{"id":3202,"date":"2008-03-16T18:04:44","date_gmt":"2008-03-16T23:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2008\/03\/16\/words-of-light-inspiration-from-the-letters-of-padre-pio\/"},"modified":"2008-03-16T18:04:44","modified_gmt":"2008-03-16T23:04:44","slug":"words-of-light-inspiration-from-the-letters-of-padre-pio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2008\/03\/words-of-light-inspiration-from-the-letters-of-padre-pio\/","title":{"rendered":"Words of Light: Inspiration From the Letters of Padre Pio"},"content":{"rendered":"

The
\nbook Words
\nof Light: Inspiration From the Letters of Padre Pio<\/a> was
\nreleased at the end of February of this year. This book is edited by
\nFather Raniero Cantalamessa who is also a Franciscan Capuchin lke St.
\nPio and of course Fr. Cantalamessa continues to be the preacher to the
\npapal household.
\n<\/p>\n

Previous editions of this book
\n have been released in Italian and the
\nrecent edition is by Paraclete Press.  After the very good
\nintroduction by Fr. Cantalamessa we get a very brief biography off
\nPadre Pio and his life.  The thrust of the book though are his
\nletters and we end up getting a biography of St. Pio’s interior life. I
\nhad previously heard that during his lifetime at one point he was
\nreceiving more letters than anybody else living at that time and it is
\nquite obvious that he wrote quite a large number of letters to people
\ngiving spiritual advice.<\/p>\n

What Fr. Cantalamessa has done with this
\nbook is to select portions of St. Pio’s letters and to divide them up
\nby topic into various chapters.  By doing this we get a very
\ngood idea of the type of advice he gave and about his deep prayer life.
\n The dark night of the soul is quite evident in his letters to
\nhis spiritual director and to other priests and when you combine this
\nwith the spiritual and physical attacks by Demons you can see just how
\nstark his sufferings were.  Like the Cur of Ars, St. John
\nVianney. who also poured himself out in the confessional and suffered
\nsimilar attacks we see a life of pure faith.  That even as he
\ncries out in suffering he is crying out to the person of Christ, Mary,
\nand the saints.<\/p>\n

Many of the segments of letters written in
\nsome of the earlier chapters lets you feel to some extent the torments
\nthat he suffered.  There are many tensions in what he
\ndescribes.  Like St. Paul there is the driving desire to be in
\nHeaven while at the same time to be totally obedient in using his time
\non earth to save souls.  For him Fiat is a continuous living
\nof his live. The love of Christ and love of neighbor is so evident in
\nSt. Pio as it is with all saints, but you get to look into his though
\nprocess on this to a greater extent than we can with most saints.
\n Much of what he has written in his letters reminds me also of
\nthe struggles that Blessed Mother Teresa also wen through and I find it
\nrather interesting that so much was made of her dark night of the soul
\nin the press and nothing as far as I am aware of was mentioned about
\nthis in regards to St. Pio.<\/p>\n

Though there is so much more to this saint
\nthan the behind the scenes torment and total faith despite
\ndeprivations.  I found the letters that referenced Mary to be
\nquite beautiful, for example this one snippet. “May she who entered the
\nworld without stain, obtain for us from her Son the grace to leave the
\nworld without fault.”  The chapter on letters in reference to
\nhis spiritual direction show the wonderful effects of his deep prayer
\nlife and the encouragement he would give others.<\/p>\n

So often when we hear of St. Pio it is
\nfocused on things like his stigmata and the supernatural events
\nsurrounding his life such as bilocation.  It is quite moving
\nto see the supernatural movements of grace in his spiritual life that
\ndirectly lead to him helping so many towards repentance and growing in
\ngrace.  Fr. Cantalamessa selection of segments of letters
\nhelps you to get a much better of St. Pio the person.  I
\ncertainly recommend this book to anybody interested in Padre Pio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The book Words of Light: Inspiration From the Letters of Padre Pio was released at the end of February of this year. This book is edited by Father Raniero Cantalamessa…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}