The Boy in the Suitcase…That evening when Padre Pio raised a dead child. “Mother, why do you scream, do not you see your son is asleep?”
Originally Published at Papaboys 3.0
IN ITALIAE ET ECCLESIA / ON 26 FEBRUARY 2018 AT 15:26 /
Maria is the mother of a newly born sick child, who learns, following a medical examination that the little creature is suffering from a very complex illness. When now all hope of saving him is absolutely lost, Maria decides to leave by train for San Giovanni Rotondo.
He lives in a village at the opposite end of Puglia but he has heard so much about this friar who carries five bleeding wounds, equal to those of Jesus on the Cross, which makes great miracles, heals the sick and gives hope to the unhappy.He leaves immediately, but during the long journey the child dies. He wraps it around his personal clothes and, after having watched him all night on the train, puts it back inside the suitcase and closes the lid. The following day arrives at San Giovanni Rotondo. She is desperate, she has lost the affection she most cherishes in the world but has not lost her faith.The same evening is in the presence of the friar of the Gargano; is in line to confess and holds in his hands the suitcase containing the small corpse of his child, now deceased for more than twenty-four hours. He arrives in front of Padre Pio.
He is bending over to pray when the woman kneels sobbing with tears broken by despair, and implores his help; he looks at her intensely. The mother opens the suitcase and shows him the little body. The poor friar is deeply touched and he too is tormented by the pain of this inconsolable mother. He takes the child and places his stigmatized hand on his head, then he turns his eyes to heaven and says a prayer.
It does not take more than a second that the poor creature is already revived: a snap gesture first removes the legs and then the small arms, seems to wake up from a long sleep. Turned to his mother, he says to him, “Mother, why do you scream, do not you see your son is asleep?” The cries of the woman and the crowd that assaults the little church explode in a general ovation. A miracle is screamed from mouth to mouth. And ‘May 1925 when the news of this humble friar who heals the cripples and resurrects the dead, flows fast on the wires of the telegraph of the world.
