“You must be modest in speech, modest in laughter, modest in your bearing, modest in walking.”
—Letters, Vol. 3, 90
Padre Pio was a man who admired simplicity. He wholly lived the Franciscan spirit of poverty with detachment from self, possessions, and comforts. There was no doubt that he had a great love for the virtue of chastity, and his behavior was modest in all situations and with all people. In his lifetime, Padre Pio reconciled thousands of men and women back to their faith.
After Pio’s death, Pope Paul VI said of him, “…he said Mass humbly, heard confessions from morning until night and was a marked representative of the stigmata of Our Lord. He was truly a man of prayer and suffering.”
In Padre Pio’s Own Words
While undergoing such severity from you, Most High, I declare myself a most obedient son to my guide. I beg you to give me strength for my suffering, since I am stripped of every comfort from you. In addition, make my resolutions constant, steadfast, and fruitful, at least enough so that they are sufficient to disarm your fury. Offer these resolutions to your offended majesty yourself, my Highest Good, but not before undergirding them by your divine power.
Meanwhile I will attempt to find a posture for my unbearable pain on this bed of sharp and cruel thorns, receiving your rejection of me as my only food.
Do not think, my father, that I have not done everything I could to come out of this harsh prison, but it has all been useless. Trying to do so was to my detriment, because I should have just resigned myself to the darkness descending into my soul and entered even more into the thick of the fight. My crying out was in vain.
(To Fr. Benedetto of San Marco in Lamis, June 4, 1918)
Prayer
St. Pio, in the midst of our busy and sometimes overly abundant lives,
may your example of simplicity remind us to embrace the smaller blessings of life.
