Novena to Padre Pio - Day 3
Getting There is Half the Fun
With a five hour flight, a 45 minute delay, and LA traffic just to get to the airport, most of yesterday was spent traveling.
Getting anywhere these days involves a lot of ritual that may or may not be efficacious: showing ID, taking off your shoes, irradiating your tote bag full of snacks, showing ID again, attempting to make small talk with the taxi/uber driver, asking the hotel for the wifi, etc, etc.
We’re in Washington DC, now, where we plan on visiting monuments and attending a baseball game, so we can look forward to more patriotic rituals in addition to the security theater. There’s a lot to be said (and has been said) about how pointless some of these things are.
On the other hand, CS Lewis writes (translates?) in the 8th letter from The Screwtape Letters:
Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal… As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation.
And in the 15th letter:
The humans live in time but our Enemy [God] destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.
Repetition and ritual help us contemplate, in some small way, eternity. It’s why music affects us so much; it’s the only art the exists purely as time (you can’t pause a song and still appreciate a single chord the way you can pause a movie and admire the mise en scène). Secular rituals like the National Anthem at a baseball game help connect us with every baseball game, past, present, and future, just as the Gloria connects us with every mass for the past 2,000 years until the Second Coming.
Still, taking off our shoes at the airport is kinda silly.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
O St. Pio, we come to you today knowing that you are truly a miracle worker. As one who is close to Jesus, we ask that you would pray for these our intentions:
Please heal Amelia of her metachromatic leukodystrophy.
We pray with the words of Pope John Paul II as we beg for your prayers on her behalf:
Glorious, humble and beloved Padre Pio. Teach us, we pray, humility of heart, so that we may be counted among the little ones of the Gospel to whom the Father promised to reveal the mysteries of His Kingdom. Help us to pray without ceasing, certain that God knows what we need even before we ask Him.
Obtain for us the eyes of faith that will help us recognize in the poor and suffering, the very face of Jesus.
Sustain us in the hour of trouble and trial and, if we fall, let us experience the joy of the sacrament of forgiveness. Grant us your tender devotion to Mary, mother of Jesus and our Mother.
Accompany us on our earthly pilgrimage toward the blessed Homeland, where we too, hope to arrive to contemplate forever the Glory of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
In closing, St. Pio, we pray the prayer you composed for Confidence and Trust in God’s Mercy:
O Lord, we ask for a boundless confidence and trust in Your divine mercy, and the courage to accept the crosses and sufferings which bring immense goodness to our souls and that of Your Church.
Help us to love You with a pure and contrite heart, and to humble ourselves beneath Your cross, as we climb the mountain of holiness, carrying our cross that leads to heavenly glory.
May we receive You with great faith and love in Holy Communion, and allow You to act in us as You desire for your greater glory.
O Jesus, most adorable Heart and eternal fountain of Divine Love, may our prayer find favor before the Divine Majesty of Your heavenly Father.
Amen.
All glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.
St. Padre Pio, Pray for us!