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Chapter Eight

“Supernatural Graces”

“Totally Lost in God”

Padre Pio’s interior life — his prayer, meditation, and communication with God and the invisible world — was the most important aspect of his existence.

For most people, as far as conscious experience is concerned, prayer is a oneway conversation. They trust that God hears their petitions, accepts their praise and thanksgiving, and pardons their sins, but their senses do not perceive his response. For Padre Pio, prayer was often an emphatically different kind of experience. He was certain that God spoke to him literally and directly, sometimes through a word perceived through his organs of hearing, sometimes through vision perceived through his organs of sight, but more often through “the vision that is not seen” and “the voice that is not heard,” through which the spiritual realm was just as real and accessible as the beings of flesh and blood around him.

During his exile in Pietrelcina, Padre Pio wrote to Padre Benedetto:

My ordinary way of praying is this: as soon as I begin to pray I feel my soul begin to recollect itself in a peace and tranquillity (sic) that I cannot express in words…. The senses remain suspended, with the exception of my hearing, which sometimes is not suspended; yet usually this sense does not cause me trouble, and … even if a great deal of noise were made around me, this would not bother me in the slightest.¹

Padre Pio wrote of a “continuous thought of God.” Sometimes he felt “touched by the Lord … in a way that is so vivid and so sweet that most of the time I am impelled to shed tears of sorrow for my infidelity and for the tender mercy of having a Father so loving and so good as to summon me to his presence in this way.” “Enriched by supernatural graces,” he felt a “spiritual devotion” so intense that his soul was “totally lost in God.” Other times he experienced “an impulse so powerful” that he found himself “languishing for God, almost ready to die.” He emphasized that “all this arises, not from my own mental efforts or preparation, but from an internal flame and from a love” poured into his soul from God, “so powerful that if God did not quickly come to my aid, I would be consumed!”²

In another letter to Padre Benedetto, he described “the internal flame”:

Hardly do I apply myself to pray than all at once I feel as if my heart is possessed by a flame of living love … unlike any flame of this poor world. It … consumes, but gives no pain. It is so sweet and delicious that the spirit finds great pleasure in it, and remains satiated in it in such a way that it does not lose its desire. Oh, God! This is a thing of supreme wonder to me. Perhaps I will never come to understand it until I reach the heavenly country.³

Within this mystical state, Padre Pio frequently received heavenly visitors. Writing to Padre Agostino in 1912, he declared, “Heavenly beings do not cease to visit me and make me anticipate the delight of the blessed.”⁴ On another occasion, Padre Pio wrote to him: “At night, as my eyes close, I see a veil come down and paradise opens to me, and, rejoicing in this vision, I sleep with a happy smile and with complete calm, expecting the little companion of my infancy [his guardian angel] to come to wake me and sing praises each morning with me to the delight of our hearts.”⁵ He could be referring simply to dreams in this case, but on many other occasions he made it clear that his experience of the supernatural world and its inhabitants was as real to him as the material world.

This, however, was not always true for him. Sometimes, Padre Pio found himself in a “great aridity of spirit,” in which it was impossible for him to become recollected and pray, no matter how strongly he desired to do so. Sometimes he wondered whether his visions were mere hallucinations, whether his experiences truly corresponded to reality. In 1913, he confided to Padre Benedetto: “An atrocious thought crosses my mind: namely, that all this could be an illusion without my recognizing it.”⁶

Most of the time, however, Padre Pio was absolutely convinced of the reality of his supersensible experiences, but he realized that it was very difficult for him to communicate effectively to others what he was experiencing. He explained to Padre Benedetto:

What happens to my soul is like what would happen if a poor little shepherd were led into the drawing room of a king, where an infinite world of precious objects were displayed that he has never seen before. The shepherd, when he leaves the palace of the king, will surely carry all those different objects in the eye of his mind, but he certainly will not know their number, nor will he be able to assign proper names to them. He might want to speak with others about all that he has seen. He might gather all his intellectual and scientific powers to make a good try, but seeing that all his powers would not succeed in making known what he intends, he prefers to keep silence.⁷

“A Surfeit of Sweet Joy”

On March 16, 1912, Padre Pio wrote to Padre Agostino, “Sometimes I seem to be on the point of dying of a surfeit of sweet joy!” Five days later he wrote:

Only God knows what sweetness I experienced yesterday … especially after Mass…. If only now, when I still feel almost all of his sweetness, I could bury these consolations within my heart, I would certainly be in paradise! How happy Jesus makes me! How sweet his spirit is! … He continues to love me and draw me closer to himself. He has forgotten my sins, and … remembers only his own mercy. Morning by morning he comes into my poor heart and pours out all the effusions of his goodness!⁸

On April 18, he wrote: “Oh, how delightful the conversation was that I held this morning with Paradise! … Things impossible to translate into human language…. The heart of Jesus and my heart were — allow me to use this expression — fused. The joy in me was so intense and so profound that I was no longer able to contain myself, and my face was bathed in the most delightful tears!”⁹ On July 7, 1913, he said that Christ had appeared to him and “immersed my soul in such peace and contentment that all the sweetest delights of this world, even if they were doubled, pale in comparison to even a drop of this blessedness!”¹⁰

These spiritual “sweetnesses,” as Padre Pio called them, only increased his desire for God, a desire that he knew could never be consummated in this world. Because of this, he longed for death. Writing to Padre Agostino on August 9, 1912, Padre Pio declared: “My spirit runs the risk of separating itself from my body because I cannot love Jesus on earth. Yes, my soul is wounded with love for Jesus. I am sick with love. I continuously experience the bitter pain of the fire that burns but does not consume.”¹¹ On December 29, 1912, reflecting on how many souls in the past year had “entered into the house of Jesus, there to remain forever,” he exclaimed: “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 distresses me in an unspeakable way.”¹²

In one of his most sublime descriptions, in which he seemingly describes a “near-death experience,” Padre Pio wrote eloquently to Padre Agostino:

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?

He longed to enter at once into “that eternal rest, where I shall live forever, lost in that immense ocean of good … and enjoying that by which He Himself is blessed! … 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 sweetest love!”¹³

The Dark Night

Not only was Padre Pio in agony at being separated from God, but he was also devastated by his own sinfulness, as he perceived it. His letters to Padre Agostino and Padre Benedetto abound with references to his own worthlessness. This seems to be the essence of the dark night that he experienced all his life, which alternated or even perhaps coexisted with his experiences of divine sweetness.

In May 1914, speaking of the “deep darkness … thickening on the horizon of my spirit,” Padre Pio confessed:

I know that no one is spotless in the sight of the Lord, but my impurity is without bounds before him. In the present state in which the merciful Lord, in his infinite wisdom and justice, condescends to raise the veil and reveal my secret shortcomings to me in all their malignity and hideousness, I see myself so deformed that it seems as if my very clothing shrinks in horror of my defilement!¹⁴

Not only was Padre Pio horrified by his actual sins, he was filled with terror at his potential to sin. In September 1915, he wrote to Padre Agostino that “the thought of going astray and … offending God fills me with terror. It paralyzes my limbs, and both body and soul feel as if they are being squeezed in a powerful vise. My bones feel as if they were being dislocated … crushed and ground up.”¹⁵ All this at the mere thought of sinning!

Padre Pio said the agony his soul experienced in this “dark night” was so great that he could not conceive of it being much less than “the atrocious pains that the damned suffer in hell.” Of these experiences, which occurred frequently throughout his life, Padre Pio said, “Such torture does not last long, nor could it do so, because, if I remain alive at all while it lasts, it is through a special favor from God!”¹⁶ In various letters, he speaks of being “mad with anguish” and not knowing whether he is in hell, purgatory, or earth, and of being in “an endless desert of darkness, despondency, and insensibility, a land of death, a night of abandonment, a cavern of desolation, in which my poor soul finds itself far from God and alone with itself.”¹⁷

Sometime later, writing to a woman who was suffering similar trials, Padre Pio declared that her sufferings were a grace ordained by God “to exalt your soul to the perfect union of love.” Before attaining to this union, a Christian needs to be purged of her defects and her attachments to things both natural and supernatural. This is necessary because every “natural inclination and mode of behavior” must be surrendered to God so as to be transformed to “work in another way more divine than human.”¹⁸ He went on to describe how God purges the soul, totally emptying it of itself. All self-centeredness must be replaced by “a new way of thinking and wishing that is simply and purely supernatural and celestial.” In order to arrive at this state, the soul must be subjected to this painful trial whereby it is purged by an intense light that reveals faults hitherto unseen, showing God not as a loving Father but as a terrifying Judge. The soul feels as if God were casting it out. It is through this passive purgation that God unites the soul to himself “with a chain of love.” Yet this process “produces a darkness thicker than that which enshrouded the Egyptians at the time of the Exodus.” This is because the intellect is incapable of receiving the light and is indisposed by many imperfections and weaknesses. The “dark night” affects the intellect, the higher powers of the soul, and even the physical appetites.¹⁹

This “purgative light” reveals to the soul its own “nothingness, its sins, its defects, its wretchedness.” It “eradicates every bit of esteem and conceit and complacency, to the very roots of the soul.”²⁰ It also prepares the will for the joy of mystical union with God. Moreover, the purgative light shows the soul its absolute dependency upon God for its salvation and its inability to do anything to save itself. Through this light, Padre Pio maintained, the Christian realizes that he cannot repay God’s love for him, that there is nothing naturally within him except falseness and deformity, and that God is the only fountain of truth and grace and love, the only source of salvation.

Even though Padre Pio could explain and analyze his trial in detail, this made it no less painful, nor was his anguish less acute in those moments when he felt abandoned by God, when he saw everything as darkness and desolation. All he could do was throw himself into the arms of Jesus.

Padre Pio at times felt as if he were sinking through quicksand into hell, yet he continued to wait for God. Constantly he repeated, as an act of faith, the words of Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him” (Jb 13:15, KJV). He continued diligently to search the Scriptures, deriving comfort from the fact that Jonah, Jeremiah, David, and Paul, like him, passed through the same deep waters of desolation. He was also comforted by Padre Benedetto, whom he accepted as the “internal and external judge” of his soul. Padre Benedetto wrote to Padre Pio, “You must calm yourself by means of my assurances and hold them as if sworn by oath.” In other words, Padre Pio was to have confidence and not despair of God’s mercy, if for no other reason than he was ordered to do so through “holy obedience.” The “Night,” Padre Benedetto explained, was sent by God “to extinguish human understanding so that divine understanding can take its place, and you, having been stripped of the … usual way of using your mental faculties, might be able to rise to that supernatural and heavenly purification.”²¹ Pannullo, however, was not as helpful as Padre Benedetto, for Padre Pio wrote, “He scolds me and I find no consolation in his sermons to me.”²²

A Conversation with an Angel

Padre Pio continued to be subject to attacks by demonic forces. In August 1912, for a space of several days, whenever he decided to write to his superiors, he was seized with violent migraine headaches and spasms in his writing arm. Recognizing devilish interference, he prayed and then was able to write. The devil continued to visit him with temptations against purity, which Padre Pio in his modesty did not detail. In addition, he continued to be subject to physical attacks by infernal forces, accompanied by terrifying noises clearly audible to neighbors. But he also continued to receive visits from his guardian angel, as well as from Jesus and Mary. It was his angel who frequently rescued him from physical assaults by demonic powers. This is the topic of a beautiful but rather strange letter that Pio wrote in November 1912 to Padre Agostino:

I cannot describe to you how those wretched creatures beat me. Sometimes I feel as if I were near death. Saturday it seemed as if they really wanted to finish me, and I didn’t know which way to turn, so I turned to my angel, who, after keeping me waiting for a time, appeared and flew all around me and, with his angelic voice, sang hymns to the Divine Majesty.

There followed one of those usual discussions. I scolded him harshly for making me wait so long while I was continually calling for him to help me. In order to punish him, I did not want to look him in the face. I wanted to withdraw and get away from him. But the poor fellow overtook me, almost weeping, and caught hold of me, trying to make me look at him. And then I glanced into his face and found him full of regret.

“My dear boy, [the angel said], I am always near you. I always hover about you with the love aroused by your gratitude to the Beloved of your heart. My love for you will not pass away, even with your earthly life. I know that your generous heart always palpitates with yearning for him whom we both love. You would climb every mountain and traverse every desert in search of him, to see him again, to embrace him again … and ask him to break immediately the chain which unites you to the body…. You would tell him that, separated here from him in this world, you have more sadness than joy…. As for now, he is able to give you only the ray of a star, the perfume of a flower, the note of a harp, the caress of a breeze. But do not cease to ask him insistently for [what you desire], because his supreme delight is to have you with him. And although he cannot yet satisfy you, since Providence wills that you remain in exile a little longer, in the end he will fulfill your desire.”²³

It is clear that even when Padre Pio cried out that God had forsaken him, this situation was often followed by encounters with Jesus, Mary, and his guardian angel, who, at times, responded to questions that his superiors put to him. To the end of his life, it caused him great anguish that, although heaven often showed him the state of others’ souls, he remained in the dark about his own.

“I Want to Bring Everyone to God!”

Most of Padre Pio’s visions related to his ministry to others. For instance, in March 1913, he described a vision in which Jesus deplored the lack of spirituality among contemporary Christians and a lack of dedication among the clergy. In this bodily vision, Jesus appeared in human form and spoke words perceptible to Padre Pio’s physical ears. At times, the Lord was silent; at other times, his throat was choked with sobs as he lamented that people

… make no effort to control themselves amidst their temptations and … even delight in their iniquity. The souls in whom I most delight lose their faith when they are put to the test. They ignore me, day and night, in the churches. They no longer care about the Sacrament of the Altar…. No one cares any more about the love that I bear them. I am continually saddened. My house has become for many a theater of amusements…. My ministers … whom I have loved as the apple of my eye … ought to have comforted my heart, which is now filled with sorrow. They ought to have aided me in the redemption of souls, but instead … I receive ingratitude and thanklessness from them. Son, I see many of them who … betray me with hypocritical faces and … sacrilegious Communions.²⁴

Jesus seems almost humanly petulant in this vision, and it further kindled Padre Pio’s zeal to win souls for Christ and to renew his self-offering as a victim. In other visions, Jesus presented souls to Padre Pio whom he never met before. Through his revelations, Padre Pio learned about the interior state of these souls so that he could help them when God gave him the opportunity to meet them.

Those inclined to dismiss Padre Pio as a madman (or at least a sane man with a very vivid imagination) must understand that his revelations and locutions usually corresponded to some generally observable reality. The supersensible communications almost always resulted in some act of kindness or concern, and all his supernatural experiences centered on love for God and man. Moreover, the hellish noises that Padre Pio reported could sometimes be heard by others.

The more Padre Pio’s spiritual life intensified, the more his love and concern grew for other people. In a letter to Padre Agostino written in the fall of 1915, Padre Pio prayed that God would give life to souls dead in sin:

I have always implored you, trembling as I beg you now, in your mercy, to withdraw the thunderbolt of thy glance from my unhappy brethren. You have said, O my sweet Lord, that “Love is as strong as death and lasts as long as hell”; therefore, look with an eye of ineffable sweetness upon these dead brethren. Chain them to yourself with a strong bond.

May all these dead souls arise, O Lord! O Jesus, Lazarus [whom Jesus raised four days after death] made no request at all that you should raise him. The prayers of a sinful woman sufficed for him. Ah, behold, my Divine Lord, another soul, also sinful and guilty beyond all measure, who beseeches you in behalf of a multitude of dead souls who have no interest in praying to you. I beg you to raise them. You know, my Lord and King, the cruel martyrdom that these Lazaruses cause me. Call them with a cry so powerful as to give them life, and at thy command, let them come forth from the sepulchre of their obscene pleasures!²⁵

Much of Padre Pio’s spiritual life was directed at the raising of modern-day Lazaruses. All of it fed into his ministry for the salvation of souls. Frequently he prayed, echoing Moses: “Either save this people or blot me out of thy book of life!” Once someone told him of a prophecy that a member of the Franciscan order would lead a third of the world to Christ, implying that it referred to him. Padre Pio retorted, “What do I want with a third? More! More! I want to bring everyone to God!”²⁶