Posted on 03/06/2002 2:45:38 PM PST by marshmallow
Thousands of believers have flocked to the Sicilian city of Messina after a statue of the revered Padre Pio began shedding tears some think are blood. A passer-by noticed that the statue seemed to be crying late on Tuesday night.
Police are to analyse the red liquid coming from the statue's eyes
He called a local priest who was unable to wipe away the red substance leaking from the eyes of the statue in the centre of the city, according to the Italian news agency Ansa.
The suspected miracle was reported on the evening news and sparked mass interest in the statue of Padre Pio who will be made a saint by the Pope in June.
Though claims of weeping statues are not unusual in Italy, the popularity of Padre Pio has made this a special case.
More than 2,000 people rushed to the statue overnight in the square in front of the Church of Madonna of Pompeii.
Stigmata
Police have taken a sample of the liquid coming from the two-metre (seven-foot) bronze statue for analysis. Padre Pio de Pietrelcine is one of the most revered religious figures in Italy.
He was considered the first priest in centuries to show the stigmata - the wounds to hands, feet and side suffered by Jesus at his crucifixion.
He has an enormous following and the monastery where he died in 1968 at the age of 81 attracts seven million visitors a year - similar to the numbers who go to France's Lourdes shrine.
Like the bringing Lazarus back from the dead, or turning water into wine, or perhaps the Resurrection?
The events you listed were used to establish the whole God / Son of God premise. Most people with a literal belief in the Bible believe that these events happened exactly as written. My opinion is that if you really believe the big events like these then you don't need a bleeding statue for it all to make sense.
Compare:
You accept the idea of Lazarus rising from the dead at the hand of Jesus - you become a believer.
You witness the statue of St. Lenny the Flatulent sweating profusely - you adjust the air conditioner.
Is it beneath God to kick it down a few notches? If you don't like my list, I'm sure we could find a bible banger to rattle off a few other instances of God revealing himself to others. And maybe that is the point. God continues reveals himself to non-believers. To those who already believe, you are right, they don't need more signs unless they dispair. But if some come to the statue and they see and they believe, then how can it be a bad thing?
That is my point. It's not a bad thing. I'm just amazed that it takes something like that to inspire faith. It's just comes across like another circus tent faith healer routine. I feel that there are more tangible indications of God/spirituality in everyday life.
I don't get the thought process either - a religious statue appears to bleed - therefore God must be giving me proof of his existence and I must follow Him. It just doesn't make much sense. Some may come to this conclusion after exhaustive analysis of the statue , the blood, and the environment but the knee-jerk reaction is a little bit too much for me.
I'm not a zealot, I rarely attend organized religious services but I believe that there are so many aspects of our existence that would lead the majority to some form of spirituality. Not because they are ignorant but because it is a reasoned conclusion.
This is bigger news in Italy than the bleeding statue -- as Padre Pio's canonization is expected to draw one of the largest crowds ever to the Vatican.
There is the famous story -- documented in more than one book that when the United States tried to bomb the town he lived in Italy during World War II, he appeared in the clouds.
One account I read was that a General leading the flight thought that seeing a monk in the clouds on a mission to bomb a monastery was a good sign not to bomb the monastery. He called off the mission. He later visited San Gioviani Rotundo, and when he went to Mass, he identified Padre Pio as the Monk in the clouds waving his planes off.
In a different account, the bomb release jammed even though they made two passes at bombing the town. But in this account, not only did a monk appear in the clouds but a woman holding a child as well as a man with a bloody sword.
Airmen who saw this later identified the monk as Padre Pio, and the woman and child a as the statue of Mary and the infant Jesus in the church at the monastery of Padre Pio.
As for the man with a sword dripping blood? A few miles from Padre Pio's monastery is a sanctuary dedicated to the Archangel St Michael (my patron saint). The airmen identified the statue of St Michael as the other "man holding the sword".
And many of the miracles when Padre Pio was alive was far greater than any statue crying blood...
But Padre Pio when he was alive gave an indication as to why he might be crying blood from a statue.
After World War II, he feared the coming time because of the evil coming into the world. However, I would have to dig to find that reference -- as I can't remember which book on Padre Pio I read that in...
It happened in 1995, and ss I recall, devotees "fed" the statue offerings of milk with a spoon, and there was a porous area in the statue's mouth that soaked up the milk into the statute's head and other porous areas in the corners of each eye that "cried" it back out again. Thus the statue could not only "cry" milk, but could "drink" it, too.
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