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I have questions.

Padre Pio wrote, “God is our Father; and what do you have to fear as the daughter (or son?) of such a father whose providence would not let a hair of your head be harmed?”

The thing is, God *does* allow us to be harmed—martyred, even. Stoned. Crucified upside down. Burned at the stake. Slain in Nazi death camps. Starved to death by Stalin. Murdered by Satan-worshipping terrorists. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Can this, then, be a correctly understood tenet of Christianity? Or do I have it wrong?

Padre Pio wrote, “The third maxim is that you must observe what the divine Master teaches his disciples: ‘What do you lack?’ The disciples answered that they lacked nothing. When you were troubled even at the time when you unfortunately did not feel much confidence in God, tell me, were you never oppressed by anxiety? You will answer, ‘No.’ So, I will reply, ‘Why do you not have the strength to overcome all the other trials?’ ”

Does this mean that the disciples said they were never oppressed by anxiety, or was it contemporaries of Padre Pio?

God hears all prayers, but sometimes the answer is “no.” A man cannot presume upon God for the necessities of life, as though He were some spiritual ATM.

Surely it must be very difficult for an ordinary person not to feel anxieties about temporal matters, when he knows that God in His wisdom might allow something that seems pretty terrible to mortal man.