Posts by Padre Pio Devotions

How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. If the drops of oil run out, the light of the lamp will cease, and the bridegroom will say, ‘I do not know you’ (Mt. 25:1-13). What are these drops of oil in our lamps? They are the small things of…

Be recollected; whoever pours himself out on exterior things quickly loses the graces he has acquired. A full jewel box is always kept closed. Humility: Avoid all those words which can draw down on you glory, esteem, or the appreciation of others. Let us listen unwillingly (without interest or reflection) and with interior reluctance to…

For three days I have been meditating on the story of the prodigal son. It is a story about returning. I realize the importance of returning over and over again. My life drifts away from God. I have to return. My heart moves away from my first love. I have to return. My mind wanders…

“Let us make an unconditional surrender of self to God, and seek to do a little more for him than is strictly required. Let us say, “Lord, you are enough for me; you and your cross.” The cross in some form or other will always be with us. It may come from our superiors. It…

Though Christ called himself ‘the way,’ in another sense he’s our end, our destination. Don’t settle down somewhere on the way so that you never come to the end. Whatever else you come to on life’s journey, pass on by it, until you come to the end, Christ himself. Some seek money. Don’t let 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…

God stands at the center of our lives just as Jesus stands at the center of the Gospel story. Jesus is the source of the gift of healing, but he is easily forgotten. He does not force himself into the lives of the ten lepers. Only one of them makes the connection between his good…

Complete freedom from fear is one of those things we owe wholly to Our Lord. To be afraid is to do him a double injury. First, it is to forget him, to forget that that he is with us, that he loves us and is himself almighty, and second it is to fail to bend…

St. Paul teaches that this life of ours is like traveling abroad from our home country. He says, As long as we are in the body, we are traveling away from the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6). Since we are still traveling in a foreign land, we ought to keep in mind what our home country…

Dear Lord, you have made us present to yourself by perpetually destroying all the idols in us and around us. We want to worship them but they turn us to stone. It is because you alone are our infinite goal that we have an immense movement of hope ahead of us. If we totally believed…