Obedient Suffering

Padre Pio was perfectly aware of the day when he would die. When Padre Pio received the stigmata, Jesus told him something that he never recorded in his letters but which he confided to some of his spiritual children. Realizing that his hands, feet, and side were bleeding, he turned to Jesus and begged him to take away the physical signs: “Let me suffer and let me die from suffering,” he prayed. “But take away these signs that cause me so much embarrassment.” Jesus told him: “You will bear them for fifty years, and then you will see me.” Exactly fifty years later, the wounds disappeared and Padre Pio died.

—from the book Saint Padre Pio: Man of Hope by Renzo Allegri