Think for a second about our ancient ancestors and their thoughts on the phenomenon of rain.
These poor primals thought water was miraculously flowing down from the lakes of the gods because they just sacrificed Ol’ Betsy to them. Why the gods wanted a cow is beyond me: maybe all that fornication up there in Olympus works up a heifer-sized appetite?
Yet just a wee bit later, our species grew to realize it wasn’t really Zeus flushing the golden-toilets above upon his earthly chefs; it was just the simple, remarkable process of evaporation and precipitation.
When it came to miracles, if I was really being honest, virtually all of the claims of the miraculous out there – until my encounter with John, the Lady and Pio – seemed like over-hyped mumbo-jumbo… because it, no doubt, was. They were no more miraculous than believing rain was a miracle. And I found, probably because of the scientific revolution and the explained-away “miracles” of the past, that I had a doubter within me always rolling his eyes and whispering “Yeah right…” whenever I heard another boy who cried “miracle.” Just because we recently-conscious monkeys don’t fully understand the dynamics of our spacetime reality just yet, it doesn’t mean we wouldn’t one day.
But what I found out by diving into the miracles of Padre Pio shocked me: the Voice’s Church possesses this same doubter within her as well.
The Catholic Church, no doubt, believes in miracles – especially based on the most-reasonable testimony of eye-witnesses like John who soberly witnessed Jesus’ resurrection, which in turn powerfully communicated the Father’s existence. But I also learned that miracles — actual, verifiable miracles — are really rare. The Church even thinks most of the supposed claims are hysteria from the cray-crays out there, or originating simply from our lack of a fuller understanding of how the cosmos works.
In fact, to ensure that only true miracles were considered miraculous, the Church even instituted the office of the Advocatus Diaboli, better known as the Advocate of the Devil.
In order to protect the legitimacy of true miracles, a Luciferian lawyer was hired. That way, miracles wouldn’t be confused for inexplicable science. The Devil’s Advocate had the sole job of sniffing out supposed miraculous baloney and consuming it without mercy… and he definitely needed a large stomach for this job. Jesus stated the truth will set you free: if the event could survive Screwtape’s prosecutorial onslaught, it wasn’t because we lacked the advanced science needed to understand what really happened. If this event could withstand this satanic subjugation, it was only due to the fact that the event’s origin was from a being outside of spacetime; and no science, no matter how advanced, could understand it or explain it away – like the resurrection event.
And this horned prosecutor didn’t take his job lightly, to say the least. A claimed miracle was to be examined by a committee of scientists that always included non-believers and atheists. This examination could last for years, sometimes even decades. And this commitment to a extreme-level of scrutiny could be seen when, for instance, during Mother Teresa's examination, the team of skeptics brought in Christopher Hitchens, the infamous atheist and author of books, like “God is Not Great” and “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice”...
Hitchens was definitely the irreverent doubter for the job.
Yet if there was someone that could out-fiddle the Devil, it was Pio.
After discovering the miracles attributed to him, I could now see why ol’ Luci wanted to mop the floor with Pio. Besides the demon-gorgon-beatings, the otherworldly stigmata and his strange travel habits, Pio had hundreds and hundreds of mind-blowing, unexplainable miracles attributed to him that shocked the 20th century into belief.
In order to be made a saint, you need two miracles (beyond your sanctity) that can make it through the house of dragons. And to make it even harder, these miracles have to come AFTER you have died… so none of Pio’s highly evidenced paranormal battles, stigmata-marks, sling-ring travels, or miracles while alive counted. Come on, man. But once again, Pio said ‘hold my beer.’ Pio whispered once to a close friend: “I will cause more commotion when I am dead than I ever did when I was alive.” And his friend knew the “commotion” he was referring to: the “miracles” he would perform when he had passed through The Wardrobe and was even closer to the Risen Wonder-Worker. And after reviewing these two miracles, videos like David Blaine pulling a frog out of his mouth just don’t hit like they used to.
The first miracle:
Father Strange scheduled his big comeback from the dead show for November 1, 1995 in his motherland, Italy.
On October 31, Maria Consiglia di Martino was struck down by a very serious illness. During the night as she slept, she felt like an elephant was on her chest, and was suffocating her. In the morning she noticed that her neck was alarmingly swollen and near her left clavicle a large bulge had formed in the shape of a ball… Tearfully leaving her husband and three kids, possibly for the last time, she was hospitalized at the San Leonardo Hospital in Salerno.
She was subjected to various examinations including a CAT scan. The doctors discovered, according to her written medical record, a “traumatic rupture of the thoracic duct,” which means the rupture of a vein inside her chest into which lymphatic fluid was flowing.
In the afternoon that day, the woman underwent a second CT scan with contrast imaging, which confirmed the devastating results of the morning test. If they did not “close up” the leak, the woman would most certainly die. Therefore, immediate surgery was essential.
It was a complicated surgery that was also extremely dangerous. Consiglia had always been devoted to Padre Pio and therefore began to pray fervently to the friar. Consiglia was also very good friends with Brother Modestino, the charismatic friar who was considered Padre Pio’s spiritual heir. She phoned him and asked him for his prayers as well.
During the night of November 1, 1995, Consiglia could not sleep. All she could think of was her three kids growing up without their mom. But at a certain moment she began to smell a strong violet perfume…
and you know what that means…
Consiglia later recounted,
“In the afternoon I clearly sensed the presence of a person at my side who opened the collar of my blouse and made a cut at the collarbone, stitching all of it back together with two stitches, and I experienced a distinct sensation of sweetness that permeated my soul while the swelling near the neck started to disappear.”
Consiglia again smelled that very sweet perfume. ‘Well, hello there surgeon Pio.’
The next morning she felt fine. Like ready for Crossfit fine. The swelling at the base of the neck caused by the hemorrhage of lymphatic fluid had completely disappeared. She alerted the doctors who were absolutely dumbfounded… to say the least… in observing the incredible change. The results sent the entire medical team into a tailspin. The rupture had disappeared, the hemorrhage had disappeared, and there was no trace of a medical condition. And after only five days of tests and observations, these mystified surgeons were forced to send Maria back home to her kids without a single cut… that is, a cut from someone on this side of the Wardrobe.
The Committee was presided over by Dr. Raffaello Cortesini, a luminary in the field of transplants; at that time he was a Professor of Clinical Pathology and Transplantation in the Department of Pathology at Columbia University in New York. He stated:
“Above all, it was perfectly documented because it took place in an accredited hospital under the monitoring of well-known specialists. In addition, there was the unequivocal result of the CAT scan. A pathological rupture of the thoracic duct can be resolved only through surgery, which never took place. This healing was instantaneous, genuine, and immediately documented by a new CAT scan. On top of that, the healing has continued over time because the woman has been perfectly well since then. As far as I know, a healing of this kind has no precedent in scientific literature anywhere in the world. Because of this, the doctors of the committee were ‘forced,’ so to speak, to vote for the scientific ‘inexplicability’ of what happened.”
Because the show was so good, the committee needed an encore…
And Pio did not disappoint… The second miracle took place for an eight-year-old boy named Matteo Pio Colella. He was the son of a doctor who worked at Padre Pio’s hospital. On January 20, 2000, Matteo was close to the end of his life and was hospitalized for fulminant bacterial meningitis that was so severe it had caused septicemia. His condition soon deteriorated and became desperate, so he was taken to intensive care. The diagnosis was clear: without treatment, he would die.
His lungs and kidneys stopped functioning and Matteo Pio went into cardiac arrest before being put into a medically induced coma. The doctors had no hope for him whatsoever. Seven of the boy’s organs were attacked and seriously compromised by this disease. When five or more organs are involved, the prognosis is always ominous. For fifteen days, drugs and machines were the only things keeping him alive, so his parents turned to his only hope…
Que the Father Strange theme song.
On the night between January 20 and 21, Matteo Pio was in a deep comatose state, yet he still remembers what happened next as if it were yesterday:
“I looked at myself lying in bed, but I was not alone in the room. Next to me there was an older gentleman with a beard wearing a long brown robe. He gave me his right hand and said, ‘Don’t worry, Matteo. You will be healed soon.’ I did not know who the man was. But when I woke up and my mother showed me a small picture of Padre Pio, I recognized him immediately. That was the man.”
The committee studying the case voted unanimously for the scientific inexplicability of this second healing. Pio had done it. Not even death could stop him from showing forth the existence of God through the power of the scientifically impossible. He was declared a saint on June 16, 2004… but that hasn’t stopped him from continuing his promised “commotion”...
And after discovering this otherworldly figure named Pio, I had to peek into the upside down to try and see for myself if these demon-gorgons that Pio had so much contact with actually exist. Like an exorcist once said,
“You have little choice but to believe in God…
after meeting the Devil.”
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