To adopt someone spiritually means to commit yourself before God to loving and praying for him in a special way. There are no hard and fast rules for this form of private devotion; it is certainly not a required element of anyone’s spiritual life. But those who are inclined to spiritually adopt others will find a sterling advocate in St. Pio of Pieltricina.
Padre Pio’s life is easy to summarize and has much in common with other great saints. He was born in Italy in 1887. He dedicated his life to God at the age of five, entered the Capuchin Order at the age of fifteen, was ordained at twenty-three, received the stigmata at thirty-one, and died at eighty-one in 1968.
Like many other great saints, Padre Pio had lots of special gifts. Besides the stigmata, he also had the gifts of healing, prophecy, discernment of spirits, and the gift of tongues. He saw Our Lord, Our Lady, and the angels with some frequency; he could bilocate, smell really nice without any cologne, and survive on three hours of sleep and 400 calories of food a day for fifty years running. (For the record, 400 calories is about two handfuls of peanuts and one slice of pepperoni pizza.) Perhaps St. Pio’s greatest achievement as a child of the Twentieth Century was that he also somehow survived without ever reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, or watching TV. Impressive.
But what sets Padre Pio apart from many great saints is his emphasis on spiritual adoption. This man didn’t just have a handful of souls for whom he was spiritual director. He had thousands and thousands for whom he was a spiritual father. He knew each of his “children” personally, and he loved each one individually. He said he would “stand at the gates of Paradise until all his spiritual children have entered.”
There are two things we can learn from this unique practice of the world’s most popular Capuchin mystic.
First: we, too, can adopt others. In a spiritual way, we can freely choose to link ourselves to other souls, dedicating ourselves to praying for them and, by our sufferings, transmitting to them something of the life of grace that has been communicated to us. They might never know in this life of our solicitude. That does not matter. God knows.
Second: we can ask to be adopted by the saints in Heaven. Already our big brothers and sisters, they absolutely take an interest in our welfare and have shown time and time again through the centuries how they love especially those who especially love them. Think of four-year-old Therese Martin throwing herself in the arms of her big sister Pauline with an emphatic, “You will be my mother now!” Who in their right heart would not be won over by such confidence?
Padre Pio said explicitly that his mission would really begin after his death. May the saint whose work in life included spiritually adopting countless souls in order to help them reach eternity safely, inspire in us a holy zeal to take care of others as he did, and to be as cared for by him as others were.
