family – Let's Join Our Hands for Nature

I just check on who watches me on Facebook and this was the result that I got. I almost fell on my chair.

My birthday is September 20 and this is a significant day in the life of Saint Padre Pio.

September 20, 1918, Padre Pio was praying in the choir loft in the Church of Our Lady of Grace, when the same Being who appeared to him on August 5, appeared again. It was the wounded Christ.

The Stigmata, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina.

On September 20, 1918, while hearing confessions, Padre Pio had his first occurrence of the stigmata: bodily marks, pain, and bleeding in locations corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ. This phenomenon continued for fifty years, until the end of his life. The blood flowing from the stigmata smelled of perfume or flowers, a phenomenon mentioned in stories of the lives of several saints and often referred to as the odour of sanctity. Though Padre Pio would have preferred to suffer in secret, by early 1919, news about the stigmatic friar began to spread in the secular world. Padre Pio’s wounds were examined by many people, including physicians.

People who had started rebuilding their lives after World War I, began to see in Padre Pio a symbol of hope. Those close to him attest that he began to manifest several spiritual gifts, including the gifts of healing, bilocation, levitation, prophechy, miracles, extraordinary abstinence from both sleep and nourishment (one account states that Padre Agostino recorded one instance in which Padre Pio was able to subsist for at least 20 days at Verafeno on only the Eucharist without any other nourishment), the ability to read hearts, the gift of tongues, the gift of conversions, and the fragrance from his wounds.

A friend told me that her brother was so sick that her mother wrote a letter to Padre Pio. Padre Pio wrote back to her mom with a letter of blessings.

I just could not imagine the volume of letter that they respond those day when internet was not yet discovered.

If there is something that influences me with the life of Padre Pio is going to confession.

From reading the story of the life of Padre Pio, it leads me of having courage to confess my sins.

I read about his miracles, collaborated with stories of people,

Another experience of Padre Pio is battle against satan, How he suffered from them.

Yes, There is Evil in this world and it powerful, it can possess people.

I personally saw people got possessed by the devil near our house in Sampaloc Street, San Antonio Village. Makati city way back in 1998.

Want to share a story after confession

In one Saturday before lent around 2017, I went to confession in St. Paul church in San Pablo and it amazes me to see families go to confession. There were about 50 mostly Hispanic because there are parents, siblings and children getting in line.

Here in St. Catherine Father Percy announce that he will have a confession for everyone. Father waited.

Next mass, Someone share to me that Father told everyone in his homily that only one went to confession.

I just smiled, so I am the only one blessed.

Hmmmm.

I am like many who run away and go to confession far from our parish so that father won’t know my sins.

It takes courage and humility.

I am only human, I also to feel ashamed to tell my sin to the priest, specially when I serve this church.

But then, there was a realization in my part.

More than anyone, I should be ashame with the Lord. He is watching me 24 hours a day.

Like the Hispanics way of life. Maybe we need to do the same, next time we go together as a family in confession so that each one of us will experience peace and happiness within. It’s a challenge because to bring our children to church is already something very difficult to do.

I learned that it seems like many believe that catholic just need to confess at least two times a year.

No it needs to be always. until you will be able to win against your repetitive sins. when we win in this battle against evil in our life we will be sanctified be purified.

Confession a good way to receive grace from our Lord.

When was the last time you went to confession. It’s about time. It’s hard but fulfilling.

Life is not just about helping and doing good.

We are all called to evangelized and be purified.

It should start from us. God is alive and he talks us in a lot of ways.

He keeps on knocking in our hearts, listen, God wants to talk to us.

God can literally talk in our hearts but it needs to be purified. It start in our hearts.

So if you want to have peace in your Heart, Confess.

Confess and receive blessings and grace

God bless

It’s sad that for the first time in history the Lourdes, a center of the Christian Pilgrimage beside Bethlehem and Rome was close for public visit on March 18, 2020 however Mass continues to be said daily.