Padre Pio

Homily at St Martin today:

"Jesus sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal" (Luke 9.1-6)

Preaching and healing have always gone together in the celebration of the Christian gospel of God's love. (I don't really need to tell you that in this parish which had Fr Maurice Maddocks as a former parish priest).

When Fr Graham celebrates St Luke's Day at St Saviour at 7.00 p.m. on Monday 19th October it will take the form of a healing eucharist. Some of you may well want to attend and perhaps bring along, in person or in your heart, someone else in need of healing as well as yourself. This kind of service is part of the regular ministry of healing in the church but there has always been those blessed by God with particular gifts of healing beyond the ordinary.

We are commemorating St Padre Pio today. He was canonised on 16th June 2002. He has already become one of the saints whose intercession is most called upon for healing with amazing effect. He received the stigmata, worked many miracles and is said to have often bilocated. It was his holiness as a priest and his selfless ministry in the confessional which will be ever remembered among the saints.

I have an Anglican priest friend who claims that his ministry of healing is controlled by Padre Pio. He is not alone in this claim but in case this is too way out for you let me also tell you that Padre Pio's lasting memorial at San Giovanni in Italy is a Home cum Hospital for the Relief of Suffering which has all the latest medical equipment and a top team of dedicated staff with beds for more than 1200 patients.

St Pio himself was a sick and disabled man all his life. He was diagnosed as having chronic bronchitis with asthma. He had high temperatures not measurable on ordinary thermometers. He was excused military service on health grounds. In his final months he had to be transported everywhere in a wheelchair. A pope described him as 'a man of prayer and suffering'.He begins his description of how he received the stigmata(written under obedience) with these words: "What can I tell you regarding my crucifixion? My God! What embarrassment and humiliation I suffer by being obliged to explain what you have done to this wretched creature!"

A former Bishop of mine in the Bradford Diocese, Geoffrey Paul (ex Bishop of Hull and father in law to the present Archbishop of Canterbury) once said to me something about healing which I have never forgotten: ' the most important qualification for anyone engaged in the healing ministry is to keep your own wounds open'.