Hearing and Radiating like St. Pio of Pietrelcina, 25th Monday (II), September 23, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina
September 23, 2024
Prov 3:27-34, Ps 15, Lk 8:16-18

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today’s Gospel, from the passage immediately after Jesus gave us the Parable of the Sower and the Seed (which we would have heard on Saturday if we didn’t have the proper Gospel for the Memorial of St. Matthew), can be summarized by Jesus’ words, “Take care how you hear.” It points to an approach to the entire spiritual life, introduces us to the importance of today’s liturgy of the Lord, and summarizes one of the things that made today’s saint so great. So let’s examine the three images Jesus gives us that can help us to determine whether we’re receiving his Word and Him on good soil:
  • He tells us, “No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel or sets it under a bed; rather, he places it on a lamp stand so that those who enter may see the light.” In other words, if we’re listening correctly, we’re hearing what he seeks to implant as “words to be done.” It’s not supposed to remain hidden or private, but is meant to illumine the world. If we’re not listening with this apostolic dimension, we’re not going to bear abundant fruit.
  • He adds, “There is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.” Jesus tells us that even though sometimes we can fake as if we’re paying close attention, our going through the exterior motions will eventually be exposed. Likewise if we’re fighting to give our full wits to his words, even if we’re struggling to comprehend or live them, that effort, too, will be known.
  • He then concludes, “To anyone who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away.” This is a law of physical exercise, musical growth, and intellectual progress: we use it or we lose it. To the one who gives the word both ears as well as the mind and the heart, he will become more and more fruitful; but to the one who is not really hanging on every word, he’ll lose eventually even that superficial adherence.
• A great means by which we can look at whether we’re listening with these qualities is by turning to today’s first reading, which is one of only three day in two years we have passages from the Book of Proverbs. It can help us to see whether we’re really living by the word of God in deeds, because all of these Proverbs are anticipations of what we regularly hear in the Gospel.
  • The Book of Proverbs first tells us, “Refuse no one the good on which he has a claim when it is in your power to do it for him. Say not to your neighbor, ‘Go, and come again, tomorrow I will give,’ when you can give at once.” This means that we should listen with alacrity to God when he speaks to us through others. If we think we can delay, then we won’t be prompt in our discipleship, like the first disciples were in leaving their boats immediately to follow Jesus. This is ultimately a version of the “Silver Rule,” not to do unto others what we don’t want to happen to us. It’s also an application of St. James’ commentary on the Sermon on the Mount that we have to care for the brother we see rather than blow him off saying we’ll pray for him and “good luck.”
  • Next Proverbs tells us, “Plot no evil against your neighbor, against one who lives at peace with you. Quarrel not with a man without cause, with one who has done you no harm.” When we’re listening to the word of God, it will transform us into peacemakers,  true children of God, not only people who do not plot evil or quarrel for no good reason, but peace builders. The Word of God will help us to love our neighbor, pray for our persecutors and do good to the one who does evil to us.
  • Third, we’re told, “Envy not the lawless man and choose none of his ways: To the Lord the perverse one is an abomination, but with the upright is his friendship.” Sometimes we can envy those who have gotten away with things that are wrong, but this passage reminds us that the upright are friends of God. When we listen to the word of God, we’re listening to a friend. This is ultimately what Jesus says to us in encouraging us to adopt his standards, rather than those of others, to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Herodians. It’s also a commentary on what he says during the Last Supper when he calls us his friends if we do what he commands.
  • Finally, the passage reminds us, “The curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked, but the dwelling of the just he blesses. When dealing with the arrogant, he is stern, but to the humble he shows kindness.” God wants to bless our “dwelling,” our life, and he will show his kindness when we’re humble enough to receive his help. We begin by humbling accepting God’s word within as a great blessing.
• Someone who really did listen to the word of God aright and become a lamp shining in the midst of the world is the great saint whom we celebrated today, St. Pio of Pietrelcina. Padre Pio generously refused no one who asked him for the help he could provide and didn’t delay till the morrow. Though he was known to have a quick temper, he plotted no evil and sought to live with peace. He was a friend of God whose life was blessed by him, whose city of origin and city where he labored and died have been similarly blessed. Because he was humble, the Lord showed him enormous kindness. When we think about Saint Pio, it’s easy to think about his more unique gifts, like the sacred stigmata with which he was marked for fifty years, his capacity to read souls, the gift of bilocation, the working of miracles, and the prediction of the future. But I always think back to what St. Paul VI said about him when he visited San Giovanni Rotondo after his death. He praised Padre Pio not for those inimitable qualities but for what all of us can emulate: “He said Mass humbly, … heard confessions from dawn to dusk … and was a man of prayer and suffering.” He was in short a man whom of the Word of God, who put Jesus’ words into practice: “Do this in memory of me” in the Mass and “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer”; “Receive the Holy Spirit: those whose sins you forgive are forgiven them” in the Sacrament of Confession; “Stay awake and pray” and “When you pray,” and so many of the attributes of humble, persevering prayer in Jesus’ name; and finally, “Deny yourself, pick up your Cross every day and follow me,” which is what he did in his suffering. He exercised each of these gifts and, through them, grew to have more of them. Let’s learn from him how to build greater spiritual muscles through each of these, trying to imitating he he acted on the word of God each contained and became a light to others.
• The Mass was the real source of his life, in which he sought to align his whole life to the Word of God proclaimed and to the Word made Flesh received. His daily Mass used to last a few hours, as he united himself to the Lord’s prayer from the Upper Room and from the Cross. Despite the crowds who attended each day, the local ecclesiastical authorities for a time banned him from celebrating the Mass publicly because they thought three hours was scandalously too long. (I wonder whether the same well-meaning but myopic authorities would have tried to hurry Jesus, too, during the agonizingly slow 3-6 hours he took to offer his body and blood on the Cross!) But St. Pio knew he was hearing Christ preach in the Mass and welcoming him into his hands on the altar, and he wasn’t going to place anything else ahead of entering into that moment. He sought to help everyone else learn from his reverence how the Mass should fill us with awe and lead us to glorify God.
• Through his indefatigable work in the Confessional, from dawn until dusk, he sought to announce to people Jesus’ words, “Repent and believe in the Gospel,” “Your sins are forgiven,” and “Go and sin no more.” To all who flocked to him, he held up the ideal of holiness, repeating to them: “Jesus has no interest outside of sanctifying your soul.” Confession is when the entire sacramental economy exists just for each of us, as we begin to experience what Saint Paul exclaimed to the Galatians, the “Christ died for me and gave his life up for me.” And by the time he gave to individual penitents, St. Pio showed each of them just how valuable they were to God.
• Padre Pio was a man of prayer who urged others to pray, founding prayer groups all over the world, so that they could learn how to hear God whispering to them in personal prayer. Even after long grueling hours in the confessional, he himself would spend much of the night in prayer. He once described himself as “only a poor friar who prays” and encouraged lay people to come together to pray in small groups, tens of thousands of which still exist across the globe under his celestial patronage. “In books we seek God,” he said, but “in prayer we find him. Prayer is the key that opens God’s heart.”
• And he was a man of suffering who taught the world about the meaning of suffering together with the Lord’s sufferings, particularly through his stigmata. Two years before his priestly ordination, Padre Pio referred to this unique pathway of the Cross when he wrote, “In order to succeed in reaching our ultimate end we must follow the divine Head, who does not wish to lead the chosen soul on any way other than the one he followed; by that, I say, of abnegation and the Cross.” Christ does not call everyone to bear the stigmata, but he does call everyone to pick up his Cross daily and follow him along the way of the Cross. It is under the Cross, Padre Pio said, that “one learns to love.”  It is for that reason, he said, “Calvary is the hill of the saints.” Padre Pio was united to Christ on the Cross in more ways than by the stigmata. For decades he suffered from the suspicions and calumny of many in his order who were confused by and perhaps envious of his divine predilection. He bore all these hardships humbly, with religious obedience, as a “crucible of purification.” When St. John Paul II visited his tomb, he said, “The life and mission of Padre Pio prove that difficulties and sorrows, if accepted out of love, are transformed into a privileged way of holiness, which opens onto the horizons of a greater good, known only to the Lord.” Similarly, he helped others to share in it through his founding of the Casa del Sollievo della Sofferenza as a first-rate hospital to care for those who were seriously ill, with paralysis and so many other diseases. It continues that mission until this day as he helps everyone live by St. Paul’s invitation to make up what is lacking in us of the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his Body, the Church (Col 1:24).
• In all of these ways, St. Pio took care how he heard. In each, he routinely received “more” from the Lord than he previously said. The Church after him has placed his example on a lamp stand to illumine all of us in our own approach to the Mass and confession, to prayer and suffering. Here at Mass the Lord does not refuse us his help or delay it until tomorrow. Here he seeks to make us his friends and bless us, and through us, our homes, our workplaces, our classrooms. If we’re humble enough to grasp that we’re not worthy to receive him, he will show us the greatest kindness of all, and strengthen us as we seek to take care of what we hear and act on what the Lord says. The fruitfulness of his response to God’s word help us to see what’s possible when we fully align ourselves with God’s words. They inspire us to “take care what [we] hear,” just as much as he did, as we prepare now to “do” Jesus’ words “in memory of” him.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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