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  Venerate His greatest suffering shoulder wound   |
Prayer
of St. Bernard
to the shoulder wound of Jesus Releases many Souls from Purgatory: 
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Mention your own intended souls silently . . . . . . . . . . optional (for those most abandoned). (Humbly ask for Padre Pio's intercession to carry your daily devotional request on his shoulder and silently mention your intended request). O Loving Jesus, meek Lamb of God, I a miserable sinner, salute and worship the most Sacred Wound of Your Shoulder on which You bore Your heavy Cross, which so tore Your Flesh and laid bare Your Bones as to inflict on You an anguish greater than any other Wound of Your Most Blessed Body. I adore You, O Jesus most sorrowful; I praise and glorify You and give You thanks for this most sacred and painful Wound, beseeching You by the crushing burden of Your heavy Cross to be merciful to the souls in purgatory and to me, a sinner, to forgive me all my mortal and venial sins, and to lead me on towards Heaven along the Way of Your Cross. Amen. Optional: Follow with an Our Father, Hail Mary & Glory Be for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. The Prayer of the shoulder wound of Jesus is a Roman Catholic prayer, addressed to Jesus whilst calling to mind and meditating upon the wound he is said to have received during the carrying of his cross. It is variously attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux or to St. Gertrude or St. Mechtilde. According to St. Bernard, he asked Jesus which was his greatest unrecorded suffering and the wound that inflicted the most pain on him in Calvary and Jesus answered: "I had on My Shoulder, while I bore My Cross on the Way of Sorrows, a grievous Wound which was more painful than the others and which is not recorded by men." Christ asked that Saint Bernard and other members of the Faithful keep a devotion to his shoulder wound, and that those who do will receive God's grace. "Honor this Wound with thy devotion, and I will grant thee whatsoever thou dost ask through its virtue and merit. And in regard to all those who shall venerate this Wound, I will remit to them all their venial sins, and will no longer remember their mortal sins." Padre Pio bore the same secret wound of Jesus ST. PIO OF PIETRELCINA, Capuchin friar, priest and mystic, died in 1968. Padre Pio was known as a confessor and a holy man who for more than 50 years bore the wounds of Christ (the stigmata) on his hands and feet. In a book published in the Italian language by St. Pio's friary, titled Il Papa e Il Frate, author Stefano Campanella reported that Padre Pio had once had a very interesting conversation with Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope St. John Paul II. According to Campanella, Fr. Wojtyla asked Padre Pio which of his wounds caused the most pain. Fr. Wojtyla expected Padre Pio to say that it was his chest wound; but instead Padre Pio replied, "It is my shoulder wound, which no one knows about and has never been cured or treated." In 2008, 40 years after Padre Pio's death, author Frank Rega wrote about Padre Pio: At one time Padra [sic] had confided to Brother Modestino Fucci, now the doorkeeper at Padre Pio's friary in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, that his greatest pains occurred when he changed his undershirt. Brother Modestino, like Father Wojtyla, thought that Padre Pio was referring to pains from the chest wound. Then, on February 4, 1971, Brother Modestino was assigned the task of taking an inventory of all the items in the deceased Padre's cell in the friary, and also his belongings in the archives. That day he discovered that one of Padre Pio's undershirts bore a circle of bloodstains in the area of the right shoulder. On that very evening, Brother Modestino asked Padre Pio in prayer to enlighten him about the meaning of the bloodstained undershirt. He asked Padre to give him a sign if he truly bore Christ's shoulder wound. Then he went to sleep, awakening at 1 a.m. with a terrible, excruciating pain in his shoulder, as if he had been sliced with a knife up to the shoulder bone. He felt that he would die from the pain if it continued, but it lasted only a short time. Then the room became filled with the aroma of a heavenly perfume of flowers - the sign of Padre Pio's spiritual presence - and he heard a voice saying, "This is what I had to suffer!" What is the mystical and spiritual significance of the shoulder wound of St. Padre Pio? The book by journalist Saverio Gaeta, Sulla Soglia del Paradiso (2), reports that Padre Pio said this of his spiritual children: "When the Lord entrusts a soul to me, I place it on my shoulder and never let it go." From this statement, it can reasonably be inferred that the saint offered up the suffering and the extreme pain of his shoulder wound for his spiritual children. |
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This page was last updated
on Aug 19, 2023
