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Quote of the Day
Spirituality
“Padre Pio had an unpleasant duty to perform. He was talking with a recently-widowed woman. Her husband had once left her and their two children to live with another woman for over three years. Unexpectedly cancer had claimed his life. Before his death, after urgent appeals, he had consented to receive the last Sacraments of the Church. The woman, short and plain, finally asked the inevitable: ‘Where is his soul, Padre? I haven’t slept, worrying.’ Padre Pio watched her with troubled eyes. He could almost feel her grief filling his own heart. ‘Your husband’s soul is condemned forever,’ he whispered. The woman shook her head and her eyes clouded with tears. ‘Condemned?’ Padre Pio nodded sadly. ‘When receiving the last Sacraments he concealed many sins. He had neither repentance nor a good resolution. He was also a sinner against God’s mercy, because he said he always wanted to have a share of the good things in life and then have time to be converted to God.’” (Prophet of the People, A Biography of Padre Pio, p. 158)
Doctrine
Concerning the 19th century Jesuit missionaries in the wilderness of America: “In the first excursions made by Fathers Van Quickenborne and Christian Hoecken, they were often lost for days at a time, and would traverse the immense prairies in every direction in a vain endeavor to discover their whereabouts. These plains resembled a vast sea: as far as the eye could see one beheld nothing but a limitless stretch of green pasture and blue sky: deer, chamois, and roebuck were plentiful; prairie-chicken and other wild game abounded. Wolves and bears creeping from their lairs to eat sheep terrified both man and beast. But even in such straits they were not abandoned by divine Providence. At nightfall the Fathers would often throw the reins on the horse’s neck, letting him take his own direction, and before long would find themselves in sight of some habitation. Once an immense and strange dog sprang in front of their horses, and, making a path through the high grass, brought them to the home of a Catholic, where they rested and were refreshed, and, to their great consolation and that of their host, they celebrated the Divine Mysteries.” (The Life of Fr. De Smet, p. 78.)
