Posts by Padre Pio Devotions

My dear friend, in the body I am at Nazareth but in spirit I have been at Bethlehem for the last month. As I write to you I feel as though I am with Mary and Joseph beside the crib. It is good to be there. Outside are the cold and the snow, images of…

It was Christ himself who chose the stable to be born in. He still chooses unlikely places. In each of us, just beyond the noise of our outward life, there is some place of silence and darkness, an emptiness where, if we have courage enough, we are alone with ourselves. There in this place of…

The Christmas story reminds us once again that it was not man’s idea that the Son of God should be born in a stable. And so the first thing we learn from Jesus’ birth is that the Lord will not always be found where we expect to find him. We tend to look for him…

You must do like the shepherds when they stay in the fields during winter. Life is a very long winter. The shepherds make a fire, but from time to time they hurry off to pick up some more wood to keep it going. If only we knew, like the shepherds, how to keep up the…

Somehow I realized that songs, music, good feelings, beautiful liturgies, nice presents, big dinners, and many sweet words do not make Christmas. Christmas is saying ‘yes’ to something beyond all emotions and feelings. Christmas is saying ‘yes’ to a hope based on God’s initiative, which has nothing to do with what I think or feel.…

St. Paul had a great and broad vision; he saw God’s plan from its beginning to its fulfillment. In one of his resounding sentences he wrote:But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law. In the same vein, Paul assures us that Christ died…

When for one reason or another, we contemplate the reality of death, it is not uncommon that we begin to think about the sin and failure in our past. And, for many, this thought can be a cause of great unhappiness and even despair. After all, the past is past, we are told; it can…

In all trouble, you should seek God. . . .God can only relieve your troubles if you in your anxiety cling to Him. Trouble should not really be thought of as this incident or that in particular, for our whole life on earth involves trouble; and through the troubles of our earthly pilgrimage we find…

Being holy means living exactly as our Father in heaven wants us to live. You will say that it is difficult. It is. The ideal is a very high one. And yet it is also easy. It is within our reach. When a person becomes ill, there may be no appropriate medicine. But in supernatural…

Keep a constant guard over your hearts and minds as they rest in Jesus. Worries carry responsibilities that belong to God, not to you. Worry does not enable us to escape evil; it makes us unfit to cope with it when it comes. – Corrie Ten Boom