Saints and Miracles

 

Saint Padre Pio and some of his Miracles of the Cross

Saint Padre and his Miracles

There are literally thousands of stories of Padre Pio, with regard to the many spiritual gifts he received.  

Many of these have been documented, while others are legend, having been woven out of a sincere love people have had for him and a desire to make him bigger than life.  But as Fr. Joseph Pio once said to us as we were writing the biography of Padre Pio,[1] "The truth is actually more fascinating than fiction." 

And so the Miracles we will share with you in this chapter have been documented by the Capuchins in San Giovanni Rotondo.

The Miracle of the Crucified Christ

One of the Miracles of the Cross dealing with Padre Pio has to do with the experience the Lord gave him almost daily as he prepared for and experienced the Crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus in the Sacrifice of the Mass.[2] 

Eyewitnesses, such as Fr. Alessio Parente and Fr. Joseph Pio[3] have shared with us that when Padre Pio would begin preparations for the Sacrifice of the Mass, and this could have been more than an hour before he actually began the Mass, they could see his knees begin to buckle and his body become bent under a tremendous invisible weight as he got closer and closer to entering the church and the altar. 

He told them he was carrying the weight of the Cross on his shoulders, and as we know, the Cross held the weight of all the sins Jesus was dying for. 

To those closest to Padre Pio, and actually many of those who waited for hours in the bitter cold outside the Church in the middle of the night to take part in the 5:30 a.m. Mass with him, they could actually see him being transformed into the Crucified Christ before their eyes during those times.

The Miracle of the Cross in the body of Padre Pio

Shortly after he was ordained, Padre Pio began to notice what he termed "red patches, about the size of a cent, accompanied by acute pain." 

This is from a letter he sent Padre Benedetto on the Birthday of Mary, September 8, 1911. 

He went on to say, "The pain was much more acute in the left hand and it still persists.  I also feel some pain in the soles of my feet." 

He told his superior that this had been happening, on and off, for almost a year.  So from the time of his ordination, at twenty three years old, he began to feel in his body, the wounds of the Passion of Christ. 

He prayed that the wounds would not show.  The Lord answered his prayers for nine years, and so while the physical signs disappeared, the pain continued.

The Transverberation of the Heart

As if in anticipation of the great miracle he was to be given very shortly, the Lord granted Padre Pio a very special gift, one that would give him joy mixed with pain all his life, agony and ecstasy. 

On August 5, 1918, he received the gift of Transverberation of the Heart.  Padre Pio wrote of this experience,

    "While I was hearing the confessions of our boys on the evening of the 5th (August), I was suddenly filled with extreme terror at the sight of a celestial being whom I saw with my mind's eye.  He held a kind of weapon in his hand, similar to a steel sword with a sharp, flaming point.  At the very instant I saw all this, I saw the person hurl the weapon into my soul with all his might.  It was all done in a split second.  I was hardly able to cry out and felt as if I were dying.  I cannot tell you how much I suffered during this period of anguish.  Even my insides were torn and ruptured by that weapon, everything lashed by fire and steel.  From that day on, I was wounded to death.  In the depths of my soul, I feel an open wound which causes me to suffer continual agony."
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Taken from: http://www.discover-catholic-miracles.com/padre-pio.html

The Star of the Magi

Matthew 2


New International Version (NIV)


The Magi Visit the Messiah

1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi[a] from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:



6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for out of you will come a ruler

who will shepherd my people Israel.’[b]”



7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”



9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.



The Escape to Egypt

13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”[c]



16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:



18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,

weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

and refusing to be comforted,

because they are no more.”[d]



The Return to Nazareth

19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”

21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.



Footnotes:

a.Matthew 2:1 Traditionally wise men

b.Matthew 2:6 Micah 5:2,4

c.Matthew 2:15 Hosea 11:1

d.Matthew 2:18 Jer. 31:15


Taken from: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+2&version=NIV

Saints that are Incorruptible

THE INCORRUPTIBILITY OF SAINTS
By Jim Dunning

(This article was originally published in "Irelands Own" magazine. The webmaster would like to gratefully thank the author for his kind permission in reprinting it here.)

When a body is described as being incorrupt it means that it does not decay after death. The same cannot be said of a body that is well preserved or mummified, or has undergone an embalming process. Most such corpses become stiff, but incorruptible saints remain completely flexible, as if they are only sleeping.

This is particularly true of Saint Bernadette [pictured above] whose body is displayed in a glass case at the Convent of Nevers in France. In spite of having died more than 130 years ago, she looks for all the world as if she is about to wake up. It is true that when she was exhumed a second time, the nuns gave her face a light wax mask, but this was done mainly to cover damage caused earlier by washing. A doctor who removed one of her ribs to provide a relic found her body had remained pliable. Pope John XXIII’s body remains intact, but it was embalmed for his lying in state and the Church does not claim that it is incorruptible due to supernatural reasons.

There is a whole list of saints, however, whose bodies have been found to be incorrupt. Not all of them were Roman Catholics. The Russian Orthodox Church is well represented by such as St. Alexander of Svir, who was a monk, and by the martyrs of Vilnius, St. Anthony, St. John and St. Eustathios.

The exhumation of saints’ bodies may appear a macabre business, but the first examples of incorruptibility were discovered by accident. It usually happened when a body was being transferred from one place to another. Now, of course, the Church is more alive to the possibility. Not that it expects the body of every saint to be incorruptible. Indeed, it is unusual, and no one knows why a few saints’ bodies are preserved and most are not. Some believe that the piety of a particular saint is so remarkable that it permeates the whole body, while others believe that decomposition has been prevented directly by God, irrespective of the degree of piety.

The argument for a physical cause, usually applied to persons not known for their religious background, relates to the physical environment in which decomposition has been retarded by the cool, dry conditions of the place of burial. With regard to Catholic saints, the Church maintains that the environments in which saints’ bodies have been preserved are normal, or even, in some instances, particularly damp. Sometimes two bodies will be buried side by side, as was the case with Jacinta Marto and her brother Francisco, the young seers of Fatima, yet only one was preserved.

Cases of incorruptibility go back a long way. The first saint whose body was found to be incorrupt was St. Cecilia, who was martyred in AD 177. Her remains were moved to a new site in 822, and in 1599 an exhumation revealed her body to be incorrupt. Over the centuries more than 100 cases of saints whose bodies have remained incorruptible have come to light, sometimes, as with St. Cecilia, many years after their death.

St. Agnes of Montepulciano died in 1317. Not only did her body remain incorrupt, but a perfumed liquid flowed from her hands and feet. She was canonized by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726. Another Italian, St. Catherine of Bologna, died at the age of 49 in the year 1463 and was canonized in 1712. She was buried unembalmed and without a casket; 18 days later, after various reports of graveside miracles, her body was exhumed and found to be flexible and uncorrupted. It was moved to the chapel of the Poor Clares in Bologna where it is displayed to this day, dressed and seated upright in a glass case.

St. Catherine Labouré (1806 – 1876) [pictured to the left] was born in Burgundy, France. She is famous for having passed on a request from Our Lady for the creation of the Miraculous Medal, worn now by thousands of the faithful. When her body was exhumed in 1933 it was found to be incorrupt. It rests now on display in the chapel of Our Lady of the Sun in the Rue du Bac, Paris.

In October, 1977, the canonization took place of an ordained Lebanese Maronite Catholic monk named Charbel Makhlouf. He had lived as a hermit from 1875 until his death at the age of seventy in 1898. With a reputation for holiness, he followed a strict fast and was devoted to the Blessed Sacrament. After his death, mysterious, dazzling lights were seen over his grave and pilgrims began to visit. His corpse which had been exuding sweat and blood was transferred to a special coffin, and hordes of pilgrims swarmed to the place seeking his intercession. They still do.

As recently as January, 1993, a partially paralysed fifty-six-year old woman named Nohed El Shami saw two Maronite monks standing next to her bed. They performed surgery on her neck and when she woke up she found two wounds on her neck. She was completely healed and able to walk again. One of the monks she identified as Charbel. His canonization took place on 9th October, 1977, in the Vatican.

[Pictured to the left is the popular Saint John Vianney, affectionately known as the Cure d'Ars] Mention has been made of the exudation of sweat and blood from St. Charbel’s body. The same symptoms have been observed with other saints, often many years after their death. The odour of sanctity is frequently mentioned, not only at the time of death or burial, but many years later. It is frequently described as a sweet-smelling perfume. In the case of the Venerable Mother Maria of Jesus (a contemporary of St. Theresa of Avila), who died in 1640, the odour detected on the occasion of her exhumation in 1929 was described as a ‘sweet perfume of roses and jasmines’ which clung not only to her body, but to articles she was known to have used during her lifetime. This was 289 years after her death!

The Church is reluctant to accept the incorruption of the body of a candidate for sainthood as a miracle proving sanctity. The cause of beatification is usually well under way before graves are opened for the recognition of relics. You could say that incorruption is seen as a bonus. By the same token, dissolution of a body provides no hindrance to a saint’s cause. Many of our most illustrious saints went the way of all flesh, including Saint Therese of Lisieux who foretold, correctly, that her body would not be protected.

We should gratefully accept that our ability to see the miraculously preserved bodies of individual saints is a privilege, a comfort and a source of encouragement in our daily struggle to achieve some degree of holiness.

-Click here for an excellent article on the incorrupt bodies of the Saints.

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Taken from: http://www.mysticsofthechurch.com/2010/04/saints-that-are-incorruptable.html