2: A Man Of Hope

2

A Man Of Hope

 

Letters to Ascended Master

St. Padre Pio,

Thursday, July 21, 2011

9: 30 A. M.

Dear Padre,

          Padre Pio, Man of Hope, by Renzo Allegri was my favorite of the ten books that I have read on your life so far, which I devoured with voracious curiosity after I met you through my spiritual sensitive—because I wanted to know everything I could about you; and although you were the same person that came through in the biographies of your life (and in your own letters and Padre Pio miracle stories, of which there were more than enough to choke an incredulous horse), you came through with the spiritual freedom of someone who had transcended the inflexible doctrine of your Roman Catholic religion—despite how you defended the false Christian premises that I so vocally threw at you in my spiritual healing sessions as a challenge to the faith that you lived and died for.

          But what I loved about how you defended the doctrine of your Roman Catholic faith (which was the bane of my youth), even though you now knew that some of the tenets were false—like the doctrine of one life, for example; eternal damnation, and the forgiveness of sins, which I will bring up in other letters—was the way you managed to get me to shift my own inflexible perspective and appreciate the spiritual goodness of the religion that I turned on in one of my past lives that surfaced in my past-life regressions five years ago.

          Not that I didn’t appreciate Christ’s teaching, not at all; I would not have found my true self without Jesus Christ’s teaching. It’s what Christianity has done with Christ’s teaching of the Way that I raged at. But let’s not dwell on that today. I want to pay homage to you in this letter, because the more I heard what you had to say in my spiritual healing sessions, and the more I studied your life the more humbled I was by your unbelievable commitment to la via di sofferenza—the way of suffering.

          You pleaded with your lord and savior to assist him in his mission, and Jesus invited you to participate in his passion by granting you the stigmata, the five wounds that he suffered during his crucifixion, which came to define your life.  Renzo Allegri wrote: “he had endured incredibly enormous suffering, accusations, slanders, trials, and condemnations than one can imagine” (Padre Pio, Man of Hope p. 5), and the more I read about your life, the more I came to believe this—and that’s when your passionate commitment to Jesus Christ’s mission began to break through the walls of my own spiritual conceit and devastate the vanity that kept me from making further progress on my journey home to God!

          “When people write about Padre Pio,” wrote Renzo Allegri, “they tend to dwell on the penitential aspect of his life, thereby giving a somewhat dark and medieval tinge to his personality. But this is not really the case. Padre Pio was, and is a man of hope” (p. 6).

          This is how you came through in my spiritual healing sessions—not dark and penitential (although, I felt shades of this quality in your character)—with a lightness of spiritual freedom and clarity that blew me away! I couldn’t believe how contemporary and New Age you were in your spiritual perspective. In fact, I soon realized just how far ahead of the life curve you were, and this induced such excitement that I couldn’t wait for my next spiritual healing session with you!

          So, Padre; let me thank you in this letter for healing me of the vanity that kept me stuck in the River of God, because once your healing grace devastated my spiritual conceit I began to ride the currents to new and exciting possibilities—to the point, as you revealed, where I actually transcended my own voice and the voice of my spiritual community!

          I wrote about this in Healing with Padre Pio; but I confess, I haven’t written the last chapter yet (“The Vanity of All Spiritual Paths”). I have to let the manuscript sit and simmer for a few months before I read it through and bring my novel to closure. For now, I want you to know that I sense that this epistolary project has already begun to take form. Be it ever so subtle, the form is taking shape, and I know it won’t be long before the dominant theme sprouts like a seed fully formed, and I can’t wait to see what fruit it bears!

          On a more personal note, I’d like to say that I have steeled myself to take on the household tasks that I’ve been putting off for—how long now, two, three, five years?—but I haven’t quite gone that far yet to actually commit myself to do them. I do however feel that you have planted the thought of doing “one small household responsibility to begin with,” which would begin breaking the hold that my little procrastinating self has on me; so I’ll see what I can do.

I can’t promise when, but I will entice myself by promising to not write you again until I do at least one household responsibility—which should be interesting!

I remain,

Your fellow companion,

Orest

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Next Sunday, Nov. 6/11, watch for Letter No. 3: "As Providence Would Have It."