Читать книгу Padre Pio - C. Bernard Ruffin - Страница 12

Chapter Four

Encounters with the Invisible World

“Manifestations and Divine Locutions”

From the beginning of his seminary studies, Fra Pio heard heavenly voices and experienced visions, a matter which is sure to make many modern people uncomfortable, and tempt many to dismiss the Capuchin as a madman or liar — or, at the very least, badly deluded. Yet, without seriously considering these manifestations, one cannot hope to understand Padre Pio, whose very existence was intertwined with the invisible world.

It would seem that from his study of Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, and other mystical writers, Fra Pio learned to distinguish between three types of visions: the bodily, the imaginative, and the intellectual. A bodily vision is what most people usually have in mind when they talk about a vision. If, wide awake, I walked into my living room and, with the same organs of sight with which I perceive my furniture and my books, saw Padre Pio, I would be (assuming that I am not hallucinating) having a bodily vision. Actually, this type of vision was distrusted by both Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint John of the Cross, partly because of the great difficulty involved in distinguishing a true vision from a hallucination. The only time bodily visions were to be taken seriously was when they were totally unsought.

Padre Pio had numerous bodily visions of celestial as well as infernal beings who were as vividly present to him as were his flesh-and-blood colleagues. As we will see, he claimed that he was beaten and bloodied by demons and that he actually kissed the hands of Christ. He told another priest, “I see my guardian angel just like I see you.”¹

The imaginative vision is hard to describe. To say that a vision is “imaginative” by no means implies that it is not real — that it is a figment of the visionary’s imagination. In an imaginative vision, supersensible wisdom is infused into the soul by means of images already in the subject’s imagination. It is like an allegory.

Although at the time he used the word “intellectual” to describe it, Fra Pio’s vision of the black giant (described in chapter 2) really corresponds to what is classically known as an imaginative vision — a vision in which, as Pio recounts, the bodily senses are suspended and the subject “sees” reality symbolically. God wished to infuse in him some knowledge of his future work and did so by using pictures and images already in his mind.

The intellectual vision has been described as pure understanding, without any impression of images on the senses. This is a “vision,” Teresa of Ávila says, which is “not seen at all.” Angela of Foligno (1248–1309), an Italian mystic, describes such visions:

At times God comes into the soul without being called; and he instills into [the soul] fire, love, and sometimes sweetness; and the soul believes this comes from God, and delights therein. But [the soul] does not yet know or see that he dwells in her; she perceives his graces, in which she delights…. Beyond that the soul receives the gift of seeing God. God says to her, “Behold me!”, and the soul sees him dwelling within her. She sees him more clearly than one man sees another. For the eyes of the soul behold a [wealth] of which I cannot speak; a [wealth] which is not bodily, but spiritual, of which I can say nothing.²

Fifteen-year-old Francesco’s “purely intellectual” revelation of January 3, 1903, when he was “suddenly flooded with supernatural light” (also described in chapter 2), providing the meaning of his imaginative vision of two days previous, was probably an example of this third type of vision.

Padre Pio actually understood his supersensible experiences as belonging to two categories: “manifestations and apparitions which are purely supernatural and without form” and those “under human form.” Those manifestations that are “purely supernatural,” he claimed, all “concern God, his perfections and his attributes.” He drew this analogy:

Let’s stand before a mirror. What do we see? Nothing but a human image. Our intellect, if it is not deranged, will have no doubt that this image is our own.

Now, let us suppose that everybody wants to prove that we are deceived in wishing to believe that the image which we see in the mirror is ours. Could they possibly succeed in dissuading us from our conviction or even causing the slightest doubt to rise within us? No, certainly not.

Well, the same thing happens to me in these manifestations and divine locutions. The soul beholds these heavenly secrets, these divine perfections, and these godly attributes much better than we see our image in a mirror. My efforts to doubt their reality succeed in nothing other than making my soul stronger in its conviction. I do not know whether you have ever seen a great fire come in contact with a drop of water. This small amount of water fails to quench the flames, but, on the contrary, we see that it serves to stir them up even more. This happens to me when I try, with all my strength, to doubt that these things have their origin in God.

He went on to say that one can neither separate the image from the mirror, nor touch it physically:

And yet the same image exists outside of us if not apart from us…. The same thing happens to me. My soul remains fundamentally convinced that these heavenly manifestations cannot come except from God, even though with my reason I attempt to question this. But just as it is impossible to separate one’s image from a mirror and touch it at the same time, it is still more difficult to succeed in committing these heavenly secrets to writing, simply because of the inadequacy of the human language. The soul, without deceiving itself, can affirm only what these are not.³

Referring to the bodily, or “human” manifestations, Pio wrote that they are usually visions of the Lord in human form — at the Last Supper; in the Garden of Gethsemane; scourged, bound to a column; or glorious and resplendent in the Resurrection and Ascension. There were visions of the Virgin Mary and “other exalted heavenly beings.” Although these were “in human form and appearance,” and he could describe them more accurately than the visions without form, he preferred to remain “in perfect reticence, because we do wrong when, in expressing ourselves, we do not see the great distance between the thing that is perceived within our consciousness and that which we are able to express in words.”⁴

Pio wrote of these supernatural manifestations:

I always emerge from them more steeped in a sense of my own unworthiness. In this light I realize that I am the most miserable of the creatures that have ever seen the light. I feel greatly detached from this wretched world. I feel that I’m in a land of exile … and I suffer immensely in seeing how few among my companions in misery aspire as I do to the Promised Land. I always feel ever more filled full of the goodness of God, and I groan that there might be at least a few who love him wholeheartedly. I suffer in seeing myself so poor, for no other reason than that of not being able to offer anything as a sign of gratitude to so excellent a Benefactor.⁵

Another result of these “manifestations” was a great continuous peace. “I feel myself strongly consumed by an exceedingly powerful desire to please God,” Pio wrote. “The Lord who favored me with this grace causes me to look with immense revulsion on that which does not help me draw near to God.”⁶

Padre Benedetto

Fra Pio exceedingly was reluctant to discuss his “heavenly secrets” with anybody, but through “Holy Obedience” he was bound to do so with his superiors, who decided that it was advisable to assign him a spiritual director. Under this arrangement, the disciple would make a commitment of obedience to his spiritual director. Unless the director counseled an obviously sinful act, the disciple would be bound to obey him exactly, as the “internal and external judge” of his soul. If the director should lead the disciple into sin, he and not the “spiritual child” would have to answer before God.

A spiritual director is supposed to be both learned and holy, and Fra Pio’s superiors settled on a man who was considered to be one of the holiest and most learned in the province. Padre Benedetto Nardella of San Marco in Lamis, then in his mid-thirties, was a professor of philosophy and physics. Fra Pio had studied under him from 1905 to 1906, and Benedetto had been very much impressed by the young man’s spiritual precocity. It was said that he himself was a mystic, at times the recipient of visions and locutions.

Benedetto was born in 1872 in the town of San Marco in Lamis, five miles west of San Giovanni Rotondo, where Pio would live most of his adult life. He entered the Capuchin order at eighteen and was ordained at twenty-six. By his thirties, he was a respected theologian and considered an authority on mysticism. He published nine books, most of which dealt with mysticism and the inner life. A celebrated preacher, Padre Benedetto was greatly in demand in southern Italy. When Padre Pio of Benevento died in 1908, Benedetto was elected to replace him as minister provincial.

Photographs of Padre Benedetto show an impressive-looking man of stout build with light eyes, and a full head of hair, whose strong, regular features were almost obscured by a gigantic beard. From his letters to Fra Pio, Padre Benedetto appears to have been somewhat distant and not a little authoritative. At times, he seemed almost tyrannical and was characterized by Fra Pio as stubborn. Even so, Fra Pio always held the man he addressed in his letters as “Daddy” in utmost reverence and respect. As his spiritual director, Padre Benedetto insisted that Fra Pio describe to him in detail all his mystical experiences; they were to be submitted “to the judgment of the one who directs you.” Padre Benedetto warned that revelations that seemed certain and thoroughly reliable could come from nature, the devil, or “the very propensity or fondness we have for believing what we consider to be revealed.” When the younger man was uncertain as to whether or not he was pleasing God, Padre Benedetto urged him to trust in his director’s judgment as totally as a blind man trusts the person or dog who leads him. Padre Pio was later to write that in his various spiritual trials he could find calm only in the counsels of Padre Benedetto of San Marco in Lamis.

Padre Agostino

As a student, Fra Pio formed a deep and lasting relationship with another teacher, Padre Agostino of San Marco in Lamis, under whom he studied sacred theology at Serracapriola in 1907. Padre Agostino came from the same town as Benedetto. Born Michele Daniele in 1880, he entered the Capuchin order after graduation from a public high school. In March 1903, two months after Fra Pio entered the novitiate, he was ordained a priest. Renowned as a preacher, Padre Agostino studied French and Greek in university and earned a degree in philosophy.

Padre Agostino was a large, heavy man, whom some called, behind his back, “Big Daddy.” His enormous forked beard was then brown, and he had rosy cheeks and a booming bass voice. He seems to have been more warm and approachable than Padre Benedetto. In fact, since Padre Agostino was only slightly older than Fra Pio, the “Dear Professor” became his lifelong confidant and probably his best friend. When they lived at the same convent, Padre Agostino was Fra Pio’s confessor. Fra Pio often poured out his heart on paper to Padre Agostino, instructing him to forward the letter to Padre Benedetto, who would, upon receiving it, offer his advice. In this sense, Padre Benedetto and Padre Agostino formed a team in their direction of Pio.

Padre Agostino was not a mystic, however, and there were certain things he could not understand as clearly as Padre Benedetto did. In 1946, Padre Pio told one of his confreres, who asked about the advisability of having a spiritual director, “It is usually sufficient to have a confessor. If the confessor is incapable of understanding spiritual matters, you should simply trust in the goodness of God.”

“Don’t you have a spiritual director?” the man asked Pio.

“I had one,” Pio answered, “and he was Padre Benedetto. But since they took him from me, I have been without one.”

When asked, “Don’t you have Padre Agostino for your confessor?” Pio answered, “Yes, but he doesn’t understand me and I have to carry on putting my trust in God.”⁷

Nonetheless, the mutual affection between Padre Pio and Padre Agostino was very deep. Their letters abound with expressions of affection. Pio sometimes called Padre Agostino, “The most beloved person in the world.” Agostino, in 1912 wrote, “My dear son, I love you very much, as God wishes me to, and I desire nothing other than to embrace you here below again and then to be together with you forever in heaven with our most merciful Lord.”⁸

During his Capuchin student years, knowledge of the supernatural events in Fra Pio’s life was limited to Padre Benedetto. Even Padre Agostino knew nothing about these things until 1911. Although impressed by the young man’s goodness, obedience, and diligence, Padre Agostino was, at that time, “unaware of anything extraordinary or supernatural.” Even so, some remarkable events were taking place.

“The Madonna Carried Me Away … to Your Mansion”

One of the most remarkable — and best documented — of these events took place two years after Fra Pio’s entry into religious life. He was then studying at Sant’Elia a Pianisi. He described his experience in writing within three weeks of its occurrence and consigned it to his superiors. The archives of the friary of Santa Maria delle Grazie at San Giovanni Rotondo have preserved Fra Pio’s deposition, dated February 1905:

Several days ago, I had an extraordinary experience. Around 11:00 p.m. on January 18, 1905, Fra Anastasio and I were in the choir when suddenly I found myself far away in a wealthy home where the father was dying while a child was being born. Then the Most Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to me and said to me: “I am entrusting this child to you. Now she is a diamond in the rough, but I want you to work with her, polish her, and make her as shining as possible, because one day I wish to adorn myself with her.”

I answered, “How is this possible, since I am still a mere seminarian and do not yet know whether I will one day have the fortune and joy of being a priest? And even if I become a priest, how can I take care of this child, since I am so far away?”

The Madonna said, “Do not doubt. She will come to you, but first you will meet her at St. Peter’s in Rome.” After that I found myself again in the choir.⁹

That very night, January 18, 1905, some three hundred fifty miles to the north, in the city of Udine, a wealthy man in his early forties named Giovanni Battista Rizzani was dying. He had been taken ill shortly after his wife, Leonilde, had become pregnant with their sixth child. Rizzani was a fervent Mason and would have nothing to do with the Church or religion. As his illness progressed, he grew even more hardened and strictly forbade his wife to summon a priest. When it was apparent that the end was near, his Masonic friends surrounded the house day and night to frustrate the efforts of any priest to see the dying man.

Leonilde, a devout Christian, prayed fervently to God that her husband might put his trust in the Lord before he died. About the same time that Fra Pio had his experience in the choir at Sant’Elia a Pianisi, Leonilde was kneeling in prayer by the bedside of her husband, who was now in a coma. Suddenly she looked up and saw a young man. She recognized his Capuchin habit but did not get a good look at his face. As soon as she saw him, he left the room. Leonilde got up to follow him, but he seemed to vanish into thin air!

She had no time to try to figure out an explanation for the appearance and disappearance of this strange young man, for the family dog immediately began to howl — a harbinger, it was believed, of imminent death. Unable to stand the baying, Leonilde decided to go into the yard and untie the dog. Before she reached the doorway, however, the distraught woman, then in her eighth month, was seized with labor pains. She called the family business manager, who lived on the premises, and he successfully helped her deliver her baby girl.

Within moments, the mother gathered the child in her arms, laid the baby on a bed, and returned to her husband’s side. The business manager went outside and demanded that the Masons admit the priest, who was trying to enter. Even if they were carrying out the wishes of their friend who refused to see a priest, he said, they had no right to bar him from entering to baptize a premature baby. They relented, and the priest went into the house. Just as he entered the sickroom, the dying man opened his eyes, regained consciousness for a short time, looked at the priest, and said distinctly: “My God! My God! Forgive me!” The priest was able to administer the last rites, and the sick man died the next morning.

In order to comprehend fully what took place in 1905, we have to advance in time to the year 1922. After her husband’s death, Leonilde moved to Rome with her children. In the summer of 1922, Giovanna, the girl born the night of her father’s death, was in St. Peter’s Basilica with a friend. She was about to enter college and was troubled. Her high school teachers had instilled serious doubts in her mind about the doctrine of the Trinity. She wanted to make her confession as well as talk to a priest about her dilemma. A guard told Giovanna and her friend that all the priests who were hearing confessions had already left, as it was almost time for the basilica to close for the day. Before they could exit the church, however, the girls encountered a young Capuchin priest who said that he would gladly hear Giovanna’s confession.

When Giovanna told the priest about her theological problem, he explained the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in such a way as to dispel all her doubts. Giovanna emerged from the confessional and stood, waiting with her friend for the priest to emerge from his side of the booth. The only person to appear was an irate guard who demanded: “What are you doing here? We’re closed. You have to leave the basilica. Come tomorrow morning and you’ll be able to make your confession.”

“But I already made my confession,” Giovanna explained to him. “We’re waiting for the priest to come out of the confessional so that we can kiss his hand. He’s a Capuchin Father.”

The guard went up to the confessional and opened the door to the priest’s compartment. “You see, young ladies, there’s no one here!”

“But where did he go?” Giovanna exclaimed. “We’ve been standing here, watching, and we haven’t seen him leave!” The girls agreed that there was no way the priest could have left the confessional without being seen by them.

That fall, Giovanna entered college. Sometime the following year, she was shown a picture of Padre Pio, who was by then becoming well-known in Italy, although she had never heard of him. She thought he resembled the Capuchin priest whom she had encountered at St. Peter’s and wondered whether it might in fact have been he. She dismissed the idea and thought no more of it until the following summer when she decided to go to see Padre Pio, along with an aunt and several friends. It was late afternoon when, standing in a crowd of people in the sacristy of the church, Giovanna caught her first glimpse of Padre Pio. To her amazement, he came up to her and extended his hand for her to kiss (as was the custom with priests in southern Italy), exclaiming, “Why, Giovanna! I know you! You were born the day your father died.”

Giovanna was nonplussed. How could this man have known such a thing? The next day, Giovanna made her confession to Padre Pio, after which he said to her, “At last you have come to me, my dear child. I’ve been waiting for you for so many years!”

“Father, what do you want of me?” the young woman asked. “I don’t know you.” She had come to San Giovanni Rotondo the previous day with her aunt and had never been there before. “Perhaps you’re mistaken and have confused me with some other girl.”

“No,” said Padre Pio. “I am not mistaken. I knew you before.”

“No, Father,” Giovanna objected. “I don’t know you. I never saw you before.”

“Last year,” Pio continued, “one summer afternoon, you went with a friend to St. Peter’s Basilica and you made your confession before a Capuchin priest. Do you remember?”

“Yes, Father, I do.”

“Well, I was that Capuchin.”

The student listened in absolute amazement as the priest continued: “Dear child, listen to me. When you were about to come into the world, the Madonna carried me away to Udine, to your mansion. She had me assist at the death of your father and she told me, ‘See, in this very room a man is dying. He is the head of a family. He is saved through the tears and prayers of his wife and through my intercession. The wife of the dying man is about to give birth to a child. I entrust this child to you. But first you will meet her at St. Peter’s.’ Last year I met you at St. Peter’s, and now you have come here to San Giovanni Rotondo on your own accord, without my sending for you. And now let me take care of your soul, as the Heavenly Lady desires.”

Giovanna burst into tears. “Father, since I’m your responsibility, take care of me,” she answered. “Tell me what I must do. Shall I become a nun?”

The Padre responded, “By no means! You will come often to San Giovanni Rotondo. I will take charge of your soul, and you will know the will of God.”

Giovanna told her mother what had happened, and so she went to see Padre Pio herself. He told her: “Madame, that little monk whom you saw walking towards the gallery of your mansion in Udine when your husband was dying — was me. I can assure you that your husband is saved. The Madonna, who appeared to me in the mansion and bade me pray for your dying husband, told me that Jesus had pardoned all his sins and that he was saved through her maternal intercession.”¹⁰ Both Giovanna and her mother utterly were convinced.

Giovanna Rizzani, who became the Marchioness Boschi of Cesena, remained a devoted disciple of Padre Pio and later gave a detailed deposition before the Archepiscopal Curia of Manfredonia. The curia noted that her account of what Padre Pio had told her about her birth and her father’s death when she first talked to him at length in 1923 was in exact agreement with the account Padre Pio had written in 1905 — a document which the marchioness had not yet read. Padre Pio’s account of his bilocation had been given to his superiors, and they had not shared it with anyone.

“Something That Distinguished Him from the Other Students”

During his years of study, except for Padre Benedetto and a handful of his superiors, Fra Pio’s confreres — including his fellow students — knew nothing about his mystical or supernatural experiences, about which he never spoke. They were, however, aware that he was different. Padre Guglielmo of San Giovanni Rotondo, who was just a year Pio’s senior, wrote of the “purity that was revealed by the great modesty in his eyes … the penances he asked with insistence to perform … the change in his countenance that could be observed when he unexpectedly encountered an immodest picture … his betrayal of distress when he observed in others an action of a dubious nature — all of these proof of his love and angelic virtue.”¹¹

Padre Raffaele D’Addario of Sant’Elia a Pianisi (1890–1974), who studied with Pio and became a close friend, recalled, “In particular, he aroused in me a sense of great admiration for his exemplary conduct.” Whenever Padre Raffaele encountered Pio, whether in the hallway, the choir, in the sacristy, or in the garden, the latter always seemed to be in a state of recollection — that is, an awareness of God’s presence. “There was never the danger that he would say a single word that was not necessary,” Padre Raffaele recalled. “Though I was still very young and no expert on virtue, I noticed something in him that distinguished him from the other students.”¹²

Padre Damaso of Sant’Elia a Pianisi (1889–1970) had a similar observation. He found Pio “a little different from the others…. He was more lovable, and he knew how to say just the right thing to [the younger] boys. He would suggest something in the way of advice in a very sweet manner, and we used to listen to him of our own accord.”¹³

There was something other than his sterling character that drew the attention and solicitude of others — Fra Pio’s precarious health.