Padre Pio Denied Communion

When Fra Pio was yet a novice, his Master of Novices was a man named Padre Tommaso. Padre Tommaso’s reputation is that he trained his novices with humiliations, harsh reproofs, and heavy punishments. One novice, when he was made to kneel all through dinner without eating anything, muttered out loud: “Back home in Naples we pay a dime to see madmen. Here we see them for free.” Padre Tommaso overhead this remark and ordered a punishment; the boy simply got up and left the convent.

Padre Tommaso’s methods are not the sort of thing one is called upon either to admire or imitate. Yet the character of Padre Pio is shown forth in his own meekness under such a regime. When a novice told Fra Pio that he was leaving and urged Pio to leave with him, saying that Padre Tommaso was insane, or even diabolical, Pio simply replied:

I could never agree to this. You’ll see, with Our Lady’s and St. Francis’ help, we too, little by little, will get used to this new life, just as others before us did. Do you believe friars here and elsewhere were not once like us? No one is born a friar.

But there was one wound that Padre Tommaso inflicted on Padre Pio that seems to have left a deep mark on the future Saint. Fifty years latter, when talking with a fellow friar, Padre Pio recalled how:

One day the Master of Novices declared, “Tomorrow there will be no Communion for you.”

Padre Pio had tears as he spoke, recounting this episode.

Two Similar Stories

Why was Padre Pio so moved by a single day on which he did not receive Holy Communion?

There is a similar story that might shed some light of this. The story concerns the holy sacristan of Ann Arbor, Mario Hilton. It is told of him that, when he was nearing death, he was no longer able to live in his small, poor second story apartment across from the Church where he was accustomed to spend all night before the Most Blessed Sacrament. He was moved to assisted living. One day a woman visited him and spoke with him familiarly about various things, when she was surprised to see his eyes well up in tears for no apparent reason. “Mario,” she said with concern, “what’s wrong?” Perhaps he was in pain!

Mario’s answer was surprising and disarming. “I did not receive the Eucharist today,” he said amidst tears.

Like Mario Hilton, Padre Pio could not be without his Beloved. The very memory of it was painful.

An episode from the life of Blessed Anne of Jesus goes to show how profoundly those in love with their Eucharistic Lord suffer when deprived of Him.

It seems to have been in 1585 that Anne of Jesus was again brought to death’s door, this time by a mystical malady-the wound of divine Love. So violent were the transports that seized upon her when in prayer, that the bones of her chest became dislocated, and she could only lie on her bed in great pain. Once more St. Teresa appeared to her, and passing her hand over her chest, left her whole and well.

Nevertheless, during these first years at Granada St. John of the Cross put Anne’s devotion to a severe test. One day, after hearing her confession, he told her she was not to go to Holy Communion again until he gave her leave. The humble religious said nothing, and for the next two days knelt on in her place when the others went to Communion. The nuns were puzzled, and with great simplicity asked their holy Mother if anything was amiss. “My daughters,” she replied, “I do not receive Holy Communion because our Reverend Father Prior has forbidden me to do so.”

A few days later leave was given for her to resume her Communions, and she presented herself once more at the grate. But Anne’s heart was beating so violently with joy in receiving her Lord once more, that it seemed to leave her body altogether in order to hide itself in that of her divine Spouse, to whom she had offered it as a place of rest. It is a well-attested fact that during the remaining forty years or so of her life the beating of her heart was imperceptible both to herself and to others.

Several who have recorded this prodigy heard of it from the lips of Anne of Jesus herself, and St. John of the Cross, to Whom she gave a full account of what she had experienced, answered: “Do not be astonished at what has happened, my daughter. When little birds see the dawn breaking they exhaust themselves in singing the praises of their Maker. So has your heart spent itself, so great was your joy in receiving Him.”

On the first anniversary of the death of the holy prioress, in the panegyric preached before the whole court of Brussels, Father Francis de Vivero referred to this wonderful occurrence. He had himself spoken, he said, with two sisters who had lived in the closest intimacy with Anne of Jesus, and they had more than once assured him that they had themselves often placed their hand over the left side of the Servant of God and had never felt the least pulsation from her heart. As Manriquez puts it: “If she had a heart, she no longer felt it… its pulsations were the pulsations of perpetual prayer.”

Padre Pio’s Sorrow at the Possibility of Sinning

It was for love of his Eucharistic Beloved, and not for any remembrance of old wounds, that Padre Pio cried that day as he recalled being denied Communion. We can say of Padre Pio, mutatis mutandis, what Saint Thérèse said of Saint Mary Magdalene, along with Saint Augustine, “these souls to Whom ‘many sins were forgiven because they loved much.'” She says:

…I love their repentance, and especially…their loving audacity! When I see Magdalene walking up before the many guests, washing with her tears the feet of her adored Master, Whom she is touching for the first time, I feel that her heart has understood the abysses of love and mercy of the Heart of Jesus, and, sinner though she is, this Heart of love was not only disposed to pardon her but to lavish on her the blessings of His divine intimacy, to lift her to the highest summits of contemplation.

Do we not sense in the tears of Padre Pio that his heart has understood the abysses of love and mercy of the Heart of Jesus? It was love alone that filled Padre Pio with a dread of sinning that is impossible for those who love less to understand. It was not scrupulosity, but love that made him say, for instance:

Life here below is a bitter grief to me, a life of exile that is a torment so bitter to me that I can scarcely bear it. The thought that any moment I could lose Jesus [through mortal sin] distresses me in an unspeakable way.

Padre Pio knew that life in this world is a warfare. He who loved the Lord Jesus so much that a single day not receiving the Eucharistic Lord could still break his heart fifty years later, could not abide the thought of losing the One he loved through mortal sin, even to the point that such a thought filled him with dread and made him long for heaven. Writing to his spiritual father, he said:

Ah, dear Father, when will that long-awaited day come when my poor little soul will break up like a foundering ship in that immense ocean of eternal truth, where we will no longer be able to sin, or be aware that creatures are endowed with free will, because there all miseries are ended and we will no longer be able to withdraw our eyes from the limitless beauty nor cease to delight in God in one perpetual ecstasy of love!…

After my poor little soul has sighed for the moment of departure, after it has come several times to the limit of life, after it has relished the sweetness of death and has suffered all the struggle and torment that come from nature reclaiming its rights, after my soul has left my body, even to the extent of losing sight of this world below, and after I have almost touched the portals of the heavenly Jerusalem with my hand, I reawaken in this place of exile, becoming once more a pilgrim, always capable of being lost, and a new kind of agony seizes me that is worse than death itself and worse than any kind of martyrdom…. Alas, dear Father, how terribly hard this mortal life is! As long as it lasts, eternal life is uncertain.

O cruel life, enemy of the Love that loves us infinitely more than we can possibly love or understand Him … why do you not come to an end?

Padre Pio’s Distress at the Sins of Priests and Religious

Someone so sensitive to the Infinite Goodness and Beauty of God and the horror of separation from Him by sin had, naturally, a heart sensitive to the wounds of sin. Padre Pio never seems to have gotten used to encountering sin. He admitted at one point that he had a hard time believing people would sin, even when he saw it before his eyes. Saint John of the Cross also said that this is a characteristic of holiness, that the holier one becomes, the less one sees or can believe that there is evil. Saint Padre Pio seems to have been startled by evil when he saw it, and to have suffered very much from it. He even endured its effects in his body. Sometimes his stigmata would bleed when he gave absolution.

Padre Pio’s point of reference in his reactions to sin was neither a self-righteousness that condemns others, nor a legalism that simply delights in the fulfilment of rules, but it was an identification with Christ, with the God Who alone is good. Having Christ before his eyes, Padre Pio’s vision was filled with the good, and wickedness was, therefore, startling and even shocking to him.

This was nowhere more the case than the sins of priests and religious. Once Padre Pio burst into tears because a guilty priest who had wronged him might be imprisoned. “A priest in prison because of Padre Pio!” Padre Pio cried.

The following account which Padre Pio made to Padre Agostino, his spiritual father, on 7 April 1913, illustrates both Padre Pio’s identification with the suffering Christ and his sensitivity to the sins of priests in particular.

On Friday morning [28 March 1913] while I was still in bed, Jesus appeared to me. He was in a sorry state and quite disfigured. He showed me a great multitude of priests, regular and secular, among whom were several high ecclesiastical dignitaries. Some were celebrating Mass, while others were vesting or taking off the sacred vestments. The sight of Jesus in distress was very painful to me, so I asked Him why He was suffering so much. There was no reply, but His gaze turned on those priests. Shortly afterwards, as if terrified and weary of looking at them, He withdrew His gaze. Then He raised His eyes and looked at me and to my great horror I observed two tears coursing down His cheeks. He drew back from that crowd of priests with an expression of great disgust on His face and cried out: “Butchers!” Then turning to me He said: “My son, do not think that My agony lasted three hours. No, on account of the souls who have received most from me, I shall be in agony until the end of the world. During My agony, My son, nobody should sleep. My soul goes in search of a drop of human compassion but alas, I am left alone beneath the weight of indifference. The ingratitude and the sleep of My ministers makes My agony all the more grievous.

“Alas, how little they correspond to My love! What afflicts me most is that they add contempt and unbelief to their indifference. Many times I have been on the point of annihilating them, had I not been held back by the Angels and by souls who are filled with love for me. Write to your (spiritual) father and tell him what you have seen and heard from me this morning. Tell him to show your letter to Father Provincial …”

Another time, when Jesus appeared to him similarly crucified and bloodies, Padre Pio said to the Lord: “Jesus, I love You, but don’t appear like this to me anymore…. You tear my heart to pieces… It’s true, then, that You bore the cross all the time of Your life … and therefore it’s wrong when wicked men say that Your suffering was only a matter of a night and a day…. Your suffering was continuous.”

A few days later, Jesus again appeared to him. Padre Pio was heard saying these words:

My Jesus, why are You so bloody this morning? … They did wicked things to You today? … Alas, even on Sunday You must suffer the offenses of ungrateful men!… How many abominations took place within Your sanctuary! … My Jesus, pardon! Lower that sword! … If it must fall, may it find its place on my head alone…. Yes, I want to be the victim! … Here is the usual excuse: “You are too weak.” … Yes, I’m weak … but, my Jesus, You are able to strengthen me…. Then punish me and not others…. Even send me to hell, provided that I can still love You and everyone is saved. Yes, everyone!!”

In the second part of this quotation, transcribed when Padre Pio’s words while in ecstasy, we find Padre Pio’s answer to sin, and particularly the sins of priests and, by extension, religious: Padre Pio offered himself.

Clare Crockett’s Account

These accounts of Padre Pio remind one of two similar accounts. In a previous post we shared about a vision-like meditation that the Servant of God Sister Clare Crockett recounts:

Finding myself there in Gethsemane with the Lord, I asked Him to let me feel what He was feeling. I asked it with tears and wholeheartedly, knowing that if I placed my entire being in supplication, with great intensity, that the Holy Spirit could not deny me His intervention with great strength. And that’s what occurred. The Lord allowed me to see and feel what He was seeing and feeling in that moment. I saw the disgust for sin, how it is so horrible that it makes even Christ weep, lying prostrate, trembling. I saw Black Masses, people breaking the Eucharist, someone sitting on a crucifix, people shouting ‘I hate you’ to God, abandoned children, aborted babies in dumpsters, Cardinals without faith, Cardinals who want to destroy the Church, priests receiving the Lord in mortal sin, priests without faith, priests with women, with nuns, nuns who didn’t obey, young people with perverse images of the Lord and Our Lady on their shirts, young people drugging themselves in nightclubs, people who were drunk, broken marriages, domestic violence, superficiality, abandoned tabernacles, faithful receiving the Lord in mortal sin, out of routine, elderly people who have been abandoned, elderly being violently abused, elderly dying in solitude and forsaken, humble people being treated unjustly by the powerful, simple folk being humiliated by the powerful, priests, religious, faithful being tortured on account of their faith, the death of several priests at the hands of their enemies, robberies, adulteries, and I also saw some of my sins.

Sister Clare’s response was similar to Padre Pio’s:

I felt like I had to get closer to the Lord. All I could offer was so little. My love is nothing compared to His. I had to console Him with the little I had or have. The enemy was on the other side of Him. He looked at me and said he was going to destroy me. The Lord was prostrate. With His right hand He was grabbing soil and He had His left hand outstretched with the palm of His hand turned upwards, as if He were offering Himself to the Father. I placed my hand in that hand and the Lord squeezed mine tightly. He was shaking. I suffered there with Him and begged forgiveness. I promised to never abandon Him and I asked Him to never abandon me.

Saint Faustina’s Account

Perhaps even more striking is Saint Faustina’s account in Diary 1702-1703 where the Lord utters His plaint to her about the souls of religious and priests.

Towards the end of the Way of the Cross which I was making, the Lord Jesus began to complain about the souls of religious and priests, about the lack of love in chosen souls.

“I will allow convents and churches to be destroyed.”

I answered, “Jesus, but there are so many souls praising You in convents.”

The Lord answered, “That praise wounds My Heart, because love has been banished from convents. Souls without love and without devotion, souls full of egoism and self-love, souls full of pride and arrogance, souls full of deceit and hypocrisy, lukewarm souls who have just enough warmth to keep them alive: My Heart cannot bear this. All the graces that I pour out upon them flow off them as off the face of a rock. I cannot stand them, because they are neither good or bad. I called convents into being to sanctify the world through them. It is from them that a powerful flame of love and sacrifice should burst forth. And if they do not repent and become enkindled by their first love, I will deliver them over to the fate of this world… How can they sit on the promised throne of judgment to judge the world, when their guilt is greater than the guilt of the world? There is neither penance nor atonement. O heart, which received Me in the morning and at noon are all ablaze with hatred against Me, hatred of all sorts! O heart specially chosen by Me, were you chosen for this, to give Me more pain? The great sins of the world are superficial wounds on My Heart, but the sins of a chosen soul pierce My Heart through and through…”

In Saint Faustina’s case, she should think of no way to intercede, because she saw how grieved the Lord was. The Lord Himself had to comfort her when He saw her tears.

When I tried to intercede for them, I could find nothing with which to excuse them and, being at the time unable to think of anything in their defense, my heart was seized with pain, and I wept bitterly. Then the Lord looked at me kindly and comforted me with these words: “Do not cry. There are still a great number of souls who love Me very much, but My Heart desires to be loved by all and, because My love is great, that is why I warn and chastise them.”

Padre Pio’s Response and Mother Mectilde

Meanwhile, Padre Pio’s response was always consistent. As was noted in Msgr. Calkins article Padre Pio Priest and Victim, Padre Pio’s consistent response was to offer himself again and again, in union with Christ, one victim with Him. How can we fail to hear our own Mother Mectilde de Bar in this self-offering? She wrote of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration, in the preface of her Constitutions:

[The Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration] will be victims to repair by their purity of intention the worship that wicked priests take away from the Most Holy Sacrament when they make use of this august Sacrament for their own gain, and for a thousand other criminal designs.

Mother Mectilde saw herself as a victim for the same two purposes for which Padre Pio offered himself, namely for ascending reparation (that is, reparation of God’s glory and consolation to His Sacred Heart), and descending reparation (that is, regaining for sinners what was lost to them by their sins). At the end of the preface, again she wrote:

If the first [obligation] obliges a “host” to look upon herself as consecrated to the glory of the Most Holy Sacrament, the second [one] obliges her to consider herself as sacrificed for all the profanations of this adorable Mystery. If the first obligation requires that a true reparator give, and do everything, to render to the Most Holy Sacrament the honour which It merits, the second [obligation] requires that the true reparator lose everything, and suffer all, to expiate the outrages and the indignities that It receives.

We can see through these quotations the kindred spirit that Padre Pio and Mother Mectilde shared. Both were animated by love of God and of souls, and especially the souls of priests. So too, both wished to spare nothing in order to share in the Lord’s work of redemption and so repair, insofar as is possible for a mere creature, what sin has disfigured.

A Way for Little Souls

If all of this seems a little too difficult — or even a little too grand — Saint Thérèse offers a littler way in her Act of Offering as a Holocaust to Merciful Love. This is a way that is open to all of us, for all of us can be moved to wish to repair for sin, and especially the sins of priests. But not all of us have the truly special call of Padre Pio. But we may all pray what Saint Thérèse prayed:

In order that my life may be one Act of perfect Love, I offer myself as a Victim of Holocaust to Thy Merciful Love, imploring Thee to consume me unceasingly, and to allow the floods of infinite tenderness gathered up in Thee to overflow into my soul, so that I may become a very martyr of Thy love. O My God, may this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear in Thy Presence, free me from this life at the last, and my soul take its flight – without delay – into the eternal embrace of Thy Merciful Love!

O my Beloved! I desire at every beat of my heart to renew this Oblation an infinite number of times, “till the shadows retire,” and everlastingly I can tell Thee my love face to face. Amen.