Archbishop Leonard P. Blair
On Sept. 23, we celebrated the memorial of St. Pio of Pietralcina, popularly known as Padre Pio, a great spiritual figure of the 20th century for whom one of our parishes is now named.
During his lifetime, St. Pio was known far beyond the borders of his native Italy as a mystic, a wonder worker and great dispenser of divine mercy in the confessional and in spiritual direction. He was also a stigmatic, that is to say, like St. Francis of Assisi before him, Padre Pio manifested the wounds of Christ in his own body. When he was canonized a saint in 2002, it was one of the largest-attended liturgies ever to take place in Rome.
St. Pio died in 1968 at the height of the Cold War and its threat of nuclear annihilation. He lived through two world wars that rocked his native Italy. He knew of the slaughter of millions by totalitarian regimes in what proved to be the bloodiest century thus far in human history. He was keenly aware of a growing forgetfulness of God in the world.
Amid all these tremendous threats, crises and problems, what did this extraordinary saint think was important? In his characteristically direct way of expressing himself, Padre Pio said: “The earth could exist more easily without the sun than without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass … If we only know how God regards this sacrifice, we would risk our lives to be present at a single Mass.
”The Mass was the center of the spirituality of Padre Pio amid all the world’s chaos and the insistent pleas he received from people suffering throughout the world. He ministered to thousands. He was responsible for the construction of one of the largest hospitals in Italy. And yet it has rightly been pointed out that his day was a continuous preparation and a continuous thanksgiving for his celebration of the Mass.
Reflecting on how Padre Pio celebrated Mass, one writer states: “We need a cosmic recall to the things of the spirit– and above all the Mass, the pulsating heart of Christianity. May it not well be that Christ … marked [Padre Pio] with his Five Wounds in order that he might stand at the altar as the living image of the crucified, and that through him the Mass might become vital for us? For it is the Mass that matters, and until its power is again felt in the heart of our civilization, all will not be well.”
Needless to say, St. Pio is only one striking example of a saint whose life’s work and passion revolved around the Mass. He understood perfectly what the Second Vatican Council meant when it said that the Most Holy Eucharist was the “source and summit” of Christian life, containing within itself “the Church’s entire spiritual wealth.”
Everything connected with the Mass and its proper celebration is important and worth our time and very best efforts, whether as clergy, liturgical ministers or members of the congregation. Priests are entrusted with the Mass in a particular way and are solemnly bound by the promise of their ordination to “celebrate [it] faithfully and reverently, in accord with the Church’s tradition” in communion with their bishop, who has a special responsibility to be a “steward of the mysteries of God.”
Each of us, in his or her own way, like St. Pio and all the saints, is called to bear witness to the supreme importance of the Mass, all the more at a time of decreasing Mass attendance and fewer priests to celebrate it, for in a very real sense, “it is the Mass that matters, and until its power is again felt in the heart of our civilization, all will not be well.”