One of My Best Friends

One of my best friends is Padre Pio.  I know I messed up and disappointed at one point, when he was showing me the tricks of the devil, pointing out how they are just tricks, and yet I was tricked not long after.  However, no matter if we fall to a trick or many tricks, all we must do is repent and simply go on, simply try again and again.  We learn from being tricked; we learn painfully but quite well.

I love the response of Padre Pio when a reporter asked him if his stigmata hurt.  Padre Pio, known for his sometimes brusk or harsh affect, replied that God had not given them to him for nothing.  Of course they hurt!

The reality is, that there is not going to be much spiritual progress, there is not going to be union with the Beloved, we will not be subsumed into His Real Presence in a profound way, without being conformed to Him through all aspects of which He experienced, and that very much includes the melding and molding by the way of the Cross.

We learn to die to this world and be born again in the next.  And for those who desire, have a need, and ask, this next can be here and now, as His Real Presence is in us.  It is all grace, given by faith.

God bless His Real Presence in each of us!