‘Imitate Padre Pio’ in holiness
During Mass and veneration of St. Pio’s relics June 11, people urged to pray for priests, increase in vocations to make the Church holy
CHARLOTTE — The scene looked like one of Padre Pio’s famed Masses at the monastery where he lived, San Giovanni Rotondo, in southern Italy – hundreds of people crammed inside the church and spilling out of every doorway, just trying to catch a glimpse of the holy Franciscan monk who bore the wounds of Christ.
Except this was not Italy. It was St. Patrick Cathedral in Charlotte June 11. Nevertheless, Padre Pio was there – several of his relics were on the altar – and more than 500 people had come to attend a Solemn High Mass celebrated in his memory.
The Mass in the Extraordinary Form was offered by Father Joseph Matlak, pastor of St. Basil the Great Eastern Catholic Parish in Charlotte, assisted by Deacon Britt Taylor and seminarian Harry Ohlhaut as subdeacon.
People from across the Diocese of Charlotte and beyond came for the Mass on Pentecost Tuesday and to venerate the relics of St. Pio of Pietrelcina, as Padre Pio is more formally known.
The relics tour, sponsored by the Saint Pio Foundation, included his glove; crusts of the wounds, cotton gauze with blood stains, a lock of his hair, his mantle, and a handkerchief soaked with his sweat just hours before he died.
Also present for the Mass and veneration of St. Pio’s relics were young men from St. Joseph College Seminary, some of whom comprised the schola for the Mass, and participants of the diocese’s 2019 Quo Vadis Days vocations retreat underway this week.
It was to the college seminarians and the retreat participants that Father Matlak directed his homily on the vocation and importance of the priesthood.
As he looked out at the hundreds of people packed inside the cathedral, Father Matlak said, “Any young men out there, if you feel God is calling you, I can only advise you from my personal experience – and I resisted God for many years – go, because you don’t know how happy it will make you. God gives you happiness, and you’re happy only when you do His Will – whether that’s to become a priest or become something else.
“From the heart, I can tell you that the vocation of the priesthood, the vocation to be one with the Eucharist on the altar, is one of the most challenging things that a man could ever do, but also one of the happiest. And I can tell you from my personal experience there is nothing – nothing! – that compares to being at the altar.”
Christ, he continued, “calls you individually, and He says, ‘You! Come and follow Me. You do what I do, because you are members of the Body of Christ, you are members of the Church.’”
“The most important thing is that you imitate Padre Pio in giving himself to God, because he loved God, because he loved the Church, because he wanted to contribute … to making the Church holy.”
Father Matlak noted that in the Old Testament, a priest’s role was to offer a sacrifice to God in thanksgiving, for the expiation for sins, and intercession on behalf of the people. A priest was also God’s suffering servant, offering the sacrifice with “a humble and contrite heart.”
In the New Testament, Christ takes on this role perfectly, Father Matlak continued, offering not just a temporary animal sacrifice but a final and complete sacrifice of Himself.
“The priesthood of the old was temporary. It gets culminated, it gets summed up, it gets fulfilled in the One that the New Testament calls the Eternal High Priest.”
“In His suffering on the cross, He was made perfect and that was what saved us. That was the source of our salvation,” he said.
Christ gave the Church the gifts of the Eucharist and the priesthood to enable us today to be present in His sacrifice on Calvary, through the Eucharist.
“The priesthood exists for one thing, and one thing only – just like in the Old Testament, to offer sacrifice, but this time it is a different sacrifice. It is the one eternal sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and when a priest stands here at the altar he stands at the foot of the cross,” he said.
St. Pio, “who was so conformed to the Lord crucified on the cross” that he bore the stigmata and was a victim soul, loved the Mass and he loved Christ, Father Matlak said.
“That man lived our faith completely in himself and in his life. For him, being a priest, the Mass was the center of everything.”
St. Pio recognized the reality of Calvary in the Eucharist, actually seeing the angels and saints around the altar at every Mass.
“Think for a moment what marvelous mystery is taking place around this altar,” Father Matlak said. “If we could only see with our eyes what is happening here, we would be on our knees.
We would be here every day if we could!”
Pray for priests and for an increase in vocations, Father Matlak entreated.
“Nowadays it’s not easy to be a priest,” he said. “Once upon a time it was a privileged thing, but not anymore. I want you to remember that every man that you see enter (the priesthood) is going into a burning building, and doing it freely. Why? Because they love the Eucharist and because they love Christ, and because they love the priesthood.”
“We need your prayers,” he said. “We’re all members of the Body of Christ and we need one another.”
He prayed, “May God give us priests, may God give us good priests, and may God give us holy priests.”
At the end of Mass, Father Matlak blessed everyone present with the reliquary containing St. Pio’s glove, which the holy monk wore to cover the wounds of the stigmata.
St. Pio was born on May 25, 1887, in Pietrelcina, Italy, and baptized Francesco Forgione. He first expressed his desire for priesthood when he was 10. The future saint entered the Capuchin order when he was 15, taking the name Pio. He was ordained a priest in 1910 at the age of 23.
During his lifetime, Padre Pio was known as a mystic with miraculous powers of healing and knowledge and who bore the stigmata, wounds that correspond to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ. They can appear on the forehead, hands, wrists and feet. The stigmata remained with him until his death on Sept. 23, 1968.
Pope John Paul II canonized him in 2002.
— Patricia L. Guilfoyle, editor
