Today at 09:40 PM panterapat said this in Post #40
I believe that it was Billy Graham (or another evangelist) who said:
"If I truly believed that Communion contained the Body and Blood of Jesus, I would crawl to the altar on my hands and knees."
We Catholics need to keep this in mind.
"Within the Mass, however, Padre Pio admitted to an intense mystical involvement with the unseen world. He apparently saw, as in a vision, the entire Passion, and actually felt, physically, the wounds of Jesus. During the offering of the bread and wine, Padre Pio often remained motionless for moments on end, as if 'nailed by a mysterious force,' gazing with moistened eyes upon the crucifix. At these moments, he said, his soul was 'separated from all that is profane.' At the Commemorations of the Living and the Dead, he maintained that he saw all his spiritual children at the altar, 'as if in a mirror.'"
People are wont to speak of "the Mass of Padre Pio." One reason for this is the frequent ecstasies which made it longer, sometimes as long as two or (rarely) even four hours. But at the altar, like every other priest, Padre Pio was only an instrument. The fact of bearing the stigmata added nothing to the intrinsic grandeur of his function. But his whole life centered around these hours in which he would lend to Christ his mouth, his hands, his eyes, to renew the sacrifice of the Cross. He would lend them in a real, physical way. Listen to one of the numerous witnesses of "his" Mass:
One would have to be blind not to see that the man who now goes up to the altar suffers. His step is heavy and stumbling. It is not easy to walk with pierced feet. His arms rest heavily upon the altar that he kisses. He has all the guarded reflexes of persons whose hands are wounded. Then, his head slightly raised, he looks at the cross.
Instinctively, I avert my eyes as if I had unwittingly looked on a lovers' tryst. The face of the Capuchin which a while ago had seemed jovial and mild, is now literally transfigured. Waves of intense emotion furrow it as if the debate into which he is drawn with invisible presences successively fills him with fear, joy, sadness, anguish sorrow....It is possible to read in these expressions the mysterious dialogue. Now he protests, shakes his head, awaits the reply. His whole body is frozen in mute pleading. After a moment, I continue to observe him with gripping emotion. Time seems to have stopped; or rather, let us say that it no longer counts. The priest who tarries before the altar seems to pull us into a new dimension where duration takes on a different meaning.
Suddenly, tears stream from his eyes and his shoulders, shaken by sobs, seem to bend under a crushing weight. I suddenly remember how it was during wartime with the men condemned to death. They have just heard the sentence. While the muscles of the face are immobile, the whole body, weighed down, writhes. To face the executioners, one must first pass through an agony, the hard apprenticeship of death.
Padre Pio is not acting out someone else's drama. Now there is no distance between him and Christ. "Vivo ego, iam non ego...." If the Head renews His sacrifice in an unbloody manner, are we thereby allowed to forget the price of Blood? On the contrary, does not each Mass invite the members to furnish their part of the redeeming Passion, because it is He who lives, suffers, and dies in His body? Are we not all workers of the Redemption? And is not the Mass, for each one of us, a place of transubstantiation, where our poor sufferings, assumed by Christ, acquire an everlasting worth.
But if such is the role of the simple Christian, how much more that of the priest, victim by vocation and mediator between God and His people.
I look at the face of Padre Pio, streaming with tears and think of the sins that he shoulders every day after unending hours spent in the confessional. It is no laughing matter that he confesses and absolves. The servant is not above the Master. The part of blood required of him is here, even more than in the stigmata. The soul's blood is heavier than the body's...Cloaked with the robe of Nessus,1 humiliated like a leper, alone between heaven and earth, he goes up to the altar of his God. Priest, he has no other reason for being than to make Christ appear.
After this dolorous ecstasy the Mass continues. I understand now why the crowd pressed around the altar holds its breath...what is happening at the altar moves it deeply. Between the people and the priest, lost in God, there is a secret bond. It is caught up and drawn in the wake of the drama. This Mass becomes my Mass.
Herein lies, it seems to me, one of the reasons for the extraordinary hold Padre Pio has on those who approach him. Like a sorcerer, from the desert of arid routine he is able to make the buried spring gush forth. After contact with him, souls "recognize" that they are Christians. Practices which have faded in meaning take on new savor and life. I defy anyone who has been to San Giovanni Rotondo to assist henceforth at the Mass as a mere spectator. "One might say that my eyes had been opened, someone told me, "and I discover in the Mass things I never suspected."
At the Offertory, the rhythm of the sacred drama intensifies. Raising the paten suppliantly, his eyes lost in an invisible light, Padre Pio shows the wounds of his hands, red and bloody. He remains in this attitude much longer than the recitation of the Suscipe requires. One would say that he remembers the whole world in this act of offering. His face, ravaged by tears, expresses a kind of challenge: "Behold, Eternal Father, what I offer Thee, in the name of Thy Son whom I represent: this human distress, this consuming anguish; these sufferings; these sins...Behold, I place all of this, pell-mell, in Thy Arms, on Thy Heart...Man among men, priest of men, I give Thee, O God, Creator, that which Thou dost restore more beautifully than Thou didst create it..."
The minutes flow like drops of blood. I understand suddenly that by the Mass we have access to eternity. The mystery of the Cross escapes time-duration in the exact measure that the crucified Man is God. In an ineffable way, absolutely inaccessible to the grasp of our intellects, Calvary is present in each Mass, and we are present at Calvary. Since this is a truth too obliterated in our restless, unquiet minds, isn't it necessary, from time to time, that to remind us of it, God deal us violent lessons like those at San Giovanni Rotondo?
At the Memento of the living, there is another halt, another ecstasy. There was a time when Padre Pio took such a long time to remember his children one by one to God that the Father Guardian, hidden in the choir, would mentally give him the order to continue.
1st April 2003 at 02:44 PM walkaways said this in Post #47
I've just been thinking on what was said about Catholics not taking Protestant Communion...but...hmm...if your heart knows what is true in the Catholic faith, and you take Communion in that way...how can that be wrong?
I'm not quite sure I understand.
1st April 2003 at 03:13 PM Gordi said this in Post #50
Jukes Im not being biased here, I think this is a reasonable question.
Why shouldn't juice be used? For example if there are people in the church that used to be an alcoholic, then wouldn't it be for their benefit also?
And just thought I'd let you know that your wine aint Christ's blood either, its symbolic for it.
1st April 2003 at 09:16 PM Miss Shelby said this in Post #51
Well, then they could just receive the Bread and not the Wine.
So much for not being biased. LOL!
1st April 2003 at 05:15 PM Gordi said this in Post #57
Nice and well manner explanation VOW, but it's either symbolic or it aint. It's either Jesus' blood or it wine, it's either Jesus' body or bread.
Thats why i agrue it is symbolic. The reason I presum Jesus didn't say this is symbolic etc.. Is because they knew that, considering he was standing in front of them fully intact.
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