The Anchor Point

When life is tough, or we are dragged down by events all around us, it can be helpful to revisit one of the anchor points in our life. It might be the time when God first became real to us, or, perhaps more likely, the most recent of numerous times when he has graciously turned the course of our life back towards himself. It may involve going to a place (this would have to be a virtual trip at the present time!), speaking with a wise friend, looking into past journals, or (for many of us) rereading a book that has had a big influence on our thinking.

A couple of weeks into the lockdown, something, I don’t know what, prompted me to look again at the story of my favourite modern saint, St Pio of Pietrelcina. I took one of my four books about him from the shelf, and as I glanced through it, my eye fell on an account of his early days as a Capuchin friar. He had longed since boyhood for the moment when he would be clothed with the habit and received into the Order. But when he was assigned to a friary, a strange thing happened — he suddenly became seriously ill and had to go home. This happened repeatedly for about five years: he would obediently report to a house of the Order, immediately fall ill, and get sent back to Pietrelcina to recover. But what really caught my attention was the sickness itself. It involved a massively high temperature, unbearable chest pains, and a racking cough; and not infrequently also, an inability to keep food down.

There was no pandemic in southern Italy at this time; Spanish flu was yet to arrive. But my immediate thought was: he is a saint for the present time; he has experienced (whatever caused them) the symptoms of Covid-19. That stimulated me to reread all my books about St Pio, and those few days’ reading became a return to one of my spiritual anchorages. Now, the malaise afflicting some people under the lockdown seems to be that they can’t get on with anything serious, especially their writing. In my case, there is plenty of writing to do and I can get on with it. But despite this, moments occur when I too think, ‘What’s the point of it all? What’s the bottom line?’ Well, St Pio reminds me strongly and reassuringly of what the bottom line is: uniting ourselves through prayer to Jesus, his faithfulness, his sacrifice, and his risen self.

St Pio’s motto was ‘Pray, hope, and don’t worry’. His entire life consisted in prayer, of being consciously in Christ’s presence all the time. His foundation in that reality reassures me that our labours are not in vain — that we are invisibly united with the Lord now, and that we will be consciously so at the end. That’s the basis from which sprang all the other graces which make St Pio a beacon of the spiritual world in an age which cannot see beyond the material. There’s no space here to properly describe these remarkable phenomena: the transfiguration that seemed to take him over when he celebrated the Eucharist; his ability to read the souls of those who made confession to him; the healings that occurred — and continue to occur — through his intercession; the wounds in his hands, feet, and side, which shed blood for fifty years; and other wonders that I will not stretch your powers of belief over (read more here).

The one thing that matters is the knowledge that when we feel we can do little, whether writing or anything else, we can pray in union with the Lord, and that God wants those prayers (if our lives are consistent) as a pathway to the doing of his will and the coming of his kingdom.