A PENITENT WOMAN AND ST. PADRE PIO

Before giving the woman absolution Padre Pio 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 15 Ave Marias and 15 Our Fathers.”
Now the cross was at the top of the mountain. The penance was not the Aves or the Our Fathers, it was a 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 go 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 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 this was a sin? That’s killing.”
Then she said nobody knows about this, only me and my mother. How could you say it could have been a priest or a cardinal?” Padre Pio simply responded saying, “but it’s a great sin.”
Source: Padre Pio: The True Story by C Bernard Ruffin, Pages 296-297
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Statements Made by Padre Pio, and His Answers to Questions by Cleonice Morcaldi
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Cleonice Morcaldi a Spiritual Daughter of Padre Pio and close Friend was born on January 22, 1904. From a numerous family, she lived in dire poverty childhood, adolescence, and study life, until she became a teacher. She met Padre Pio in 1920. Padre Pio showed a singular predilection for her. Her strong faith in God enlightened her life, and let her stick to what her eyes saw and what her ears heard. She relentlessly pursued the quest to know more and more of the flood of love that God had versed on Padre Pio. She made the wows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and renewed them every year on December 8, feast of the Immaculate Conception. Through direct verbal interaction, and by question in writing usually passed to Padre Pio by Pietruccio the blind, – who also brought back the answers handwritten by Padre Pio, her unshaken persistence gave us a fascinating glimpse of the afterlife, and let us know some of what our eye couldn’t see of the gigantic battle going on between good and evil. Her fearless faith made her unique, and we are grateful for what she did. After the death of Padre Pio in 1968 she spent her life helping the poor and spreading Padre Pio’s message of unconditional love for God and the neighbor. Cleonice died on February 23, 1987.
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1.Padre Pio told some spiritual children gathered after confession: “I can forget myself, but not my children; I tell you that when the Lord will call me, I will stay at the door of paradise and I will tell Him: ‘Lord, I do not enter before I see that all my children have entered.’ ”
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Did you really say that? “I made this proposal to the Lord. I don’t know if He accepts it.” “I can forget myself, but not the children that cost me blood: I promise you that I will stay at the door of paradise until I will see in the last of my children.”
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2. There is a prophecy that a friar of Saint Francis will bring to God a third of the world. Padre Pio remarked “More, more.”
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3. Say something about Ascension. Padre Pio: “There are two ascensions, one to the Calvary, and the other to heaven.”
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4. Did Jesus cry in Bethlehem? “Yes. He suffered like any other child.”
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5. “God doesn’t send souls to hell; they want to go.”
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6. Did the prophet Elijah die? “He disappeared in a chariot of fire. Maybe he is in paradise. He will come at the end of times to fight the Antichrist.”
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7. In Paradise, with all that multitude of angels and saints won’t be difficult to have one to one conversations?“We will be alone, even if we will be in company. Nobody will prevent us to communicate with whomever we want.”
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8. Was the serpent tempting Eve an animal? “It was the devil talking through him”.
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9. Where were the Angels before the test? “They were in another world.
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And After the test? “They went to Paradise.
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10. Why Jesus said to Mary: Don’t touch me. “To let her live of faith.” Didn’t she have faith? “No. Because she said: “Lord, if you were here my brother wouldn’t have died.’ “The centurion had faith when he said: You don’t need to come to the house. Just say a word and my servant will be healed.”
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11. Why did Judas betray Jesus? “For wickedness.” Peter disowned Jesus. “And that was a mortal sin.” John did run away too. “Yes but he didn’t disown.”
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12. Did they overturn the cross with Jesus on it to clinch the nails? “Yes.”
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13. Is there a shortcut to get fast to God? “The shortcut is Mary. Jesus comes to us through Mary”
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They say that the rosary is outmoded. “Let’s do the way we have always done. Let’s love the Madonna. Let’s make people love the Madonna.
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Let’s pray the holy rosary that She Herself thought us.”
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“He who prays a lot will be saved. He who prays a little is in danger. He who doesn’t pray is condemned.”
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“He who prays a lot saves himself and saves others.”
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SAINT PIO ON HIS CELEBRATION OF THE MASS
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Father, what is your Mass?
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– A sacred accomplishment of the Passion of Jesus.
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– What should I comprehend in your Holy Mass?
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– All of Calvary.
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– Father, tell me all that you suffer at the Holy Mass.
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– All what Jesus suffered in his Passion, I inadequately suffer to the extent a human creature can possibly suffer. All of it at no merit of my own and only because of His Goodness.
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– Father, how could we know about your passion?
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– In knowing the Passion of Jesus, you will also know mine.
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– Do you have the agony of death, Father, like Jesus in the Garden?
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– Probably.
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– Does the angel also come to comfort you?
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– Yes.
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– What FIAT do you say?
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– The one of suffering, and always to suffer for the brothers in exile and for His Divine Kingdom.
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– You also said…”and they will shout: Crucify him, crucify him!” Who will shout?
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– The children of men… more precisely the beneficiaries of His death.
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– How was Jesus after being scourged?
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– The prophet says: “He became as a whole sore. He became like a leper”
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– So, you also are like a sore from head to foot?
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– And is not this our glory? If there is no place left for more sores, we will make sores on top of sores.
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– My God, this is too much! You are, dear Father, a real executioner of yourself!
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– Do not be afraid. On the contrary rejoice in it. I do not want the suffering in itself, no, but the fruits it gives me. It praises God and saves our brothers. What else could I wish for?
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– Father. When at night you are scourged, are you alone or does somebody assist you.
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– The Holy Virgin assists me, all of Paradise is present.
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– Jesus has made me feel that you suffer the crown of thorns.
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– Otherwise the immolation would not be complete.
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– What sins did Jesus pay for with the crowning of thorns?
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– For all, especially those regarding thoughts, not excluding the vain and useless ones.
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– Father, do you have the thorns on your forehead or around your head?
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– Around the whole head.
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– Father, how many thorns does your crown have…Thirty?
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– Ah…yes!
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– Father, I think that your crown does not have 30, but 300 thorns.
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– You get impressed because of a zero! Anyway, is not thirty contained in three hundred?
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– Father, is it true that you suffer the torment of the crowning of thorns during the Holy Mass?
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– And you doubt it?
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– During the whole Mass?
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– And also before and after it. The crown is never taken away.
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– Father, do you also suffer what Jesus suffered during the Way of the Cross?
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– Yes. But I wish to do so, in order to arrive at the point of suffering to which the Divine Master arrived.
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– Who are your Simon of Cyrene and Veronica?
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– Jesus Himself.
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– Father, at the Divine Sacrifice, do you take our iniquities on yourself?
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– It is impossible to do it differently, as it is part of the Divine Sacrifice.
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– So, does the Lord consider you a sinner?
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– I do not know. But I am afraid to be so.
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– I have seen you trembling when going up the stairs to the altar. Why? Was it because of what you were going to suffer?
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– No, not because of what I am supposed to suffer, but because of what I should offer.
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– Father, what time during the day do you suffer the most?
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– During the celebration of the Holy Mass.
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– Father, do you also suffer during the day what Jesus allows you to suffer during the Holy Mass?
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– I would not feel well! How could I work? How could I do my ministry?
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– At which part of the Divine Sacrifice do you suffer the most?
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– From the Consecration to the Communion.
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– At which moment of the Mass do you suffer the scourging?
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– From the beginning to the end, but more intensely after the Consecration.
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– Father, why do you almost always cry when you read the Gospel in the Holy Mass?
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– And do you find it little thing that a God talks to His creatures, and they react against Him? That he is injured constantly by their ingratitude and incredulity?
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Why do you suffer so much during the Consecration?
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– Revealing the secrets of the Supreme King is desecrating them. You ask me why I suffer. I would like to shed not a few tears but abundant tears. Are you not conscious of the tremendous mystery? God, Victim of our sins! And we are His executioners!
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The awesome mystery of the Consecration contains the last hours that Christ spent on the Cross. The crucified of Gargano now relives at the altar, one after the other, each of the last moments of the Crucified of Golgotha. Let us keep in mind what the Gospel says about Jesus. Especially at the introduction of the Crucifixion.
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Did the executioners turn the Cross around to clinch the nails?
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– Naturally!
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– Do they also clinch the nails for you?
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– I think so!
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– Do they also turn around your cross?
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– Yes, but do not be afraid.
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Father, do you also speak during Holy Mass the “seven words” that Jesus stated on the Cross?
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– Yes, although unworthily, I also speak them.
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– And to whom do you say: Woman, there is your Son?
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– I tell her: Here are the children of your Son.
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– Do you suffer the thirst and rejection Jesus suffered?
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– Yes.
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– When do you experience thirst and rejection?
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– After the Consecration.
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– Until when do you suffer thirst and rejection?
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– Normally up to the Communion.
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– Did the Crucified Jesus have His innermost Being consummated?
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– You should rather say burnt.
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– For what did the Crucified Jesus thirst?
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– For God’s Kingdom.
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You told me you were ashamed of pronouncing this phrase: “I looked for someone to comfort me, but found none.” Why?
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– Because our suffering is insignificant compared to the real suffering Jesus experienced.
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– In front of whom do you feel ashamed?
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– In front of God and in front of my conscience.
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What did the Virgin do at the feet of the Crucified Jesus?
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– She suffered watching her Son suffer. She offered to the Eternal Father her pain and the sufferings of Jesus for our salvation.
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What is the Sacred Communion?
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– It is interior and exterior Mercy. A total Embrace. Do not stop begging Jesus to make Himself sensibly noticed.
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– Where does Jesus kiss you?
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– He kisses me all over.
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– When Jesus comes, does he visit only the soul?
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– The entire being.
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– What does Jesus do at Communion?
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– He delights in His creatures.
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– Is Communion an incorporation?
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– It is a fusion. Like two candles that fuse together and cannot be distinguished one from the other.
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– When you join Jesus in Holy Communion, what should we request the Lord for you?
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– To let me be another Jesus, all Jesus, always Jesus.
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Where did the dying Jesus look in His last gaze?
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– Towards His Holy Mother.
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How will our meeting with Jesus in Heaven be?
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– Oh!… The Eucharistic could give us an idea.
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Such was Padre Pio`s Mass, and not only men attended it:
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– Does the Most Blessed Virgin Mary attend your Mass?
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– Do you think the Mother is not interested in Her Son?
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– Do angels attend your Mass?
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– In legions!
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– What do they do?
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– Adore and praise.
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– Father, who is closest to your altar?
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– All of Paradise.
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Father, does the Lord love the Sacrifice?
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– Yes, because with It He has regenerated the world.
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– How much glory to God does the Mass give?
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– An infinite glory.
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– What should we do during the Mass?
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– Be compassionate and love.
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– Father, how are we supposed to listen to the Mass?
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– The way the Blessed Virgin and pious women attended to the tragedy of Calvary. The same way John attended the Eucharistic Sacrifice and the bloody Sacrifice of the Cross.
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– What kind of fruits do we receive when we hear the Mass?
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– They cannot be enumerated. You will know it only in Paradise.

From:  https://gloria.tv/post/SNunXKLUCmfn4KPZrXfygtNVL

V6 – 9.17.05 – Having been in Much Suffering because of the Privation of my Most Sweet Jesus, this morning, the Day of the Sorrows of Mary Most Holy, after I struggled in some way, He came and told me:  “My daughter, what do you want, that you So Much Yearn for Me?”

And I:  ‘Lord, what You have for Yourself – that is what I yearn for myself.’  And He:  “My daughter, for Myself I have Thorns, Nails and Cross.”  And I:  ‘Well then, that is what I want for myself.’  So He gave me His Crown of Thorns and shared with me the Pains of the Cross.

Then He added:  “Everyone can share in the Merits and in the Goods Produced by the Sorrows of My Mother.  One who, in advance, places herself in the Hands of Providence, offering herself to Suffer any kind of pains, miseries, illnesses, calumnies, and everything which the Lord shall Dispose upon her, comes to Participate in the First Sorrow of the Prophecy of Simeon.  One who actually finds herself amid Sufferings, and is Resigned, clings more tightly to Me and does not offend Me, it is as if she were saving Me from the hands of Herod, keeping Me Safe and Sound within the Egypt of her heart – and she Participates in the Second Sorrow.  One who feels downhearted, dry and deprived of My Presence, and remains yet Firm and Faithful to her usual practices – Even More, she takes the opportunity to Love Me and to search for Me More, without tiring – comes to Participate in the Merits and Goods that My Mother Acquired when I was lost. (Third Sorrow).  One who, in any circumstance she encounters, especially in seeing Me gravely offended, despised, trampled upon, tries to Repair Me, to Compassionate Me, and to Pray for the very ones who offend Me – it is as if I Encountered in that soul My own Mother Who, if She could have done it, would have freed Me from My enemies; and she Participates in the Fourth Sorrow.  One who Crucifies her senses for Love of My Crucifixion, and tries to Copy the Virtues of My Crucifixion within herself, Participates in the Fifth One.  One who is in a Continuous Attitude of Adoring, of Kissing My Wounds, of Repairing, of Thanking etc., in the name of all mankind, it is as if she were holding Me in her arms, just as My Mother held Me when I was Deposed from the Cross – and she Participates in the Sixth Sorrow.  One who remains in My Grace and Corresponds to It, giving a place to no one else but Me within her heart, it is as if she Buried Me in the center of her heart – and she Participates in the Seventh One.”

As we did on May 13, 2021, also Feast of Our Lady of Fatima and Feast of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, we Now make the Vow of Victim in the Holy Divine Will, on the 13th of each month until October (and/or beyond)

The little children of the Divine Will, Fusing ourselves in  +Jesus +Mary and +Luisa Continue to celebrate the New Baptism, the New Birth in the Divine Will with The Command Prayer as Vow of Victim for the Kingdom to be Established on earth as It is in Heaven:

COMMAND PRAYER

Abba Father,

In the Name of Jesus, our Savior and Spouse,

in the Unity and Love of the Holy Spirit, our Sanctifier,

Under the Mantle of Mary, our Mother and Queen

with all the Holy Angels and Saints,

through the Intercession of

the little daughter of the Divine Will Luisa Piccarreta,

we pray:

O Most Holy Trinity, Fused in Jesus, Mary and Luisa,

we Now make this Vow as a Victim soul with Luisa.

Let the Love of Jesus, His Sighs and also His Tears for Desire that His Will Reign in us as Life

be Accomplished, that He Himself Mold us, Strengthen us, Purify us, Prepare us,

and Do all that we do, Together with us.

Let us Feel all the Good of the Divine Will Operating in us and Lay Its Acts in us,

so that His little children become the Residence of the Divine Will,

Giving You the Freedom to Dominate and Do whatever You Want.

Jesus, Our Savior and Our King, Make us Ascend in the Divine Will.

May Your Throne be in our hearts,

that we may Love You with Your Divine Love.

As the First children of the Divine Will, may we begin to Live

in the Kingdom of Your Divine Will on earth.

Give us the Grace to never give life to our human wills

and Live only in the Divine Will

in order to call everyone to Live in this Kingdom So Holy.

Let the Beauty, the Enchantment, the Peace of the Divine Fiat be given to everyone.

May this Fulfill the Missions of Jesus, Mary and Luisa, as we Enter into the Image and Likeness of the New Adam and the New Eve, through the Intercession of Luisa,

Possessing the Divine Inheritance of Jesus and Mary

by being Linked with the Third Eve, the little daughter of the Divine Will Luisa Piccarreta.

May this be for the Glory and Honor of all, Past, Present and Future.

We make this Vow as a Victim soul in the Divine Will on this Ascension Thursday,

(or 13th of the month)

Where You Jesus will take our human will to Heaven and in Exchange

You will Give us Your Divine Will,

so that the Kingdom of God

be Established on earth as It is in Heaven.

Please take our humble prayer

and make it Your Command!

May All be Accomplished and

Completed in the Most Holy Divine Will!

WE BELIEVE! WE RECEIVE!

Fiat!  Amen!

In 2009, Ignatius Press released Father Ratzinger’s speech “What Will the Church Look Like in 2000” in full, in a book titled Faith and the Future along with a collection of his other teachings from the time.

The transcription the 1969 radio broadcast in full is below:

“The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves.

To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality. Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial. By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened. He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered.

If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves, to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other. Thus our own interior depths remain closed to us. If it is true that a man can see only with his heart, then how blind we are!

How does all this affect the problem we are examining? It means that the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is all empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the [sidelines], watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of man, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future.

Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.

The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century.

But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.”

From: https://ucatholic.com/blog/the-lost-prophecy-of-father-joseph-ratzinger-on-the-future-of-the-church/

Our Lady of Angels

August 2: Our Lady of Angels, Assisi, Italy (13th Century)

Our Lady of AngeFromls, or of the Portiuncula, is located six hundred yards from the city of Assissium, in Italy. It was a desolate locality, and apparently an unsettled one where robbers and the lawlessness flourished, for the Benedictines who had lived at the monastery felt it was too hazardous to remain there. They abandoned the monastery, relocating to Mount Subasio, which was a fortified monastery.

The original chapel is thought to date from the 4th Century, and was built by holy hermits who had come from the Valley of Josaphat. It is said that they brought relics of the Blessed Virgin with them to the region when they constructed the chapel.

The history of the feast is inspiring. St. Francis of Assisi, in the early days of his conversion, while he was still uncertain as to what path to pursue, was praying earnestly for enlightenment before the crucifix at the Church of San Damiano, when he heard within him the command of the Crucified: “Build up my house, for it is nearly falling down.” Taking the words literally, Francis began to restore San Damiano and other dilapidated churches in and near Assisi. The most famous of these was the church of Our Lady of the Angels.

Some time after the restoration of this little chapel, an angel told St. Francis to come to the Church of Our Lady of Angels, or Portiuncula. There he found Our Lord, His Blessed Mother, and the Angels waiting for him. Our Lord commended Francis because of his zeal for the salvation of souls, and promised to grant him whatever he should ask in behalf of sinners. St. Francis asked for this great favor: that all those who came to this church to pray and, truly sorry for their sins, confessed them, should “Obtain in perpetuity a plenary indulgence” so that they would have nothing to account for when God called them. This was the great favor he asked, but Our Lord granted it to him through Mary.

When Saint Francis came upon the little, run down and abandoned chapel of Our Lady of Angels, or Santa Maria degli Angelis, in the year 1208, it was almost completely hidden in shrubs and brush. Saint Francis entered the hidden church, which measured only twenty-two feet by thirteen feet, and saw the ancient fresco that had been placed above the main altar. It was an image of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin surrounded by angels. Some say that this is why the chapel was named Our Lady of Angels, although there are also legends that angels could often be heard singing there.

Our Lady of Angels

The place took its name, the Little Portion, or Portiuncula in the native Italian, from the small section of fertile land that was gifted to the monks for them to work for their support. It is said that this was the place where Saint Francis first understood his vocation, received visions, and was also where the saint desired to live. The Benedictines had lived at that location for hundreds of years, but the Benedictine monks gave this chapel to Saint Francis upon his request. It was certainly here that the Franciscan Order was founded.

At first Saint Francis wished the convent which he built there to be the principal one of his order. He assembled the first General Chapter there, where there were five thousand religious. It was also where he yielded up the ghost on October 3rd in the year 1226, the twentieth of his conversion, and the forty-fifth of his age. The cell in which the poor man of Assisi died can still be seen where it rests against one of the columns of the cupola under the choir bay.

James Fitzhenry, roman-catholic-saints.com, Marian Calendar

From:  https://www.roman-catholic-saints.com/our-lady-of-angels.html

https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/catholic-contributions/the-chains-of-st-peter-in-rome.html

Two lengths of fetters are here fused in a single chain, displayed in a church all its own near the Roman Colosseum.

The bonds, according to tradition, once held fast the limbs of St. Peter the Apostle and have been cherished by Christians since the first century.

The story of their veneration first appears in the ancient Acts of Saint Alexander, an early pope who died as a martyr in AD 115.  As he awaited his own execution, he received a visit from Quirinus, the nobleman who oversaw the prisons in Rome.  The man’s daughter Balbina was desperately ill, and he had heard that Pope Alexander had the power to heal her.  She was completely cured when the pope touched her with his chains.  Balbina wanted to kiss the chains in gratitude — but Alexander instructed her to find the chains of St. Peter and honor them instead.

Balbina became a Christian — and, according to some accounts, a consecrated virgin — and she arranged for the construction of a shrine for St. Peter’s fetters.  It would be rebuilt and moved and expanded through the centuries.

In scripture we find St. Peter imprisoned twice in Jerusalem.  Once he was jailed with the rest of the apostles and set free by an angel (Acts 5:17–25).  The second time, the authorities took no chances.  They assigned him two guards and bound him in his cell with double chains.  But, again, “an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell; and he struck Peter on the side and woke him. . . . And the chains fell off his hands” (Acts 12:7).

Once freed, Peter brought the Gospel first to Syrian Antioch and then to Rome.  In the imperial capital, during the reign of Nero, he was jailed briefly in the Mamertine Prison before suffering death by crucifixion.

Iron chains became, paradoxically, an early symbol of Christian freedom.  They are, according to St. Polycarp, writing in the second century, “the fitting ornaments of saints, and . . . indeed the diadems of the true elect of God and our Lord.”  Though the emperors possessed the power to chain the popes — from Peter to Alexander and beyond — the Church endured and triumphed.  Christians, from at least the fourth century, celebrated a feast of St. Peter’s chains on August 1, the beginning of the month named for Rome’s first emperor, Augustus.

As Rome’s Christians honored Peter’s chains from the Mamertine, so the Church in Jerusalem kept his chains from the Herodian prison.  In the fifth century, the Christian empress Eudocia, the wife of Theodosius II, sent a length of Peter’s Jerusalem chains to St. Leo the Great.  According to tradition, Leo held it beside Peter’s chains from the Mamertine Prison, and the two miraculously, inseparably fused together.

There are abundant testimonies to the presence of these chains in Rome.  St. Gregory the Great, who reigned as pope from 590 to 604, was intensely devoted to the relic and often sent small filings as gifts to dignitaries — to Constantina Augusta, the Byzantine empress; to a bishop named Columbus; to King Childebert of the Franks; to King Rechared of the Visigoths; and to Theodore, the court physician at Constantinople.  He would place the filing in a key-shaped reliquary — the key representing Peter’s authority.  He sent each particle with a prayer “that what bound [Peter’s] neck for martyrdom, may loose yours from all sins.”

The chains are today exposed for veneration in a gold and glass reliquary in the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli, on Rome’s Oppian Hill, a church built in the fifth century during the reign of Leo the Great.

Peter’s chains remain a sign of the relationship, often uneasy, between throne and altar, bishops and emperors.  In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI granted the title of the basilica to the cardinal-archbishop of Washington, DC.

~ The Holy Octave of Consecration to God Our Father ~

The Feast Day for the Father of All Mankind
is celebrated the first Sunday in August click here  for Consecration