"May all the crosses of your life become as a bouquet of Roses." - Padre Pio

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. - Romans 8:18

St Paul teaches us that our heaviest burdens of suffering are far outweighed by the glory that awaits us 2Co. 4:17.

Though the afflictions of our time on earth are inescapable, the Spirit helps to make them bearable.

Suffering is all part of God’s plan to mold us into the image of Christ. (Scott Hahn, Ignatius Study Bible NT, Rm 8:18)

Praying with Padre Pio in suffering.

"The cross does not oppress you if its weight makes you falter

His power - its power - will lift you up; raise you." - Padre Pio

"May all the crosses of your life become as a bouquet of Roses." - Padre Pio

St. Edith Stein like Padre Pio experienced the strength of the cross and suffering. Note in this passage how her powerlessness was transformed by her faith in the Lord:

 While in Frankfurt, she went into the Cathedral and saw a woman go in with a shopping basket and kneel for a brief prayer: “This was something totally new to me. In the synagogues and protestant churches I had visited people simply went to the services.

 Here, however, I saw someone coming straight from the busy marketplace into this empty church, as if she was going to have an intimate conversation. It was something I never forgot.”

In November 1917, she went to visit the widow of Adolf Reinach.  They recently converted to Protestantism.  She was uneasy at first but then was surprised to meet a woman of faith:  “This was my first encounter with the cross and the divine power it imparts to those who bear it . . . It was the moment when my unbelief collapsed and Christ began to shine his light on me - Christ in the mystery of the cross.” 

“Things were in God’s plan which I had not planned at all. I am coming to the living faith and conviction that - from God’s point of view - there is no chance and that the whole of my life, down to every detail, has been mapped out in God’s divine providence and makes complete and perfect sense in God’s all seeing eyes.”

“Every time I feel my powerlessness and inability to influence people directly, I become more keenly aware of the necessity of my own holocaust.”

Magnificat, August 2017, page 122ff   

"May all the crosses of your life become as a bouquet of Roses." - Padre Pio

In this entry Padre Pio speaks to us of an experience which is so common to human life especially for those who suffer, he relates of his own extreme desolation and how difficult it is to bear this agony; he describes it as being in a wilderness.

Yet, deep within his spirit, the padre is aware of a feeble light that penetrates and allows him to feel the presence of the Father. Notice that despite the agony and darkness of suffering deep within in the apex of his spirit he feels the stirrings a gentle spring breeze—this is a touch of grace from above.

In all our sufferings if we be still before Him in Deep Silence and expectant faith, we will know His touch and the breeze of Heaven.

 
Spend time reading and meditating on these penetrating words from Padre Pio:

 “Our good Jesus has placed my soul in extreme desolation and I find it difficult to think that I am living the life of God’s children.  I am in a wilderness where my soul knows no comfort in these moments of trepidation and hope.

 Now and again a most feeble light penetrates from above, just enough to reassure my poor should that all is being directed by Divine Providence and that through joy and tears the heavenly Father is leading me by inscrutable secret ways to the end he has in view.  This is nothing else than the perfection of my soul and its union with God.  But then, alas, a little later my poor soul is plunged into a more tragic desolation than before.

 I cannot understand how one can live when our blessed God places the soul in such straits.  All I can say is that my soul in this state seems to glimpse a concealed hand which can be none other than the hand of God.  Moreover, at the apex of my spirit I feel, like the stirring of a gentle spring breeze, the divine Master’s most beautiful assurance that not a hard of our heads will perish without the permission of our heavenly Father, that he watches over the soul with fatherly love and that when he tries it by similar desolation he invariably does so out of love and for the soul's perfection.”   (Letters, I, #264)

"May all the crosses of your life become as a bouquet of Roses." - Padre Pio

Here are penetrating words that Padre Benedetto (Padre Pio’s spiritual director) wrote to Padre Pio in 1918, it is noticeable that Our Lord is leading Padre Pio to share in the Passion of the cross and into glory.  The passion of Jesus is the entrance into glory for Padre Pio, this defines his whole life and this is where, as a spiritual Father he brings all his children, and this is why we pray with him:

Padre Benedetto hit the mark when he defined this mission and the charism of which we are speaking by the concise and forceful expression, “a vocation to co-redemption.”  On 27 August 1918, in his reply to Padre Pio’s letter of the 21^st of that month, in which he told him of the mystical phenomenon of transverberation and his consequent painful anxiety, Padre Benedetto writes as follows:

“All that is happening to you is the effect of love. It is a trial, it is a vocation to co-redemption and hence a source of glory […] The Lord is with you.  He is with you: patient, suffering, eager love, crushed and trampled upon, heartbroken, in the shadows of the night and even more so in the desolation of Gethsemane, he is associated with your suffering and associates you with his own.

This is the whole fact of the matter, this is the truth and the only truth.  Yours is not a purgation but a painful union.

The fact of the wound completes your passion just as it completed the Passion of the Beloved on the Cross.”

This “vocation to co-redemption” of sinful mankind was carried out by Padre Pio through his participation in the sufferings of the crucified Lover who chose him to be a victim of love and suffering.

From  "Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, Letters I", by Fr Gerardo Di Flumeri OFM Cap.