This is the prayer Padre Pio prayed after receiving Communion. It is known by its first words — Stay with me, Lord — and it asks for nothing. Not a healing, not a particular grace, not even consolation. It asks one thing, thirty times over: that He would not go.
Where it comes from
From the road to Emmaus. Two disciples walk with a stranger who opens the Scriptures to them; when they arrive He makes as if to go further, and they take hold of Him to keep Him. The Gospel preserves the exact words they used:
Et coégerunt illum, dicéntes: Mane nobíscum, quóniam advespe&raacute;scit, et inclináta est jam dies. Et intrávit cum illis.
But they constrained him, saying: Stay with us, because it is towards evening, and the day is now far spent. And he went in with them.
Notice the verb: they constrained him. This was not a polite invitation — they took hold of Him. And it was after He stayed that they knew Him, in the breaking of the bread. Padre Pio’s prayer is that same sentence drawn out by a man who has just received Communion and knows what comes next: the morning, the work, the distraction, the forgetting.
This prayer is published everywhere as his, and it was indeed the one he prayed after Communion. But the text appears to be older than he is: several sources say Padre Pio spread it rather than composed it.
That takes nothing from it. A prayer is not worth the signature on it; it is worth whether it is true — and this is the one a man who bore the wounds of Christ chose to say after receiving Him, every day, for fifty years.
The prayer
Pray it slowly. It was made for the quarter of an hour after Communion — the one in which almost everybody is already thinking about lunch.
Stay with me, Lord, for it is necessary to have You present so that I do not forget You. You know how easily I abandon You.
Stay with me, Lord, because I am weak and I need Your strength, that I may not fall so often.
Stay with me, Lord, for You are my life, and without You I am without fervour.
Stay with me, Lord, for You are my light, and without You I am in darkness.
Stay with me, Lord, to show me Your will.
Stay with me, Lord, so that I hear Your voice and follow You.
Stay with me, Lord, for I desire to love You very much, and always to be in Your company.
Stay with me, Lord, if You wish me to be faithful to You.
Stay with me, Lord, for as poor as my soul is, I want it to be a place of consolation for You, a nest of love.
Stay with me, Jesus, for it is getting late and the day is coming to a close, and life passes; death, judgment, eternity approach. It is necessary to renew my strength, so that I will not stop along the way — and for that I need You.
It is getting late and death approaches. I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows. O how I need You, my Jesus, in this night of exile!
Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers. I need You.
Let me recognise You as Your disciples did at the breaking of the bread, so that the Eucharistic Communion may be the light which disperses the darkness, the strength which sustains me, the one joy of my heart.
Stay with me, Lord, because at the hour of my death I want to remain united to You — if not by Communion, at least by grace and love.
Stay with me, Jesus. I do not ask for divine consolation, because I do not deserve it; but the gift of Your presence — oh yes, that I ask of You!
Stay with me, Lord, for it is You alone I look for: Your love, Your grace, Your will, Your Heart, Your Spirit — because I love You, and ask no other reward but to love You more and more.
With a firm love I will love You with all my heart while on earth, and go on loving You perfectly through all eternity.
Amen.
What it teaches, if we pray it in earnest
It asks for no things. Thirty times over, the same petition: stay. It is the prayer of a man who has grasped that His presence is the grace, and that everything else comes with it or does not come at all.
It admits weakness without drama. “You know how easily I abandon You.” No promise to do better, no excuse. A man who bled from the wounds of Christ said this of himself — and you, who do not bleed, hesitate to admit the same.
It refuses consolation and asks for presence. This is the hardest line in it: I do not ask for divine consolation, because I do not deserve it; but the gift of Your presence — oh yes, that I ask of You. That is the difference between wanting to feel God and wanting God. Nearly all our dryness comes from confusing the two.
And it is in a hurry. It is getting late. That is not melancholy: it is an exact reading of how much time there is to say this.
One practical counsel, and I will stop. Do not try to pray the whole of it at the first attempt. Choose one line — the one that unsettled you as you read — and pray only that next Sunday, after Communion, instead of leaving the church already thinking about the rest of the day. Padre Pio took fifty years over this. You may begin with a sentence.
Sancte Pie a Pietrelcina, ora pro nobis. Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, pray for us.
- Padre Pio: fifty years with the wounds — the life, the priesthood, the rosaries and the miracles.
- Novena to Saint Thérèse — nine days, 22 to 30 September.
- Words of the saints — a growing collection, in English and Portuguese.
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