Chapter Four

      Encounters with the Invisible World

       “Manifestations and Divine Locutions”

      From the beginning of his seminary studies, Fra Pio heard heavenly voices and experienced visions, a matter which is sure to make many modern people uncomfortable, and tempt many to dismiss the Capuchin as a madman or liar — or, at the very least, badly deluded. Yet, without seriously considering these manifestations, one cannot hope to understand Padre Pio, whose very existence was intertwined with the invisible world.

      It would seem that from his study of Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, and other mystical writers, Fra Pio learned to distinguish between three types of visions: the bodily, the imaginative, and the intellectual. A bodily vision is what most people usually have in mind when they talk about a vision. If, wide awake, I walked into my living room and, with the same organs of sight with which I perceive my furniture and my books, saw Padre Pio, I would be (assuming that I am not hallucinating) having a bodily vision. Actually, this type of vision was distrusted by both Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint John of the Cross, partly because of the great difficulty involved in distinguishing a true vision from a hallucination. The only time bodily visions were to be taken seriously was when they were totally unsought.

      Padre Pio had numerous bodily visions of celestial as well as infernal beings who were as vividly present to him as were his flesh-and-blood colleagues. As we will see, he claimed that he was beaten and bloodied by demons and that he actually kissed the hands of Christ. He told another priest, “I see my guardian angel just like I see you.”¹

      The imaginative vision is hard to describe. To say that a vision is “imaginative” by no means implies that it is not real — that it is a figment of the visionary’s imagination. In an imaginative vision, supersensible wisdom is infused into the soul by means of images already in the subject’s imagination. It is like an allegory.

      Although at the time he used the word “intellectual” to describe it, Fra Pio’s vision of the black giant (described in chapter 2) really corresponds to what is classically known as an imaginative vision — a vision in which, as Pio recounts, the bodily senses are suspended and the subject “sees” reality symbolically. God wished to infuse in him some knowledge of his future work and did so by using pictures and images already in his mind.

      The intellectual vision has been described as pure understanding, without any impression of images on the senses. This is a “vision,” Teresa of Ávila says, which is “not seen at all.” Angela of Foligno (1248–1309), an Italian mystic, describes such visions:

      At times God comes into the soul without being called; and he instills into [the soul] fire, love, and sometimes sweetness; and the soul believes this comes from God, and delights therein. But [the soul] does not yet know or see that he dwells in her; she perceives his graces, in which she delights…. Beyond that the soul receives the gift of seeing God. God says to her, “Behold me!”, and the soul sees him dwelling within her. She sees him more clearly than one man sees another. For the eyes of the soul behold a [wealth] of which I cannot speak; a [wealth] which is not bodily, but spiritual, of which I can say nothing.²

      Fifteen-year-old Francesco’s “purely intellectual” revelation of January 3, 1903, when he was “suddenly flooded with supernatural light” (also described in chapter 2), providing the meaning of his imaginative vision of two days previous, was probably an example of this third type of vision.

      Padre Pio actually understood his supersensible experiences as belonging to two categories: “manifestations and apparitions which are purely supernatural and without form” and those “under human form.” Those manifestations that are “purely supernatural,” he claimed, all “concern God, his perfections and his attributes.” He drew this analogy:

      Let’s stand before a mirror. What do we see? Nothing but a human image. Our intellect, if it is not deranged, will have no doubt that this image is our own.

      Now, let us suppose that everybody wants to prove that we are deceived in wishing to believe that the image which we see in the mirror is ours. Could they possibly succeed in dissuading us from our conviction or even causing the slightest doubt to rise within us? No, certainly not.

      Well, the same thing happens to me in these manifestations and divine locutions. The soul beholds these heavenly secrets, these divine perfections, and these godly attributes much better than we see our image in a mirror. My efforts to doubt their reality succeed in nothing other than making my soul stronger in its conviction. I do not know whether you have ever seen a great fire come in contact with a drop of water. This small amount of water fails to quench the flames, but, on the contrary, we see that it serves to stir them up even more. This happens to me when I try, with all my strength, to doubt that these things have their origin in God.

      He went on to say that one can neither separate the image from the mirror, nor touch it physically:

      And yet the same image exists outside of us if not apart from us…. The same thing happens to me. My soul remains fundamentally convinced that these heavenly manifestations cannot come except from God, even though with my reason I attempt to question this. But just as it is impossible to separate one’s image from a mirror and touch it at the same time, it is still more difficult to succeed in committing these heavenly secrets to writing, simply because of the inadequacy of the human language. The soul, without deceiving itself, can affirm only what these are not.³

      Referring to the bodily, or “human” manifestations, Pio wrote that they are usually visions of the Lord in human form — at the Last Supper; in the Garden of Gethsemane; scourged, bound to a column; or glorious and resplendent in the Resurrection and Ascension. There were visions of the Virgin Mary and “other exalted heavenly beings.” Although these were “in human form and appearance,” and he could describe them more accurately than the visions without form, he preferred to remain “in perfect reticence, because we do wrong when, in expressing ourselves, we do not see the great distance between the thing that is perceived within our consciousness and that which we are able to express in words.”⁴

      Pio wrote of these supernatural manifestations:

      I always emerge from them more steeped in a sense of my own unworthiness. In this light I realize that I am the most miserable of the creatures that have ever seen the light. I feel greatly detached from this wretched world. I feel that I’m in a land of exile … and I suffer immensely in seeing how few among my companions in misery aspire as I do to the Promised Land. I always feel ever more filled full of the goodness of God, and I groan that there might be at least a few who love him wholeheartedly. I suffer in seeing myself so poor, for no other reason than that of not being able to offer anything as a sign of gratitude to so excellent a Benefactor.⁵

      Another result of these “manifestations” was a great continuous peace. “I feel myself strongly consumed by an exceedingly powerful desire to please God,” Pio wrote. “The Lord who favored me with this grace causes me