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In the book of Revelation, we find a powerful image of the Lord who knocks on the door of our hearts, and waits to be welcomed inside: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).

Jesus knocks at the door of our hearts and eagerly desires to dine with us at the sacrificial meal we call the Eucharist. He wishes to find us ready to receive him, to sit down and eat with him, in the upper rooms of our lives.

Each of us longs for harmony. We feel it deep within us, the instinct to live free of shame, naked and vulnerable before our God and the world. We long to know ourselves fully and not be afraid of who and what we are. It is the map back to Eden imprinted on our souls and desired by our flesh. We long to know what it meant to be woman when we were Eve—to have that relationship with God, with man, with ourselves. Eden’s blessing calls us, and we spend our lives, if we are pursuing God earnestly, trying to unravel what it means to be Eve, to live naked and unashamed before him.

When God sees woman, what he sees is not simply spirit, but her physical body, itself a reflection of him. In the physical existence of woman, God’s longing for a relationship with the created world and his desire for the good of humanity are met, and he is able to rest. Woman becomes gift not just to the world, but also to God himself, who finds his last longing fulfilled and rests in his satisfaction.

By loving his children, the pilgrims, and all those who approached him, Padre Pio united himself more intimately with God. Those who were rehabilitated by Padre Pio’s union with eternal love could not be amorphous creatures; they had to be dynamic. Padre Pio’s spiritual children could be distinguished from other Catholics by their spirit of altruism, by their disposition to righteousness, by their public and private prayers, by their sacrifices which were known only to God, by their professional honesty, by their serenity and wholesome joy.

Good mothers want nothing more than to ease the pain of their children. They would rather endure the pain themselves than see their children suffer with it. That is exactly the kind of good mother Mary is—she would rather endure the pain herself than to see us suffer. She cares not only about the fact that the pain is there, but also about how to help us heal from it. She loves us and wants to become the instrument of our healing. And she will, if we allow her.

God looked at the world he had created, teeming with life, stars flung across the heavens, every bird and bug and animal and flower in its most glorious state, the rivers and mountains and valleys and seas, and man—perfect in his reflection of the image of God—he looked at all of that, and saw that it was incomplete, that something was still missing. Before the Lord of the universe could sit back and rest, he longed for one more thing—to bring woman to life.