Following the Saints to Christ

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - May 23, 2008

I'm writing from Italy where I'm the chaplain for a pilgrimage of American consecrated virgins who, after their international congress in Rome last week, have launched out with me on an adventure of faith to several of Italy's most famous sanctuaries.

Earlier this week we followed in the footsteps of St. Francis in Assisi and of St. Catherine in Siena, two of the greatest saints who ever lived. Then we headed to Loreto, where the holy house of Nazareth was brought after the Muslim invasion of the Holy Land. We were able to reflect on the hidden years of the life of Jesus, Mary and Joseph and how the path to holiness is most often, as St. Paul wrote and SS. Joseph and Mary lived, to be "hidden with Christ in God" (Col 3:3).

Next we traveled to Lanciano, the site of the most documented and famous Eucharistic miracle of all time. In the 8th century, soon after the words of consecration in Mass, the priest's host turned to flesh and the precious blood in the chalice coagulated into five different sized, but equally heavy pellets. Despite the passage of 12 centuries, the miracle has never decomposed. In 1970, Pope Paul VI authorized examination of the meticulously preserved host and the coagulated blood pellets and the results showed that the flesh was human heart muscle and the blood human type AB.

How can this miracle not influence the way we celebrate the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord on Sunday? By working it, the Lord wanted to convey to us that he gives us his "heart" in the Eucharist, the "new heart" he promised through the prophet Ezekiel (36:26), the organ by which he loves us and through which we are made capable of loving God and others in the same way (Jn 13:34).

The Lord also wanted to convey to us a truth about his blood. It clearly would have been fitting for Jesus' blood to have been type O, the universal donor, since his blood is "histo-compatible" with anyone who receives Him in the state of grace. But after the third part of the secret of Fatima was released in 2000, which depicted Jesus' cross dripping with the blood of the martyrs, this AB finding was seen in a fuller context: Christ receives the blood of the martyrs and unites it to his own as the seed of new Christians. He is the universal recipient of all the sufferings, crucifixions and even deaths of members of His Mystical Body. We learn in Lanciano that, by means of the Eucharist, we are called to unite ourselves to Christ's sacrifice by giving our body, our blood, our sweat, our energy, our lives to and for God and others.

In God's eternal precision, in which every detail matters, there's also another relevant fact about the miracle of the Precious Blood: even though AB is the rarest human blood type, it's also the type found on the Shroud of Turin.

From Lanciano, we will proceed tomorrow to two places renowned for their connection to a contemporary saint whose blood and sufferings were famously united to the Lord's: St. Padre Pio, who for 50 years of his priesthood bore the sacred stigmata.

I cannot tell you how excited I am to be going to Pietrelcina where Padre Pio was born May 25, 1887 — we'll be with him for his 121st birthday — and to San Giovanni Rotondo, where he ministered for most of his priesthood and passed into the arms of the Lord. During my years in Rome, I always wanted to visit these holy sites, but never made it. In one important way, it was worth the wait: just last month his mortal remains were exposed for the veneration of the faithful in a glass casket, next to which we will have the privilege to celebrate Mass.

I wrote on Padre Pio last September around his feast day. I spent most of that column focused on how his whole life was a living union and glorification of the Cross of Christ, in whose wounds Padre Pio shared. I also noted his reputation, both during his earthly life and after, as a divinely-chosen thaumaturgus.

On this pilgrimage, though, I find myself transfixed not by Padre Pio the stigmatist or miracle-worker, but by Padre Pio the priest. Pope Paul VI said that his worldwide fame came principally because "he said Mass humbly, … heard confessions from dawn to dusk … and was a man of prayer and suffering."

His fame came first from his humble daily Mass, which 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 three hours he took to offer his body and blood on the Cross! It was one of many misunderstandings and sufferings that formed Padre Pio's "crucible of purification" to perfect him in obedience.

His acclaimed reputation also came from his daily martyrdom in the confessional. Penitents from all over the world traveled to kneel at his ear, often needing to wait days, despite his hearing confessions more than 12 hours each day. His holiness, and sometimes his violent reaction against the sins that were spiritually killing his penitents, brought many of them to profound conversion.

He was also renowned for his prayer. Even after long grueling hours in the confessional, he would spend much of the night in prayer. He once described himself as a "only a poor friar who prays" and encouraged lay people to come together to pray in small groups, tens of thousands of which now 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 which opens God's heart."

As I prepare to visit for the first time the places made holy by Padre Pio, it's becoming ever more clear to me that, although few priests are chosen by God to be thamaturgi and even fewer to bear Christ's wounds, every priest is called to imitate his heroic faith and love when standing at the altar, sitting in the confessional and kneeling at the prie Dieu.

As we prepare to celebrate Corpus Christi, together let's ask him to intercede for all priests, that they may be distinguished by the same "fame" and fruits.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.