Lessons From Padre Pio

Padre Pio seemed to know aspects of the lives of his penitents which they tried to hide from him or even from themselves. 

Albert Cardone first learned of Padre Pio in 1944, when he was eighteen, through the testimony of a neighbor, whose name he could not disclose because she may still have been alive at the time when he related the incident in March 1990:

 "She went to confession. Padre Pio, before giving her absolution, said, 'Try to remember the other sin.' The woman said, 'Padre, I think I gave you all the sins I know and I think this is it.' Padre Pio said, 'Then, for your penance, go to the cross to say fifteen Ave Marias and fifteen Our Fathers.' 

Now the cross was at the top of the mountain. The penance was not the Aves or the Our Fathers, it was the journey to get there, as it was a very bad road... So she did that and said the prayers and went back to Padre Pio for a second confession and Padre Pio asked, 'Do you remember all your sins?' She said, 'Padre Pio, I've confessed everything.' 

Padre Pio said. 'No, you still don't remember all. You've got to go to the cross at the top of the mountain again.'


She went for the second time and when she still did not remember he sent her for the third time to the cross on the mountaintop. When she returned for the third time for confession, Padre Pio asked, 'So, do you remember everything now?' She replied, 'No, Padre, I don't have anything more to confess.' Then Padre Pio said in a loud voice, 'What do you mean, you don't remember anything? 

Don't you know he could have been a good priest, a bishop, even a cardinal?' She started to think and then began to cry, 'Father,' she said, 'I never knew abortion was a sin.' 

'What do you mean,' he said, 'you didn't know that this was a sin...Abortion is Murder!'  

Then she said, Nobody knows about this, only me and my mother. How could you say the baby would have been a priest or a cardinal?'  Padre Pio responded by saying, 'It's a sin, a despicably evil sin.' 

Padre Pio On Abortion of Children
with Possible Disabilities

The following was told by Mary Pyle to author Dorothy Gaudiose: 

One morning, Mary met a distinguished-looking woman who asked Mary to pray for her. The woman was accompanied by two of her daughters, one fourteen years old and the other four. The older daughter was deaf and dumb, but the younger one was normal. The woman had left her other two children at home-a girl and a boy, both deaf and dumb. 


Between spells of sobbing, the woman told Mary why she was there. On her third pregnancy, when she already had two deaf and dumb daughters and was feeling the same symptoms she had experienced during her first two pregnancies, she feared that the third would also be born deaf and dumb. Both she and her husband felt that they would not be able to stand the suffering of seeing most of their children deaf and dumb. 


The struggle was great, but finally, with her husband’s consent, the woman made the decision to have an abortion. From that moment on, she had no peace. The woman went to confession. The priest who heard her confession, after sharply rebuking her, extracted a promise from her that she would do no such thing again, and absolved her. Still, she did not feel calm. 

As her uneasy continued, she decided to go to Padre Pio.  With trepidation she approached Padre Pio’s confessional. He had no sooner opened the shutter than he shouted at her: "Assassin! You have murdered your child!" And he closed the shutter of his confessional and left. 


Pierced by suffering, the woman returned home and told her husband everything that had occurred. They were both distraught and spent several days wondering what they had done and about what they had been told. 


The woman became pregnant again. This time a boy was born; and he too was deaf and dumb. The woman returned to San Giovanni Rotondo. In the confessional, Padre Pio said to her only these words:

 "Do God’s will." 

The woman had still another child. This one was a beautiful little girl. Padre Pio, after blessing the oldest of the woman’s daughters, placed his hand on the newborn girl’s head and, looking into the mother’s eyes, said: 

"You see what comes of doing God’s will? This little girl will always be good, beautiful, clever. She will always remain beside her mother." 

Jesus Christ is the Key to all locks

"Seek Me in the midst of the battle," the Lord spoke in an inspiration,  to a Christian woman named Sarah Young.

 "Sometimes events whirl around you so quickly that they become a blur. Whisper My Name in recognition that I am still with you. Without skipping a beat in the activities that occupy you, you find strength and peace through praying My Name. Later, when the happenings have run their course, you can talk with Me more fully. Accept each day as it comes to you. Do not waste your time and energy wishing for a different set of circumstances. Instead, trust Me enough to yield to My design and purposes," 

Sarah wrote in Jesus Calling. "Remember that nothing can separate you from My loving Presence; you are Mine. Nothing can separate us, that is, but hatred; but confusion."

Power comes quickly when we think of Him in that desert and repeat over and over in our minds in the midst of busyness or perplexity:  

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus..."  

The Eucharist Seen Through the Eyes of the Holy Church Fathers

Carlos Mwangi from Nairobi has a Powerful Heavenly Vision

On 2010, Carlos Mwangi, from Nairobi, Kenya, fell into a trance and was shown that when the rapture occurs, it will be at around 6pm on a Saturday. 

It just so happens that First-fruits, on also falls on a Saturday -The 7th of May 2016.

When it's 6:00pm on the 7th of May in Nairobi, it will also be 6pm on the 7th of May 2016 in Jerusalem as well! This means that the Lord is going to wait until the very Last Watch, on First-fruits, before He gathers up His saints into heaven to attend the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

The Following is Carlos's Story...

"...I was in the city center of Nairobi city, I had been sent by my mother to do some errands and I was now on my way back home.

As I was crisscrossing shoulder to shoulder I suddenly looked down for I felt very uneasy with my left shoe so I bent down to adjust it.

I was very aware of my surroundings suddenly standing up I just froze and looked up and then leveled my head where I could see cars.

They all began crashing simultaneously and there were people falling at the same time because all over, graves were opening.

Directly above, to the direction I was facing, I saw a big angel with big triangular curved elegant wings with a golden trumpet standing in front of the other angels, and the line of these angels stretched back as far as I could see and he blew the trumpet a second time.

Then I turned to the opposite direction and I saw people flying towards a center and there was JESUS with Angel Michael at his side.

It's then that I realized that the heavenly citizens were on opposite sides of the sky. The music from the trumpet was sweet and loud and did not hurt my ears. I don't remember the tune but it was inviting pulling me up to the clouds.

The Archangel who had the trumpet in front seemed to blow it continuously blowing a long key and the others behind him seemed to play Music but it was pure harmony all the same..the sky light was so bright like golden yellowish color.

It was 6:00 PM on a Saturday

I noticed that people seemed confused at the noise, others were hysterical, as if demon possessed, because they held their ears and screamed in agony.

It then vanished as quick as it had started...I closed my eyes and started shaking my head. I seemed to have stepped into eternity. Even though I was very much aware of everyone else. That's when I realized that people were looking at me. Then it hit me! I was standing right in the middle of the path as if in a trance.

 

When I got home I prayed to the Father to let me know everything. He let me know that it was my expectancy that was beaming in my spirit ever since I started fellowship with my FB family, talking about the rapture and the Wedding Supper of the Lamb.

Then later, that's when it came to my realization, ONLY THOSE WHO ARE READY will hear the Trumpet sound as music. But the unbelievers, due to the commotion with the earthquake and the crashing of everything around them, will be confused with hysteria, the Trumpet will sound like bomb explosions going off all around them. 

The rapture itself will also not take too long in this “time existence” I was made to understand that it will take less than 5 seconds. It will happen so fast and everything will go quiet again. 

To those who will be flying it will be an eternal moment. For eternity has been placed in our hearts according to the Scriptures. But I'm guessing, for those who are left here, it will be the longest 5 seconds of their entire existence. I saw everything happening so fast, yet through their eyes I saw everything happening in slow motion, like a never ending nightmare.

Soon people, very soon, its going to happen. 

So get ready!"

A Life Well Lived Saint Angela Merici

Saint Angela Merici had just returned from a trip to the Holy Land. On the way there she had fallen ill and become blind. Nevertheless, she insisted on continuing her pilgrimage and toured the holy sites with the devotion of her heart rather than her eyes. On the way back she had recovered her sight. But this must have been a reminder to her not to shut her eyes to the needs she saw around her, not to shut her heart to God's call.

 
All around her hometown she saw poor girls with no education and no hope. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century that Angela lived in, education for women was for the rich or for nuns. Angela herself had learned everything on her own. Her parents had died when she was ten and she had gone to live with an uncle. She was deeply disturbed when her sister died without receiving the sacraments. A vision reassured her that her sister was safe in God's care -- and also prompted her to dedicate her life to God. 


When her uncle died, she returned to her hometown and began to notice how little education the girls had. But who would teach them? Times were much different then. Women weren't allowed to be teachers and unmarried women were not supposed to go out by themselves -- even to serve others. Nuns were the best educated women but they weren't allowed to leave their cloisters. There were no teaching orders of sisters like we have today. 

 

But in the meantime, these girls grew up without education in religion or anything at all.
These girls weren't being helped by the old ways, so Angela invented a new way. 

She brought together a group of unmarried women, fellow Franciscan tertiaries and other friends, who went out into the streets to gather up the girls they saw and teach them. These women had little money and no power, but were bound together by their dedication to education and commitment to Christ. 

Living in their own homes, they met for prayer and classes where Angela reminded them, " Reflect that in reality you have a greater need to serve [the poor] than they have of your service." They were so successful in their service that Angela was asked to bring her innovative approach to education to other cities, and impressed many people, including the pope. 


Though she turned him down, perhaps the pope's request gave her the inspiration or the push to make her little group more formal. Although it was never a religious order in her lifetime, Angela's Company of Saint Ursula, or the Ursulines, was the first group of women religious to work outside the cloister and the first teaching order of women. 

 

It took many years of frustration before Angela's radical ideas of education for all and unmarried women in service were accepted. They are commonplace to us now because people like Angela wanted to help others no matter what the cost. Angela reminds us of her approach to change: "Beware of trying to accomplish anything by force, for God has given every single person free will and desires to constrain none; he merely shows them the way, invites them and counsels them." 


Saint Angela Merici reassured her Sisters who were afraid to lose her in death: "I shall continue to be more alive than I was in this life, and I shall see you better and shall love more the good deeds which I shall see you doing continually, and I shall be able to help you more." She died in 1540, at about seventy years old. 

In Saint Angela Merici's Words...

Take a look around you. Instead of just driving or walking without paying attention today, open your eyes to the needs you see along the way. What people do you notice who need help but who are not being helped? What are their true needs? Make a commitment to help them in some way.

There is No Choice but Life

 

 

 

 

Our Lady of the Pillar

Miguel Juan Pellicer was born in the early 17th century to a Catholic family in the small agricultural community of Calanda, Spain. In 1637 when he was 20 years old, he was working on his uncle’s farm when a terrible accident occurred: he was riding a mule pulling a cart and accidentally fell off, and the cart ran over his right leg, breaking his tibia (also known as one’s shin – ouch!).

He received some treatment at a local hospital but soon decided to go to a special hospital in the city of Zaragoza dedicated to Our Lady of the Pillar. He, like many Catholics in Spain, had a strong devotion to her, and he hoped to benefit from her intercession.

 

Unfortunately, by the time he arrived, his leg was so gangrenous that it was black. The only option left was amputation. Two expert surgeons removed most of the lower half of his right leg from just below his knee. They cauterized the wound with fire.
Now, keep in mind that this was the mid-17th century, so there was no anesthesia. They gave him alcohol and other drugs to try to numb the pain, but Pellicer nonetheless experienced incredible pain. One witness later wrote: “In his torment the young man called upon the Virgin of the Pillar, unceasingly and with great fervor.” They then buried his amputated leg in the hospital’s cemetery, as was the custom.


A few months later, he was released with a wooden leg and crutch. Apparently, he was also able to get some sort of license for begging (I didn’t know that kind of thing even existed) at the Sanctuary of the Pillar. He was able to survive from begging and, since it’s a popular pilgrimage destination, was seen by thousands if not millions of people. He also got regular checkups with his doctor at the hospital.

Unflappable Faith

But he didn’t lose hope that God still might heal his leg, as impossible as it seemed. In an act of faith, every night he would request some oil from the sanctuary, rub it on his stub, and pray for the intercession of Our Lady.

After about two years, with the health of his leg seemingly stable, he finally decided to return home. He arrived in the midst of the 2nd week of Lent (sometime around March 11-14) in 1640. Unable to help on the farm, he took up begging again, and many people in the surrounding towns saw his stub leg.
Then, about two weeks later on March 29th, the miracle happened.

 

It was around 10 p.m. and he was ready to go bed. A soldier was temporarily staying in his family’s home and was sleeping in his bed, so Pellicer plopped down in an extra bed in his parent’s room instead. About an hour later, his mother walked in and saw two feet sticking out of the covers. Thinking the soldier had gone to sleep in the wrong room, she called her husband to resolve the misunderstanding.
But when her husband came and lifted the blanket, he was shocked at what he found: it was their son, and he had both of his legs!

They tried to wake him up right away, but he was in a deep sleep and it took a while. Once they finally were able to shake him awake, he explained that he had been having a vivid dream in which he was at the Sanctuary of the Pillar and was rubbing his stub with the oil as he used to do.  The three of them rejoiced, praised God, and thanked the Lady of the Pillar for her intercession!
 

The Church Investigates

 

News of the miracle spread like wildfire in the surrounding towns, and both government and ecclesiastical officials came to their house to see his healed leg for themselves. Three weeks later, Pellicer and his parents made a pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Pillar to give thanks, and many people there who had known him with his stub leg were amazed to see him with both legs.

The story became such a sensation that the local archbishop conducted an extensive investigation of the miracle. When they dug up the box that he been buried with his amputated leg in the hospitals’ cemetery, it was apparently undisturbed – but empty. Regarding eye-witness testimony, there were obviously thousands of people who had clearly seen his stub leg before the miracle.

 So investigators asked two dozen of the most respected witnesses to testify in the court proceedings, including doctors who had treated him. No doubters of the miracle could be found.
A year later, the archbishop finally issued a judgement: the miracle was authentic.

 

excerpted from: https://churchpop.com/2016/01/12/god-cured-amputee-the-astonishing-miracle-of-calanda/