The Healing Journey

September 23, 2024

“Pray, hope and don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.”
— Padre Pio

For a year, Linda had been praying a special healing prayer that St. Padre Pio is said to have used. She would pray it for others and for herself. Her life had been changed since she converted to Catholicism. She had a true devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and every morning, she would go to St. John Cemetery on Hope Street and walk among the graves, praying for people who had died, some of whom she had known and many more she had never met in this life. One morning in December, she encountered a priest who had just finished the prayers over the grave of a woman who had her funeral Mass that morning. Their paths crossed, and they began to talk. Linda told Father Damien about her conversion to the faith, her love of the rosary and everything that is Catholic. He was impressed with her and said, “Wait a moment. I’ve got something for you,” and walked to his car and opened the trunk and came back with a folder and handed it to her. Inside was a picture of St. John Paul II, his card, and what she later realized was a second-class relic of St. Pio.

Here is the prayer she and millions of others pray every day:

St. Padre Pio Powerful Healing Prayer

Heavenly Father, I thank you for loving me.
I thank you for sending your Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, to the world to save and to set me free.
I trust in your power and grace that sustain and restore me.
Loving Father, touch me now with your healing hands,
for I believe that your will is for me to be well in mind, body, soul and spirit.
Cover me with the most Precious Blood of your Son,
our Lord, Jesus Christ, from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.
Cast out anything that should not be in me.
Root out any unhealthy and abnormal cells.
Open any blocked arteries or veins and rebuild and replenish any damaged areas.
Remove all inflammation and cleanse any infection
by the power of Jesus’ Precious Blood.
Let the fire of your healing love pass through my entire body
to heal and make new any diseased areas
so that my body will function the way you created it to function.
Touch also my mind and my emotion,
even the deepest recesses of my heart.
Saturate my entire being with your presence,
love, joy and peace, and draw me ever closer to you every moment of my life.
And Father, fill me with your Holy Spirit
and empower me to do your works
so that my life will bring glory and honor to your Holy Name.
I ask this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.

***

On this feast of St. Pio of Pietrelcina, we ask, “St. Pio, pray for us.”