For everything there is a season. The well-known verses from Ecclesiastes were even turned into a well-known popular song in the 1960's, adapted by the rock musician Peter Seeger from the King James text of this passage from the Bible. This song became a popular peace anthem in the era of the Vietnam War - I remember singing it with my class at George Armstrong Elementary School in Chicago.
What can we, as people of faith, make of these beautiful, poetic words that are so familiar to us? God has appointed different times and seasons in the way our world functions.; it is part of the natural order of things. Our eternal God is beyond the temporality of the world, even though we live in a world of change. In fact, Father Vincent McNally, the Church history professor I had in seminary, used to commonly say that death and change were the only constants in our world. If we look at the changes we go through in our faith life, how our life of faith is constantly evolving and changing as we continue on our journey, we can appreciate how much change is so much a part of the world and our lives. With the tumultuous changes our national and global economy are enduring right now, change that is accompanied by a lot of worry and uncertainty, we are all too familiar with the change that characterizes so much of our lives.
Even in the midst of all this change, God is a constant in our lives. God appears to us in a very real way with a human face with the saints we celebrate in our Church. Padre Pio is a very popular saint in our Catholic Church. He was born in 1887 in rural Italy, the son of a shepherd. He was ordained as a priest in 1910 and received the stigmata in 1918 while he was praying before a cross – he was the first priest to have received the stigmata. American soldiers spread the word about Padre Pio throughout the world after WWII as he became popular with people who would come from near and far in order to meet him and to be in the presence of this holy man. Padre Pio would hear confessions for hours; many believed that he could really see into the intentions of their hearts that went beyond the mere words they confessed. Many were healed by Padre Pio; many claimed that they were healed by him through his mere touch.
Padre Pio sends out this message to us through one of his well-known prayers: “Pray, pray to the Lord with me, because the whole world needs prayer. And every day, when your heart especially feels the loneliness of life, pray. Pray to the Lord, because even God needs our prayers.”
May the faith of Padre Pio and the rest of the community of saints inspire us to live holy live, to live out our faith with courage & zeal. May our prayers unite with the prayers of the community of saints in giving glory to God.
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