Ave Maria Meditations encore
St. Padre Pio: PRAY, HOPE, AND DON’T WORRY!
Padre Pio’s Prayer After Holy Communion
Stay with me, Lord, for it is necessary to have You present so that I do not forget You;
You know how easily I abandon You.
Stay with me, Lord, because I am weak and I need Your strength,
that I may not fall so often.
Stay with me, Lord, for You are my life and without You I am without fervor.
Stay with me, Lord, for You are my light and without You I am in darkness.
Stay with me, Lord, to show me Your will.
Stay with me, Lord, so that I hear Your voice and follow You.
Stay with me, Lord, for I desire to love You very much and alway be in Your company.
Stay with me, Lord, if You wish me to be faithful to You.
Stay with me, Lord, as poor as my soul is I want it to be a place of consolation for You,
a nest of Love.
Stay with me, Jesus, for it is getting late and the day is coming to a close and life passes,
death, judgment and eternity approaches.
It is necessary to renew my strength, so that I will not stop along the way and for that,
I need You.
It is getting late and death approaches,
I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows.
O how I need You, my Jesus, in this night of exile!
Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers, I need You.
Let me recognize You as Your disciples did at the breaking of the bread,
so that the Eucharistic Communion be the Light which disperses the darkness,
the force which sustains me, the unique joy of my heart.
Stay with me, Lord, because at the hour of my death,
I want to remain united to You, if not by Communion, at least by grace and love.
Stay with me, Lord, for it is You alone I look for,
Your Love, Your Grace, Your Will, Your Heart, Your Spirit,
because I love You and ask no other reward but to love You more and more.
With a firm love, I will love You with all my heart while on earth
and continue to love You perfectly during all eternity.
Amen.
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I have often raised my hand in the silence of the night and in my solitary cell, blessing you all and presenting you to Jesus and to our father, St. Francis of Assisi.
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O Jesus, impart to me also that same strength, when my weak nature foreseeing future evils rebels, so that like Thou, I may accept with serene peace and tranquility all the pains and distress which I may meet on this earth of exile. I unite all to Thy merits, to Thy pains, Thy expiations, Thy tears, that I may cooperate with Thee for my salvation and flee from sin, which was the sole cause of making Thee sweat blood and which led Thee to death. Destroy in me everything that does not please Thee, and with the sacred fire of Thy love write Thy sufferings into my heart. Hold me so closely to Thee, with a bond so tight and so sweet, that I shall never again abandon Thee in Thy Sufferings. May I be able to rest on Thy Heart to obtain comfort in the sufferings of life. May my spirit have no other desire but to live at Thy side in the Garden and unite itself to the pains of Thy Heart. May my soul be inebriated with Thy Blood and feed itself with the bread of Thy sufferings. Amen.
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The prayer that Padre Pio preferred was the Holy Rosary. He loved it and recited it so that he could be called a “saint of the Rosary.” If one did not see Padre Pio at the altar or in the confessional, it was likely one would see him holding and praying his Rosary. From the time he was a boy he loved the Rosary. His first visit to a Marian shrine was the visit he paid to the shrine of the Madonna of the Rosary of Pompei.
From the time the Madonna appeared at Fatima as the Madonna of the Rosary and urged the Rosary as a powerful prayer for winning every blessing and banishing every evil, Padre Pio adopted the Rosary as the prayer he said ceaselessly and tirelessly day after day. He said, “If the Holy Virgin has urged the Rosary wherever she has appeared in her (recent) visions, doesn’t it seem that we have a special motive for praying it?”
The more the number of his spiritual children grew and spread out, the more he increased the Rosaries he would recite. It was with the Rosary that he banished sickness and obtained graces. He reached the point of reciting, in the course of a day, an inconceivable number of Rosaries. He spoke of the fact a number of times different people.
These facts bear out principally two things: first, that Padre Pio prayed uninterruptedly, having that mystical gift that some great Saints have had of prayer even while asleep or doing other things; second, it s evident that this uninterrupted prayer was something all Marian, as it all consisted of Rosaries. Here is something he said that eloquently preaches excellency of the Rosary: “I wish days had forty-eight hours so that we could double our Rosaries!”
Needless to say that the whole array of gifts and miracles that Padre Pio used for souls came about through the Rosary. His power to draw sinners and stray souls who came from everywhere was the fruit of his Rosaries. All his projects and enlightened counsels and his victories over sin were linked with the power of the Rosary. Ceaselessly praying the Rosary, he also upheld the truth that Mary is Mediatrix of all graces of which St. Bernard said, “The Lord gives nothing but what passes through the hands of the Queen of Heaven.”
Needless to say Padre Pio used to urge people with all his zeal to pray the Rosary. He gave away countless Rosaries. Someone asked him one day what the inheritance would be that he would leave his spiritual children. He answered at once, “The Rosary”. Someone else asked him what prayer to choose for use throughout one’s life. He promptly replied, “ The Rosary.”
Shortly before his death, some of his spiritual children asked him for some words of wisdom. He answered, “Love the Madonna and make her loved by others. Always pray the Rosary”. Day and night Padre Pio used to entrust to the Madonna his spiritual children and his Home for the Relief of Suffering.
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He counted frequent confession important for himself and for others. He made his own confession at least every week, and often several times a week, without counting those periods when he went to confession every day to whatever priest was at hand. As for others, he wanted weekly confession to serve as a golden rule of the Christian life. Even during the years when great throngs were coming to him, he never wanted his spiritual children to stay away from confession more than ten days.
Once a spiritual daughter carelessly let a month pass without coming to confession. When she came to Padre Pio and told him that she had not gone to confession for a month, she received a severe rebuke from him, “Oh, how neglectful! That you would not yet understand the value of confession and what you lost by neglecting this sacrament!”
For Padre Pio was convinced that confession is a powerful means not only for removing sins, but also for increasing divine grace. He taught that an atom of grace is worth more than the whole created universe.
(excerpts from Padre Pio of Pietrelcina by Fr. Stefano Manelli, F.I. )
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“A thousand years of glory in palaces of men cannot be worth the sweetness of one hour spent before the tabernacle.”
–Padre Pio would describe himself as just a ‘friar who prays’.
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St. Pio of Pietrelcina was born Francesco Forgione in 1887. He entered the Franciscan Capuchin Order at age 15 as Brother Pio. He was ordained on August 10, 1910. While praying before a cross, he received the stigmata on September 20, 1918, the first priest ever to be so blessed. His obedience to superiors was heroic. He would hear confessions by the hour, reportedly able to read the consciences of those who held back. He became very well known during his lifetime and people would wait for days to have the opportunity to confess to him. Many miracles were associated with his intercession during his lifetime and among the supernatural gifts he had was the gift of bilocation. He had a great love for the Mother of God and prayed the rosary continually. He founded the House for the Relief of Suffering in 1956, a hospital that serves 60,000 a year. He died in 1968 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002.
