Posts by Padre Pio Devotions

One of the most important things you can do to improve your spiritual life and your mental health is to fill your mind with uplifting thoughts. If you hold on to hurtful memories, they will only make you sick. You have a choice. You can reject them. Decide firmly that you will not let the…

God is never absent – it is just our belief system that makes us think that God could not be present when things, according to our judgement, go wrong. The Parable of the Leaven (Mt.13:33) suggests that God is never more present than when things are going wrong. The leaven, symbol of what we regard…

I see that we have to take many steps before arriving at sanctity. We think every step we take can be the last, and then we find that we have done nothing, we have hardly begun. A man who enters religion thinks there is nothing left to be done, but he soon finds that he…

Joy does not depend on acclaim, advancement, promotion, recognition, fame, prestige, or power. Joy can never come from without. It can only come from the Lord who plants it deep within us. If our joy is contingent upon affirmation, success or career, it is planted in sand and will never endure. Actually, our joy should…

Let us never put aside the thought of our ultimate aim. And what is this ultimate aim? To know God, principally, is why he conceived our days, our years. Therefore, let us try never to forget this ultimate aim, for everything depends on it. And for what reason? To serve Him with faith, with love,…

The dream of creating a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ lives on. It is not determined by my age, my health, or my degrees, but by my heart and the burning desire to act for God, to make God’s love and healing presence visible in a hurting world. I can do something, now, in…

Jesus’ response to our worry-filled lives . . . He asks us to shift the point of gravity, to relocate the center of our attention, to change our priorities. Jesus wants us to move from the ‘many things’ to the ‘one necessary thing.’. . .Jesus does not speak about a change of activities, a change…

Being holy means living exactly as our Father inheaven wants us to live. You will say that it is difficult. Itis. 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 affairs, it…

The holy exercise of prayer must be considered one of the chief foundations of Christian life and holiness, since the whole life of Jesus Christ was nothing but a perpetual prayer; which you must continue and express in your life. Neither the earth on which you live, the air you breathe, the bread that sustains…

Keep the transcendent dimension of your life burning bright through prayer and sacrament, through love and peace, mercy and justice. It changes every fiber of your being when the transcendent is your priority. Live for God. Nothing else is worth it. Father Matthew Kelty O.C.S.O.