given a presentation, and we had four presentations lined up for that day, and then I had a small group.
10:23
Speaker 1: So a number of us took a small group afterwards to discuss what we're, what, uh, what we had discussed in the large group in the retreat.
10:30
Speaker 1: And so I'm sitting on a carpet, thankful that it seemed, padded with my back against the walls, and seated in front of me Were a dozen teenage boys, all high school sophomores, assigned to me for the small group discussion.
10:41
Speaker 1: So I threw open the forum for questions, comments and all almost immediately hand went up and one of the boys asked so how do we know that jesus really died on the cross?
10:51
Speaker 1: I mean, it happened a long time ago.
10:52
Speaker 1: How do we know that someone didn't just make it up?
10:54
Speaker 1: Well, I said, you know that's a fair question and I could know I could answer it in a number of ways.
10:59
Speaker 1: I replied, but let me answer it for you the way my dad did for me when I was about your age Dad was in world war two came home, like many other american gis, especially those stationed in italy, with stories about padre pil.
11:14
Speaker 1: A little background first, in case you haven't heard of him.
11:17
Speaker 1: Padre pil was born in italy and was ordained a priest in the Uh capuchin order at the age of 23 years old.
11:23
Speaker 1: Even as a young man he loved to pray.
11:26
Speaker 1: This is going to be key always to padre pil.
11:28
Speaker 1: He loved to pray this is the key to all of us today and especially loved to pray the rosary another key and he felt that jesus was calling him to offer his life to god as a victim For poor sinners and for the souls and purgatory.
11:43
Speaker 1: One day, at the age of 31, while padre pil was praying before jesus on the crucifix, the marks of the stigmata, the wounds of christ appeared on his own hands, feet and in the side.
11:55
Speaker 1: These painful wounds that bled when not ever, padre pil would say mass would last for 50 years.
12:01
Speaker 1: In addition, he had the gift of healing by location.
12:05
Speaker 1: He could be in more than one place at a time.
12:08
Speaker 1: He could read hearts, especially those who went to him for the sacrament of confession.
12:12
Speaker 1: He was incredible.
12:14
Speaker 1: After the war ended, my own dad and a couple of friends out of Chicago bought a small plane that they would fly from, a small I think it was midway in those days, but I can't remember the airport in Chicago they used to fly out of.
12:28
Speaker 1: But they used to fly from Chicago to a small airstrip near the Benedictine monastery in Atchison, kansas, and once there they would jump in an old car that they kept at the airfield and head to the monastery where brother Steve, a childhood friend and now a Benedictine monk, had received permission for them to hunt after the war on this vast property.
12:50
Speaker 1: In the evening they would join some of the monks and priests for dinner and drinks.
12:54
Speaker 1: My dad was a was a chef in those days and so were was a friend of his, so they they could hunt and then they could make some great dinner for the priests and the monks there.
13:04
Speaker 1: So everybody enjoyed themselves on one such trip.
13:07
Speaker 1: While helping to prepare dinner, my dad mentioned his devotion to Padre Pio to brother Steve, who replied you know, jack, my dad's name is Jack too.
13:15
Speaker 1: You know, jack.
13:16
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about Padre Pio, you should talk to father Columbin.
13:19
Speaker 1: He was also here.
13:21
Speaker 1: He is also a World War two vet who met Padre Pio when he was stationed in Italy.
13:26
Speaker 1: Well, that of course got my father excited.
13:29
Speaker 1: He wanted to meet father Columbin right away.
13:31
Speaker 1: So, with brother Steve providing directions, my dad set off down a series of hallways connecting to the other side of the building, where he found the door to father Columbin's room slightly ajar, and he knocked.
13:41
Speaker 1: Father, who was sitting at a desk, looked up with a warm smile and invited dad to come in.
13:49
Speaker 1: Excuse me, father, brother Steve mentioned that you were a veteran of World War two and that you know something about Padre Pio.
13:56
Speaker 1: I also served in the war and was hoping that you might have a few minutes to speak to me about him.
14:01
Speaker 1: With that, father Columbin's face changed.
14:05
Speaker 1: His eyes closed for a moment, took a deep breath and became reflective, and then he said yes, soldier, I know a little bit about Padre Pio.
14:14
Speaker 1: Come sit down.
14:16
Speaker 1: He began.
14:18
Speaker 1: I was a master charge sergeant in charge of the squad.
14:21
Speaker 1: We had been in many battles, first in North Africa and again as we pushed further north through the boot of Italy.
14:26
Speaker 1: One day we found ourselves near the town of San Giovanni Rattondo and a couple of the guys came over and said hey, sarge, aren't you Catholic?
14:34
Speaker 1: There's a priest named Padre Pio, not far from here who, we heard, can read your heart and mind, and a few of us plan to go to confession with him in the morning.
14:43
Speaker 1: He can tell you.
14:45
Speaker 1: He can tell if you told him all your sins, why don't you come with us?
14:49
Speaker 1: We're?
14:50
Speaker 1: This is a brutal war Sarge.
14:52
Speaker 1: We can get killed anytime.
14:53
Speaker 1: We've seen death and destruction around us.
14:55
Speaker 1: No thanks, I said.
14:58
Speaker 1: And I said I hadn't been a master confession since I was a kid.
15:02
Speaker 1: I don't consider myself Catholic anymore.
15:05
Speaker 1: One of the soldiers say hey, sarge, I think you're afraid to go to confession to Padre Pio.
15:09
Speaker 1: You got too much to confess.
15:10
Speaker 1: I think you're scared.
15:11
Speaker 1: I replied after what we've been through, I'm not scared of anything.
15:16
Speaker 1: Soldier, I tell you what.
15:17
Speaker 1: I'll go with you, and not only that, I'll tell Padre Pio everything I'm done, and it's quite a list.
15:23
Speaker 1: I'm gonna blow that priest right out of the confessional.
15:27
Speaker 1: He didn't know Padre Pio very well, did he?
15:30
Speaker 1: So he goes, father Columban goes on and tells my dad.
15:34
Speaker 1: So the next morning we got in a jeep and drove to San Giovanni Rattondo, where we got in a long line for confession that extended all the way up a hill to the monastery.
15:43
Speaker 1: The line was moving slowly and after about an hour I realized that we're never gonna make it there in time to get back before our outfit and wanted us back.
15:51
Speaker 1: Disappointed, we decided to head back justice and.
15:55
Speaker 1: But just as we started down the hill, someone at the top of the hill yelled out that Padre Pio wanted the American GIs to come to the front.
16:03
Speaker 1: The pilgrims can wait, he said.
16:06
Speaker 1: Astonished.
16:07
Speaker 1: We looked at one another and headed up the hill.
16:10
Speaker 1: I suddenly found myself in the front of the line and when the next person came out of the confessional, I went in and out down.
16:15
Speaker 1: I opened up and confess everything to that priest, just like I said I would.
16:20
Speaker 1: When I finished, there was silence and I wasn't sure what came next.
16:23
Speaker 1: Then, softly, warmly, expecting to get balled out for everything I did, padre Pio just said son, when you're a young boy, you dreamed of becoming a Catholic priest.
16:35
Speaker 1: Persevere and you'll become a Catholic priest.
16:38
Speaker 1: Wow.
16:39
Speaker 1: I walked out into the air, my sins forgiven, with tears coming down my eyes.
16:45
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about being a priest since I was a little boy and I hadn't told anybody about that story.
16:51
Speaker 1: The only ones that knew about that were my mom and dad, and they were gone.
16:54
Speaker 1: I hadn't told anybody else, but Padre Pio knew.
16:58
Speaker 1: That changed my life and you can see, my forgotten dream became a reality.
17:03
Speaker 1: You can't make this stuff up, can you soldier?
17:06
Speaker 1: He said to my dad Not long after Father Columbin met Padre Pio, john Paul II.
17:12
Speaker 1: Just about that time then, a young priest also journeyed to San Giovanni Ritondo.
17:17
Speaker 1: He spent a week in the company of Padre Pio and he asked them while he was there which one of his wounds from the stigmata caused him the most suffering, and Padre Pio divulged it's my shoulder wound, which no one knows about and it's never been cured or treated.
17:33
Speaker 1: Padre Pio never told anyone else about his most painful and bloody wound.
17:37
Speaker 1: Now myself, when I was later on doing some research about that, I was later to find out that, according to Pius Legend, saint Bernard of Clairvaux asked Jesus which was his greatest unrecorded suffering and the wound that inflicted the most pain on him in Calvary, and Jesus answered I had on my shoulder which, while I bore my cross on the way of sorrows, a grievous wound which was more painful than the others and which is not recorded by men Back in the 19th century mystic, anne Catherine Emmerich.
18:11
Speaker 1: We have this observation from her vision of our suffering Lord.
18:14
Speaker 1: When he was crucified, there was a frightful wound on the shoulders which bore the weight of the cross she had, she said, and unlike his more noted wounds on his hands, feet and side, this one, as he said, was not recorded, but it didn't make it any less painful.
18:31
Speaker 1: Young man, I said.
18:32
Speaker 1: Looking back at the boy, there is not a serious historian in the world that would deny that Jesus walked upon the earth or even that he died on the cross.
18:40
Speaker 1: The question is did he rise from the dead?
18:43
Speaker 1: Is he God and can he transform your life?
18:48
Speaker 1: Read about Padre Pio, john Paul II, get to know them and then turn your heart to prayer.
18:55
Speaker 1: But then talk to people whose lives have been changed and whose hearts have been transformed by Jesus Christ.
19:00
Speaker 1: You see, you're going to find people like Father Columban all around you when you open your eyes and walk into the story.
19:08
Speaker 1: How do I do that, he asked, and the other boys were interested and I said it's through prayer.
19:12
Speaker 1: You know, every single generation and every person stands at that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, just like Adam and Eve did in the beginning, each person from each generation.
19:22
Speaker 1: And standing there we decide Do we go for God or do we reject Him?
19:27
Speaker 1: Are we created in the image and likeness of God or do we create God and ourselves in our own image?
19:34
Speaker 1: Are we ruled by man and by passions and emotions, or do we open our heart to God and let God rule our heart?
19:41
Speaker 1: This is a decision we all have to make and it happens mostly through prayer.
19:46
Speaker 1: Get down on your knees.
19:47
Speaker 1: The first the three things I always tell people before you look at that phone in the morning just go right down to your knees and open up your heart and say your will be done, your will be done.
19:58
Speaker 1: And then, throughout the day, you're going to have temptations, especially when you start to open your heart up to Jesus Christ and use those temptations as an opportunity, as an invitation to prayer.
20:10
Speaker 1: Remember, temptations are in a sin.
20:12
Speaker 1: Every time I'm tempted, I just open that, open it.
20:14
Speaker 1: I'm not afraid of those anymore.
20:16
Speaker 1: I open them up to Jesus Christ and ask Him to come into my heart.
20:19
Speaker 1: You know the beauty of that you'll be praying all day and you won't get frustrated.
20:23
Speaker 1: And the third you have to act.
20:24
Speaker 1: You have to act.
20:25
Speaker 1: You have to act in the world.
20:27
Speaker 1: You have to be filled and become a person of love, and then you have to be that person of love in the world.
20:32
Speaker 1: And don't wait.
20:33
Speaker 1: Don't wait till you're perfect.
20:34
Speaker 1: It's going to be a while before any of us are perfect, isn't it?
20:38
Speaker 1: Just do those three things.
20:40
Speaker 1: But, saint Padre Pio, you would always talk about the grace to persevere.
20:45
Speaker 1: And so, first of all, what do we do at that foot of our bed?
20:49
Speaker 1: Just look up and think it's the foot of the cross and contemplate the face of Jesus Christ.
20:55
Speaker 1: Contemplate first, before anything else, the face of Jesus Christ.
20:59
Speaker 1: And Padre Pio said this in a meditation from Saturday may the grace of the divine spirit always triumph in your heart and give you more and more courage to face calmly and cheerfully the war waged by your enemies.
21:13
Speaker 1: See you, guys?
21:14
Speaker 1: You guys think you came into a neutral zone, didn't you?
21:17
Speaker 1: You know, you came into a world and it's all kumbaya and whatever I think or whatever I do.
21:22
Speaker 1: No, you came into a war zone, guys.
21:24
Speaker 1: You came into a battle zone.
21:26
Speaker 1: You didn't create the universe, you didn't write the big story.
21:30
Speaker 1: You didn't create the original fall.
21:32
Speaker 1: Did you your original sin?
21:33
Speaker 1: But you came into a story, right?
21:36
Speaker 1: This is the story.
21:37
Speaker 1: You came into a battle between good and evil, so you get down and you start to pray and you choose the side of what's true, what's good and what's beautiful.
21:45
Speaker 1: Padre Pio says what else can we desire than God's will?
21:48
Speaker 1: What other wish can a soul have when it is consecrated to him?
21:52
Speaker 1: What else do you desire, then, if not that God's plan may be fulfilled in you?
21:57
Speaker 1: Take courage, therefore, and go forward on the path of divine love.
22:01
Speaker 1: This is so important, of divine love.
22:03
Speaker 1: We're walking into a love story.
22:05
Speaker 1: It's always been a love story.
22:08
Speaker 1: Let us live, he said.
22:09
Speaker 1: Let us live, then, with a lively faith, a firm hope and an ardent love, with eyes fixed on heaven and the keenest desire, as long as we are travelers here on this earth, to dwell one day in heaven, whenever this is pleasing to God.
22:22
Speaker 1: Let us keep our thoughts.
22:24
Speaker 1: This is so important.
22:24
Speaker 1: This is so important, right?
22:26
Speaker 1: This is the second stage of our thoughts and our temptations Always, always, always, invitations to prayer.
22:31
Speaker 1: Let us keep our thoughts I say Padre Pio says Continually fixed on heaven, our true homeland, of which this earth is merely an image.
22:40
Speaker 1: This will change things for you, right, basing our trust on the promise made to us by the divine master.
22:46
Speaker 1: Ask this.
22:47
Speaker 1: This is what Jesus says.
22:50
Speaker 1: Ask and it will be given you.
22:53
Speaker 1: Seek and you will find.
22:55
Speaker 1: Knock and it will be open to you.
22:57
Speaker 1: Everything that you ask, the Father in my name will be given you.
23:01
Speaker 1: Padre Pio goes on.
23:02
Speaker 1: Yes, serene in our faith and tranquil and soul.
23:05
Speaker 1: Let us pray and continue to pray, because intense and fervent prayer pierces the heavens and is backed up by a divine guarantee.
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Speaker 1: Can you imagine?
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Speaker 1: Padre Pio and some of the saints and mystics all throughout history have opened their self up so totally that they've received the stigmata.
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Speaker 1: It's amazing, right?
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Speaker 1: I'm going to read you just one more meditation, because this brings us further in.
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Speaker 1: What are we looking up to again when we contemplate the face of Jesus Christ?
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Speaker 1: These are just the Sunday readings.
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Speaker 1: You know, when you start to look through the lens of the beauty and power of God's plan for us, once you open his heart, he's going to bring you on an adventure and he's going to woo you in a way that he didn't woo anybody else in the world, in a way he hasn't wooed anybody else through history.
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Speaker 1: You could just read almost any scriptures.
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Speaker 1: You're going to find this once you see through this lens.
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Speaker 1: This is the first reading from Sunday from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
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Speaker 1: Seek the Lord while he may be found.
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Speaker 1: Call him while he is near.
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Speaker 1: Let the scoundrel forsake his way and the wickedest thoughts.
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Speaker 1: Let him turn to the Lord for mercy, to our God, who is generous and is forgiving, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor my ways.
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Speaker 1: Your ways, says the Lord.
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Speaker 1: As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.
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Speaker 1: The word of the Lord.
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Speaker 1: When you unite yourself to Jesus Christ, your thoughts are going to go higher than you ever thought.
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Speaker 1: In the gospel reading from Matthew, jesus told his disciples the spirit of the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard.
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Speaker 1: After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he set them into his vineyard.
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Speaker 1: Going out about nine o'clock, the landowner saw others standing idle in the marketplace and said to them you too, go into my vineyard and I'm going to give you what is just.
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Speaker 1: So they went off and he went out again around noon and around three o'clock and did likewise.
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Speaker 1: Going out about five o'clock, the landowner found others still standing around and said to them why do you stand here idle all day?
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Speaker 1: They answered because no one has hired us.
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Speaker 1: He said to them you too, go out into my vineyard.
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Speaker 1: What was evening?
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Speaker 1: The owner of the vineyard said to his foreman summon the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first.
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Speaker 1: When those who had started about five o'clock came, each received the usual daily wage.
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Speaker 1: So when the first came, they thought they were going to receive more.
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Speaker 1: But each of them also got the usual wage.
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Speaker 1: And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner.
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Speaker 1: What did they say to him?
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Speaker 1: These last ones worked only an hour and you made them equal to us who bore the day's burden and the heat.
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Speaker 1: He said to one of them and reply my friend, I am not cheating you.
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Speaker 1: He said Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?
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Speaker 1: Take what is yours and go?
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Speaker 1: What if I wish to give this last one the same as you?
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Speaker 1: Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money?
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Speaker 1: Are you envious, because I am generous?
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Speaker 1: Thus, the last will be first and the first shall be last.
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Speaker 1: The gospel of the Lord.
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Speaker 1: So to unpack that, I'm reading the meditation from the Magnificat, and if you don't have the Magnificat you really should get it.
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Speaker 1: It's such an incredible rich monthly publication.
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Speaker 1: It's got all the daily readings, meditation, saints, all kinds of things in their stories and it's cost me $19.95 a year to have it sent to my iPad.
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Speaker 1: You can get the printed version for a little bit more.
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Speaker 1: So this is Father Simeon.
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Speaker 1: He's a trappist monk and he writes this.
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Speaker 1: It's really beautiful.
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Speaker 1: The bounty of the landowner.
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Speaker 1: And while I'm reading this, I want you to think again how we started this with Padre Pio's meditation Contemplate first the face of Jesus Christ.
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Speaker 1: That actually was something that John Paul II said often.
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Speaker 1: And so we contemplate the face of Jesus Christ and we're brought into this story.
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Speaker 1: We knock, we seek, we ask, and as we're doing that, what are we looking at?
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Speaker 1: Right?
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Speaker 1: Think about the power of this from this parable.
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Speaker 1: And Father Simeon says this the apparent arbitrariness of the landowner since I'm the boss, can I not do whatever I want Is only a worldly decoy containing the mystery of God's freedom, which is the very opposite of arbitrariness.
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Speaker 1: God must give the one in the same wage to all, because the one thing he has to give is His Son, single, whole, undivided, all-sufficient.
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Speaker 1: He who did not spear His own Son but gave Him up for all.
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Speaker 1: Will he not also give us all things with Him?
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Speaker 1: You can read that from St Paul, romans 832.
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Speaker 1: The point is precisely that infinite, bountiful mercy of Christ, impossible for any of us to merit, that puts itself listen to this lovingly in the place of the sinner of me, of you, in order to justify Him, me, you again, before the holiness of God and make Him worthy of participating in God's own holy life.
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Speaker 1: Think about that.
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Speaker 1: God is pure.
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Speaker 1: Have we ever come into union and communion with Him?
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Speaker 1: That's grace.
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Speaker 1: Don't forget the grace that God gives us participation in this union and communion, this life of God.
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Speaker 1: We have to contemplate that, we have to meditate on that, we have to own that because we're free.
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Speaker 1: This is the fulfillment of all righteousness, because God's justice, even while condemning sin, has always tended in the direction of justifying us, justifying sinners, raising us to the fullness of life.
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Speaker 1: With this unheard of event, though, of raising us in righteousness before God and into God and union and communion with God, it's unheard of.
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Speaker 1: How could this happen?
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Speaker 1: Well, it couldn't before the incarnation of the Word made possible God's.
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Speaker 1: What Humiliation in Christ Can you imagine?
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Speaker 1: God humiliates himself in Christ.
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Speaker 1: It's as low as he can.
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Speaker 1: Takes on sin, takes on death.
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Speaker 1: Before the crucified Jesus himself became the first of those whose abundant love makes them thirst until death for the fulfillment of righteousness.
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Speaker 1: It is this purely divine and redemptive conception of righteousness that Jesus is teaching in this parable, which is therefore a revelation of the depths of his own superabundant love.
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Speaker 1: Share madness to the logic of the world, but love of God is sheer madness to the logic of the world.
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Speaker 1: Jesus pays our wages in his own blood, enough to nourish us through eternity, before what he has received anything from us.
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Speaker 1: The whole exhausting process of hiring at different times of the day, the accomplishment of the work itself, and then the climax at sunset, at the moment of paying out the wages All this has been a drama set up by the landowner, our Lord, in order to provoke a conversion of heart in us all Through the illumination of the true nature of the kingdom.
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Speaker 1: This is the nature of the kingdom the God who loves us, who will humble himself, even humbling himself to the cross, to take on everything to bring us back into this life.
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Speaker 1: This is what we're contemplating Love poured out to us on the cross.
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Speaker 1: The bridegroom climbs the marriage bed of the cross, the parable this parable I just read is a catechesis meant to transform the natural man the fallen man though, who was always supposed to be supernatural in the beginning, before sin, but to transform now the natural fallen man and his pagan values and mentality into a Christian with a generous mind and redeeming heart of Christ.
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Speaker 1: See, our light doesn't come by from ourselves.
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Speaker 1: Our light comes from union and communion with Him, that is, into a being capable of bearing the full joy and glory of a kingdom where every breath is an act of love.
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Speaker 1: Don't forget our body and soul.
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Speaker 1: After the fall, cut off like a cut flower, the default position is sin and death.
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Speaker 1: Jesus comes in and takes on a body.
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Speaker 1: So this body and soul filled with grace, filled with divine life, he unites it in his body.
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Speaker 1: He pours this out to us.
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Speaker 1: So we receive this.
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Speaker 1: Now we have the potential for human flourishing, the potential for human life in eternity with God.
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Speaker 1: Now we have to act, see, that's the last part, to make it efficacious in this created world.
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Speaker 1: We have to act, we have to go out, we have to be that which we receive.
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Speaker 1: So to end, let me just give you a couple of little things that happened in my life.
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Speaker 1: So my dad, soon after that, encountered with Father Columbin.
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Speaker 1: Father Columbin told him the story.
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Speaker 1: My dad writes out a little check, a $5 check In those days he didn't have much money and he writes it out to Father Pio because Padre Pio was building a hospital in Italy and was asking for donations.
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Speaker 1: And sometime later the canceled check comes back and Padre Pio signed those canceled checks and so I have his signature here and I have it right in front of me as I'm speaking right now.
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Speaker 1: It's so beautiful to see his signature and there's a little smudge mark Almost looks like it could have been a little blood, but at least a little smudge mark right by where he printed that, where he signed the name.
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Speaker 1: Then I see a card here and this card was from his tomb.
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Speaker 1: When I was in San Giovanni Rotondo myself, I went to visit the tomb of Padre Pio and I was in Italy riding my bicycle through Tuscany one time and just at the last minute there was not something we planned this friend of mine and myself, we drove all the way across the boot to the other side, to the Amalfi Coast, found Padre Pio's tomb and guess what?
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Speaker 1: It happened to be his feast day.
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Speaker 1: I kid you not.
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Speaker 1: We visited Padre Pio the first time and the only time in my life, by accident really, not that I didn't have it in the back of my mind, but I never thought we'd be able to squeeze it in.
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Speaker 1: We found out, we had a day in between and we took off and we made it there on his feast day.
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Speaker 1: Finally, I'll tell you this story.
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Speaker 1: Sometime, many years actually, after that, I'm praying in the chapel of what was in my church and I was praying and I don't remember what, for I was praying to Padre Pio to help me with something and kind of just smile and say, padre Pio, I could really use a sign on this one, knowing that I shouldn't really do that or ask for a sign and didn't really expect to get a sign.
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Speaker 1: But I said thank you very much.
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Speaker 1: I know he was going to go to work on this and as I walked out of the chapel that day, I came out of the chapel and there's a table.
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Speaker 1: They're a pro-life table and it's always there.
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Speaker 1: It's always got flyers and pamphlets and stuff on it.
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Speaker 1: And I look over and I look down on it and right in the middle of that table of all these pamphlets, there's a blue wristband, a blue wristband.
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Speaker 1: And I thought, well, that's kind of strange.
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Speaker 1: They have one blue wristband in the middle of all these other flyers and things.
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Speaker 1: So I picked it up and on that wristband one side said Padre Pio and the other side said pray, hope and don't worry His favorite phrase, huh.
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Speaker 1: So I took that wristband and I just smiled at Padre Pio and I said thank you so much.
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Speaker 1: I put that wristband on and it was many, many, many years ago.
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Speaker 1: I never really remember writing down the anniversary.
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Speaker 1: It's too bad, it's amazing how these things happen.
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Speaker 1: But I have never taken it off.
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Speaker 1: So I've been wearing it ever since.
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Speaker 1: Hey, it's amazing what happens when you walk into the story.
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Speaker 1: By the grace of God, go.
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Speaker 1: I certainly don't deserve any of this.
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Speaker 1: As I look back at my life, it's been pure grace that got me to this point where I am today.
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Speaker 1: And we're still the work in progress, aren't we?
34:37
Speaker 1: Hey, god bless you.
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Speaker 1: Thanks for being with me.
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Speaker 1: Say a prayer to Padre Pio, for me, for the John Paul 2 Renewal Center, for Love Ed, and thanks for joining me everyone.
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Speaker 1: God bless you.
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Speaker 1: I'll see you again soon.
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Speaker 1: God bless you.