The Source of Your Peace and Joy

Just as Saint Padre Pio did, my dear friend, you, too, can find peace and joy in prayer, even if sometimes you experience a dryness, a spiritual "aridity," when you pray. During those "dry" times of prayer, it seems as if God is hiding from you, right? But He is not. He loves you with an unfathomable love and wants you to persevere in prayer, in spite of the aridity of your soul. He longs for you to speak to Him, to listen to Him, to just spend time in His loving Presence. In the Letters of Saint Padre Pio, Volume One, page 471, the Padre shares with you his secrets of prayer and how God will eventually lead you, too, out of your spiritual dryness:

"My usual manner of praying is this," says St. Padre Pio. "I no sooner begin to pray than my soul becomes enveloped in a peace and tranquiliity that words cannot describe. The senses become inactive, with the exception of my hearing, which is sometimes not inactive. Generally, however, this does not bother me in the least, and I must confess that even if a great deal of noise were to be made around me, it would not disturb me at all. From this, you will understand that I rarely succeed in using my mind in discursive prayer.

"It frequently happens," continues St. Padre Pio, "that at certain moments, when my mind wanders from the continual thought of God, who is always present to me, I suddenly feel the touch of our Lord in a most penetrating and sweet manner in the depths of my soul, so that, more often than not, I am obliged to shed tears of sorrow for my infidelity and to shed tears of love for such a good and attentive Father who calls me back to His Presence.

"At other times I experience, instead, a great aridity [dryness] of soul; I feel so oppressed by my many bodily ailments [he bore the five bleeding wounds--the stigmata--of Christ for fifty years] that I am incapable of pulling myself together to pray, no matter how much I want to. . . . When the heavenly Spouse of souls is pleased to put an end to this martyrdom, He suddenly sends me an irresistible spiritual fervor. In an instant, everything is changed, and I feel so enriched by supernatural grace and so full of strength that I am ready to defy the whole of Satan's kingdom.

"All I can say about this prayer," concludes St. Padre Pio, "is that my soul seems to be completely lost in God and that in those moments it gains more than it could in many years of intensive spiritual exercises."

Therefore, my dear friend, you, too, can become a Saint merely by spending time with God and allowing your soul, like Saint Padre Pio's, to be "completely lost in God," so that you, too, will "gain more than" your soul would be able to gain through "many years of intensive spiritual exercises."

Amen! So be it!