A former pastor of mine was fond of saying, “Love us or hate us, you cannot deny one thing: Catholics are interesting.” There is certainly no shortage of interesting aspects to the Catholic faith.
From the morbid to the sublime, we have levitating saints (like St. Joseph of Cupertino) and chapels built of bones (like Our Lady of the Conception Capuchin Church in Rome). We have pilgrimages and processions and pious practices aplenty. As long as we maintain a proper perspective, these more curious aspects of our faith can be wonderful tools for catechesis and evangelization precisely because they are attention grabbing.
Arguably one of the more interesting phenomena reported among the saints are the stigmata. This is the manifestation on a person’s flesh of the physical wounds suffered by Christ on the cross. Usually it occurs on the hands or feet, though occasionally on other parts of the body. Recorded stigmatics include St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena, St. John of God, St. Faustina Kowalska, St. Rita of Cascia and others. The term derives from the Greek word “stigma,” meaning “mark.” Some believe St. Paul may have been referring to stigmata when he wrote “I bear the marks of Jesus in my body” (Gal 6:17).
The most recent documented stigmatic is St. Pius of Pietrelcina, more popularly known as Padre Pio. For 50 years, from 1918 until his death in 1968, the holy priest bore the wounds of Christ on his hands. He was examined many times by medical doctors, none of whom could find a cause. The wounds had unusually smooth edges, never became infected, and reportedly exuded a sweet odor. What makes Padre Pio’s case especially interesting is that it was recent enough to not only be investigated by the tools of modern medicine, but also to be photographed. You can do a simple online image search for Padre Pio and see pictures for yourself.
All this is undoubtedly interesting, but one may ask, so what? Is this just an odd thing that happens to certain saints? What does it mean for the rest of us?
In thinking about saints who experience the stigmata, I am reminded of the first time I saw my child in pain. My wife and I were new parents, and we were taking our days-old daughter to the doctor’s for various routine check-ups. They thought she might be looking a little jaundiced, so they wanted to test her bilirubin levels. To do that they needed a blood sample, so they pricked her heel and squeezed out the tiny drop they needed.
It’s been 18 years, but that moment is still etched in my memory. As soon as the needle pricked her heel, her tiny mouth opened in a silent scream. No sound came out, but her face instantly turned beet red. When her cry did come, it broke my heart. Tears rolled down our cheeks as I held her shaking little body. My little girl was hurting and there was nothing I could do. If I could have traded places with her, I would have done so in an instant. I wanted to take her wound for myself. And in a way, I did; not in a physical way but in a real way nonetheless. I felt her pain.
Love will do that to you.
I believe the stigmata is something like that. It is said Padre Pio first received his stigmata after praying in front of a crucifix. I imagine that, looking upon the image of his wounded savior, the saint’s heart was filled with compassion for Our Lord. He felt Jesus’ pain and his heart broke. He was wounded by a desire to feel Christ’s wounds and take His pain upon himself. And so he did.
Love will do that to you. And by a special grace from God, those wounds were made manifest on his very flesh.
Does this mean the stigmata are simply gifts granted by God to those who feel compassion for His Son’s sufferings? No. Doubtless there have been many saints who felt as much or more compassion for Christ than the stigmatics. If stigmata were merely a trophy awarded by God to especially compassionate souls, that would make them dependent on our human effort – and that’s not how miracles work. God grants His miracles to whom He chooses, and never without a purpose. Just like the healing miracles recorded in the gospels, the stigmata have a greater purpose than their immediate effect. God grants His miracles not only for the good of the recipient, but for the good of the world.
Miracles are interesting. They get our attention. When God gets our attention by manifesting the wounds of Christ in the flesh of the saints, what is He telling us? I believe God raises up stigmatics from time in time in the history of the Church not to show us how much the saints love Him, but to remind us of how much He loves us. You see, as much as we may be filled with compassion when we contemplate the suffering of Jesus, we love Him because He first loved us (Jn 4:19). God the Father looks upon the suffering of His children with perfect compassion. He feels the pain of our wounds. Just as my heart broke as my baby daughter’s heel was being pricked, our Father’s heart longs to take the pain we suffer upon Himself. So He does. Love will do that to you.
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the regional faith formation coordinator for the Smoky Mountain Vicariate.