Revolutionary of Tenderness: Padre Pio
Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
By guest writer, Ian Richard Shaefer
Growing up, when we’d visit my Italian-American mother’s relatives, a photo of Padre Pio was like a refrigerator to me: every house had one, but I never gave it much thought. At the same time, my very German paternal grandmother has kept a Padre Pio prayer book under her well-used rosary for as long as I remember. I never was particularly drawn to the charming smile of the sweet old Capuchin. His famous quote, “Pray, hope, and don’t worry,” seemed to me more like an inspirational bumper sticker than the deeply powerful truth I now understand it to be.
Frankly, I was too comfortable. Fourteen-year-old me had his struggles and moments of suffering but was never really forced to face them as much as I would ten years later. Returning from one of the most beautiful years of my life as a student in Milan, Italy, and about to start a career in the United Nations in Rome, my life hit a hard brick wall when my doctors found a rare sort of tumor in my heart. My heart, the most vulnerable part of me that there is!
From this devastating low, something – rather, someone – helped me up, put my nervously shaking hand in his bloody one, pointed to an empty tomb, and smiled at me with his charming smile. I don’t mean that Padre Pio visited in some mystical apparition, though. Rather, he kept visiting in the reality around me, and I simply began to pay attention. Little things prompted me to learn more about him: a painting at my parish by one of Padre Pio’s cousins; a chapel established in a nearby town; cards mailed from friends and family.
All of these things increasingly felt like calls from a friend that I had been ignoring. Finally, in my need, I did answer; over time, I began to build a relationship with Padre Pio. Watching movies, reading about him online and in books, and going to pray at his chapel inspired my parents and I to make a pilgrimage to San Giovanni Rotondo after my chemotherapy treatments finished. There, I met the physical Padre Pio – not only in his relics, but also in the community that to this day carries on his simple, hopeful, and concrete works of love.
I am now in the midst of a second battle with cancer, and while I’m grateful that things seem less threatening than the first time, my same fears remain. I’m consoled by the novena I’ve been praying, in anticipation of Padre Pio’s feast day, because I know he won’t withhold his help. I keep close to Padre Pio, who in his suffering with the stigmata has helped me see that God sometimes chooses to show His love with wounds. I remember that quote, “Pray, hope, and don’t worry,” and I try my best to live it. And I’d definitely put it on a bumper sticker on my car.
