A. Human suffering:
Every human in this world under go suffering. This come in two forms - spiritual and bodily;
that is, suffering of the body and sorrow in the mind. Bodily sufferings can be trivial or tremendous, passing or permanent, merely inconveniencing or totally incapacitating. They can range from headaches and cancer to hernia and the hideous injuries apt to arise from road accidents.
Spiritual sufferings, on the other hand, wound us inwardly, and can do so in ways and to degrees quite as wide ranging as the bodily variety. Here we think of things like worry,loneliness,fear,disappointments, bereavements.
Interior sufferings like these transform the garden of the soul into a little Gethsemene, while the bodily kind look to Calvary as their crowning summit.
Scripture says of the Lord who so lovingly endured every thing that Gethsamene and Calvary could inflict on Him: " Son of God though He was, He learned school of suffering"(Heb 5:8).
B. JESUS AT THE CROSS:
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At the age of 33, Jesus was condemned to the be Crucified. At that time only "worst"criminals were given this penalty. Jesus was to be nailed to the cross by His hands and feet. Each nail was 6 to 8 inches long.
The nails were driven into His wrist. Not into His palms as is commonly portrayed. There's a tendon in the wrist that extends to the shoulder.
The Roman guards knew that when the nails were being hammered into the wrist, that tendon would tear and break, forcing Jesus to use His back muscles to support himself so that He could breathe.
Both of His feet were nailed together. Thus He was forced to support Himself on the single nail that impaled His feet to the cross. Jesus could not support himself with His legs because of the pain, so He was forced to alternate between arching His back then using his legs just to continue to breathe. Imagine the struggle, the pain, the suffering, the courage.
Jesus endured this reality for over 3 hours.
We saw wounds to His hands and feet and even the spear wound to His side.. A hammer driving large nails through the wrist, the feet overlapped and an even large nail hammered through the arches, then a Roman guard piercing His side with a spear.
But before the nails and the spear, Jesus was whipped and beaten. The whipping was so severe that it tore the flesh from His body. The beating so horrific that His face was torn and his beard ripped from His face. The crown of thorns cut deeply into His scalp. Most men would not have survived this torture.
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Jesus poured all 3.5 liters of his blood; He had three nails hammered into His members; a crown of thorns on His headband, beyond that, a Roman soldier who stabbed a spear into His chest.
C. Symbolic extensions of Jesus sufferings in recent past.
WHAT IS STIGMATA?
Stigmata is a miraculous phenomenon where a person receives wounds identical to those inflicted on Jesus during His crucifixion-namely nail marks in his hand &feet,wound in inside of abdomen(where lance of Roman soldier pierced heart of Christ),and/or head wounds(from crown of throns). These wounds are not self inflicted and there is no evidence of any internal or external cause,yet wounds appear and often bleed during prayer. Medicine will not heal wounds neither infected nor become worse. No one is born with stigmata and dies from it
STIGMATA OF ST FRANCIS ASSISI
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Many saints have had invisible stigmata, but only some have visible ones. The most stigmatisation in church history is that of St Francis of Assisi. In 1224, two years before his death, while in prayer on Mount Alvernia, a seraphim appeared to St Francis showing on his wings the figure of an extremely beautiful crucified man- Our Lord Jesus Christ- with His hands and feet extended in the form of across. When the vision disappeared, a flame of divine love remained in his soul, and the wounds of the Reedeemer appeared on his body. St francis hid them as well as he could until his death on 3 oct 1226. But after his passing, the friars- who witnessed his agony- and many lay people clearly saw in the palms of his hands and in his feet, three iron coloured nails formed with his own flesh and adhering to it. The heads of these nails were round and protruded from the skin. Their tips, which loomed in the back of his hands and the soles of his feet, looked gnarled and pitted so that one could easily insert, like into a ring, a finger into the fold beneath the tip protruding from the flesh. And on the right flank, as if pierced by a spear, they observed a reddish scar from a real wound from which blood often flowed.
On one hand, these wounds were the cause of great joy for St Francis, and on the other hand, they cause intolerable pain.
ANOTHER CASE!
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Another remarkable case of stigmatisation is that of St Veronica Giuliani. When she died, an autopsy was done in presence of doctors and church men, and they they found that her heart seemed to have been carved into kind of delicate bas-relief representing all the instrument of crucifixion: nails, pliers,hammer, and crown of thorns.
C. MOST RECENT STIGMATA! ST PADRE PIO
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He was born on 27/5/1887 in southern Italy. At the age of 10,in order to practice mortification he formed a way to quietly abstain from solid foods and liquids. He slept on the floor,leaning his head on a rock that served as a pillow.In 1903, age 16,he admitted to the novitiate of capuchin order. In 1910 aug 10 th, he was ordained as a capuchine priest.
Receiving invisible Stigmata!
On 20 sept 1915, while praying, he suddenly felt a searing pain in the manner of burning in his hands and feet and below his heart. But he could see no injury as he looked at these parts of his body, in other words, he had received the invisible stigmta.
FR PIO STIGMATA!
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Exactly 3 years later,while meditating on the passion and death of our Lord before a crucifix in the Capuchine convent, he asked for the grace of participating in the sufferings of Jesus. At that movement, he received the five wounds of the visible stigmata.
The pain was so great that he could not bear it and fainted. Blood flowed profusely from his wounds. Two friars arrived at the scene, realized what had happened and led him back to his cell, laying him in bed. He asked to be left alone.
FR Pio's Gethsemani
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The stigmatisation of Padre Pio was frowned upon by some people, who spread rumors that he was a trickster who intentionally injured himself and kept his wounds fresh with the help of the devil. Others said he was hysterical, a psychopath, a mad man.
These suspicions and murmuring echoed in Rome, to the point that the Holy Office ordered Padre Pio placed under observation and forbid him to show his stigmata, to appear in public, to celebrate Mass in the presence of others, to write letters to anyone(including his spiritual director), and even to walk in the choir of the convent with the other friars so that his voice could be heard from a distance by those present in the church. In 1923 the Holy Office issued an official statement declaring that"...the facts attributed to Padre Pio are not found to be supernatural."It ordered the Capuchin to not to exercise any priestly Ministry(except celebrating Mass in the convent inside chapel) and dramatically vetoed pilgrimages by the faithful who went to San Giovanni Rotondo. It also banned any kind of relationship between the believers and Padre Pio, including letter writing. In 1926, the same Roman Court ruled that people should not read any book on Padre Pio and reiterated the prohibition to communicate with him. In 1935,on 25 th anniversary of his priestly ordination, he was not allowed to celebrate a Solemn Mass.
In 1936, friars who kept indirect relics of Padre Pio(eg: objects touched on him) were threatened with ipso facto suspensionad divinis. Lay people who did likewise were warned that they would be denied communion. Years later the Holy Office put on the index of all books of Padre Pio. About all these it is well to clarify that the majority of the small and mid-level officials of the Holy Office were favorable to Padre Pio.
WITHIN HIS OWN RELIGIOUS ORDER HE WAS ALSO SUBJECT TO MERCILESS PERSECUTION.
Some friars called him a"Venomous, repugnant and execrable serpent","devil" etc. One of his superiors ordered any and all documents about him found in the convent of San Giovanni Rotodo to be burned. Another referred to a piece of skin that fell from the stigmata in his hands as " disgusting". A third, seeing that a faithful had touched a handkerchief to the wounds of Padre Pio, asked him for it,tore it up, threw to the ground and trample it under foot. Padre Pio was accused of bad behavior, caressing young woman, paying journalists to advertise himself, buying and using expensive perfumes, demanding special meal etc. They went so far as to hide upon recorders under his bed and even in his confessional.
Late 1930's Pope Pius XI ordered the Holy office to reverse it's ban on Pio,s public celebration of Mass and ability to hear confessions was restored. He offered all these humiliation(around 20 years) in total obedience to his legitimate superiors and never disobeyed a single rule even when in his heart he must have thought they were unjust.
FR PIO'S INCORRUPT BODY!
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On 23/sept/1968 he died. He was canonized as saint in 16/6/2002.In 2008,when his grave was opened, His body was found to be in corrupt.
He lived in the light of faith, immersed in supernatural realities. In God he placed all his confidence and hope, not only with words but also by example. The guiding principle of his day was to love God and make Him loved. His spirit of mortification and love of the cross show admirable practice of virtue of fortitude. His humility shines in his behavior after he received the stigmata. When it became visible, he preferred to hide it rather than have it seen by others. As for his observance of the religious vows, he was obedient in all things to the commands of his superiors; cultivated poverty with total detachment from self and from earthly goods and honors; and he shined in the practice of chastity.
FR PIO'S ADVICE:
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He greatly encouraged praying of Rosary, which he called"my weapon".His motto was"ABONDON YOURSELF INTO THE ARMS OF YOUR HEAVENLY MOTHER. SHE TAKES CUSTODY OF YOUR SOUL".
D. EXAMPLE OF GOOD THIEF!
Indeed, that crucified pair who flanked our savior on Good Friday can be said to represent all of us, since everyone without exception hangs on a Cross carpentered by life's circumstances. But we must at all costs identify with the Good Thief by saying to the lord
"We suffer these things justly on account of our sins"(Lk23:41).
Yet another key lesson is that we can offer our Redeemer every sorrow and suffering that comes our way as a coredemptive contribution to the salvation of souls.
E. KEY LESSON OF THE CROSS
Obedience basically means our loving acceptance of God's Will. This is the paramount lesson we pupils in life 's school of suffering are to master at all costs.
A further key lesson in the syllabus is that every suffering, whatever its shape or size, really forms part of the penalty that the sins of the world, our own included, justly deserve for our having offended against the Almighty Creator.
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