Franciscan Media

One cannot understand God without first believing in God. If you have any interest in knowing what’s true, you must first have faith. It is by faith that God purifies your heart. Unless you first abandon yourself to God, you will never know God. The more you love God, the deeper your faith, and the more love and faith you possess, the more you know what’s true. All of this is truly biblical, and represents well the tradition of the Church fathers and mothers.

The Gospel of St. Luke tells us that, in the family of Nazareth, Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40). Our Lady does just this for us, she helps us to grow as human beings and in the faith, to be strong and never to fall into the temptation of being human beings and Christians in a superficial way, but to live responsibly, to strive ever higher.

Natural suffering necessarily requires rest; supernatural suffering, even when rest is willfully neglected, will multiply one’s strength for the glory of God, a glory which will someday delight the spirit of the suffering person. From childhood, Padre Pio had the special grace of understanding that life is pain, so he transformed it by exalting pain. He said to a spiritual son, in the confessional, “My son, life is primarily suffering and pain; we must love and appreciate it, especially because our Lord has given it to us.”

In the Upper Room, on the night before he died, Jesus kept telling his disciples that he had to leave them and would send them the Advocate, another name for the Holy Spirit. In fact, he told them, “But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you” (John 16:7). The Holy Spirit, fully revealed at Pentecost, comes to the apostles in the Upper Room only because of Jesus’s departure.

O gracious Parent! Elevate our souls, and give us access to thy sublime throne, that stable seat of pure delight! All earth-born cares remove; dispel the mists of sense; and with a ray from heaven illumine our darkened minds. Allow us to see thy light; let us view the source of good unveiled; and fix, O ever fix, our eyes on thee. –Roman Boethius,