During many treks to the Jersey Shore I take different routes, my favorite being Route 40 East because it passes through quaint small towns and farmland. My small red Fiat 500X zips past a handful of farmers’ produce stands promoting freshly picked strawberries, watermelons and peaches, festive garden stores, local wineries, various gift shops, a western wear store and a woman selling gladiolas from a pickup truck.
I often say one day I’ll stop at some of these country delights; yet I never take the time in my hurriedness to reach the beach.
Then I saw it … a Padre Pio marquee reading “pray, hope and don’t worry” in bright red scrolling letters. It was a side-of-the-road promo announcing a beautiful outdoor St. Padre Pio shrine and garden at an intersection in the small town of Landisville, New Jersey.
I swear my Fiat turned left on its own.
“Oh, this I have to stop for,” I muttered to my pup, Lupini, asleep on the passenger seat, quite uninterested in saints of any kind. I parked and approached the shrine. It was drizzling and I didn’t mind, my polka-dotted umbrella stored in the trunk.
So peaceful! So moving! Very lovely. I immediately cried.
Feeling light and joyful amidst the religious icons and the tall Padre Pio statue, I walked up to him. He seemed to stare directly and deeply into my eyes, as if I was the only person in New Jersey. He seemed alive. Fresh red roses sat at his feet with a touching note from a mom asking for healing of her daughter afflicted with Lupus disease. Other handwritten notes were tucked under Jesus’ feet on his statue and near every other statue, the paper crinkling in the rain.
Music piped through speakers played softly in the background … “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” The garden area was full of fresh and fake flowers, wreaths perched on Mother Mary’s head, and several rows of decorative benches boasting family name inscriptions to memorialize loved ones.
I watched a woman approach Pio – the only other visitor sharing the garden with me.
“This is so beautiful!” I shared, wanting to unite with someone, anyone, in this experience, even a stranger. She smiled, placed her hands on his statue, and bowed her head.
My parish, St. Leo the Great in Little Italy owns a tall, beautiful bronze statue which stands to the left of our altar. The statue was a gift “from the people of the province of Benevento” (Italy) presented in 2007 to our congregation by its president, the Honorable Carmine Nardone.
Our parish celebrates an annual Padre Pio Mass, this year on Sept. 18 during a 10 a.m. Mass with Archbishop William E. Lori as the main celebrant, along with our pastor, Pallottine Father Bernard Carman and several others.
Since I design and write our weekly parish bulletin and have included information about the upcoming Mass, the saint is on my mind. As I sit in church and stare at his statue, I recall my marvelous spontaneous open-air experience of discovering the shrine in New Jersey — a four-story monument on ten acres of land. Its website teaches us that the project was conceived by Italian-American farmers from Buena, New Jersey, completed in 2002, the year he was canonized by St. John Paul II — a devotee of the saint — who in 1999, also beatified Pio.
St. Padre Pio was born in 1887 in Pietrelcina, Italy. He was a priest and is a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. He was born into a devout Catholic family and at the age of 5, consecrated himself to Jesus. He is noted for having the stigmata of Jesus’ wounds on his body: marks, bleeding and pain corresponding to the wounds Jesus suffered during crucifixion. Typically, many Italians are devoted to the saint and own Pio statues and icons.
In Jersey or Little Italy, take me to Padre Pio, where I will “pray, hope and don’t worry.”
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