Pilgrimage to St. Padre Pio and Lanciano
For our special presentation on our talkshow Straight from the Sky, we went to the Kaiser Medical Center in Makati City to find out about the latest health technology called Ozone International Therapy. This technology came from Europe and only arrived in the Philippines last December. No, it is totally different from the stem cell technology, but much cheaper. As I said, this program is now commonplace in Europe and as luck would have it, when I was in Barcelona, I was able to interview Dr. Umberto Lacostales in his office about this technology, which we will show sometime next month.
So tonight we have with us Dr. Maria Cristine Nicolas (she was trained by Dr. Lacostales in Barcelona) and former PBA Basketball Star Eric Menk their corporate endorser. So watch this new technology being discussed tonight on SkyCable's channel 53 at 8 p.m. with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. We also have replays on MyTV's channel 30 at 9 p.m. Monday and at 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday.
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As of this writing, we have ended our 20-day vacation/pilgrimage (while it was my vacation, I never stopped sending you my columns) and hopefully we will arrive in Cebu today. Hence I had to send this column way ahead due to lack of Wi-Fi availability. We arrived in Rome last Wednesday and last Sept. 21 on Thursday, our vacation turned into a pilgrimage, which my family originally planned. We rented a Mercedes Benz van with a Filipino driver called Mario who drove us for the 381-kilometer trip via the autostrada to the town of San Giovanni Rotondo to see the incorrupt body of the most known saint of our time, St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina.
The autostrada is Italy's version of Germany's autobahn with no speed limits. But the drive was very pleasant passing through quaint villages. Best of all the, Italian highway was made for the convenience of the motorists, so we passed many tunnels and road bridges which makes us Cebuanos cry why we cannot have this kind of highway in our beloved Cebu.
We found out that our road trip was a great blessing because when we arrived in San Giovanni Rotondo, we learned that it was on the Eve (Visperas) of the Feast of St. Padre Pio. Best of all, we arrived by 1 p.m. when the Italians, like the Spaniards, were taking their siesta. So there were no crowds and only a few tourists to see the incorrupt body of St. Padre Pio whose prayers I always recite during my Eucharistic visits.
Halfway in our trip, we passed a sign that read "Lanciano". It got us thinking whether this was the Lanciano, the site of the first Eucharistic Miracle. So on the way back, we turned to the Lanciano exit and true enough, this was the town where that Eucharistic Miracle occurred. What happened to us in this pilgrimage was a minor miracle of sorts simply because we never entertained in our minds that our pilgrimage to San Giovanni Rotondo would also include a visit to Lanciano.
As we left San Giovanni Rotondo by 4:30 p.m., we believed that even if we reached Lanciano in two hours, the church might already be closed. Somehow the Holy Spirit guided Mario (he never even knew about this pilgrimage site or about Eucharistic Miracles) and we arrived around 6:45 p.m. with 15 minutes to spare.
And since most of the tourist had already left, we had the whole Church of the Eucharistic Miracle to ourselves, taking photos and praying to the Blessed Sacrament that turned bloody because the priest who consecrated the host had doubts about the real presence of our Lord in the Eucharist. Lanciano, according to a periodical I read, was the home of the Centurion Longinus who pierced the side of our Lord Jesus Christ where blood and water gushed causing the Centurion to declare, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"
You could see from the monstrance the Holy Host still surrounded by blood and below it, a vessel with coagulated blood. Then the church had to close and right beside it was a restaurant with toilet facilities for the disabled. A boon to my sister Adela Kono. Thank you Lord for our wonderful vacation and pilgrimage in Italy.
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