We All Have a Destiny

By Nick Cascione

We All Have a Destiny is a magical and sometimes tragic story of a boy who is named after a particular renowned priest from his parents' homeland, in Italy. The young boy is similar to his namesake in the simplicity of his good heart and through a spiritual connection they both share. From the moment he was born, the stars of the night danced in great celebration. His parents instill in him much confidence by giving their only child numerous words of encouragement to let him know how very special they believe him to truly be. It is these positive words that have a way of penetrating the very being of this unique young boy, which allows his heart to humbly believe these very sentiments. As he becomes a man, realization of the importance of his essential upbringing reveals how his faith affects his fate. Although his life is a darkened mystery at times, it is through his faith alone that he is enlightened. The puzzling questions of life for him are answered in the wondrous signs he uniquely receives through intuitive abilities. These signs from above help mold him exactly into the man whom he is destined to become. As the story unfolds, his once darkened mysteries will be illuminated in such a way as to reveal to him what he spends his whole life searching for""his destiny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644169445

Book preview

To my mom and dad; the spiritual foundation you laid for me from the very beginning of my life has made all the difference in the world. I thank you both from the bottom of my heart for guiding me throughout my life. I love you both so very much! May God continue to bless you always.

To the spirit of St. Padre Pio whose presence I have personally felt in my life.

Chapter 1

Life Has No Coincidences

Have you ever heard a story so incredible that you say to yourself after reading it, This just can’t be true! Well, my story can most likely be put into that category. Unless you were close to me growing up and knew me personally, that may be exactly what you would say upon reading it: This can’t be true. Well, this is my story, and it is true, but if you still do not believe by the time you are finished reading it . . . do me one favor, and think for a moment of another story that you may have read or heard of in your life that seemed as unbelievable as mine may seem to you. Then you found out that, indeed, it was true. There must be dozens of stories like mine out there in the world, seemingly too farfetched at first, and possibly many are not true. Then again, maybe some are and inspiring as well. So perhaps you will think to yourself, for argument’s sake . . . what if? It is possible to believe in my story, and I will tell you why—because God makes each one of us very special in our own way, and we all have one important thing in common that links us all together . . . We all have a destiny! And this is the one God planned for me.

There are old adages that you may have heard of . . . There are no coincidences in life, and everything happens for a reason. Well, with that said, the only way to tell this story of mine and to help you believe it is to tell it from the beginning.

I was born in one of the New York Boroughs, in Staten Island in a mainly Italian section called Decade Point. It is mixed in with many Irish, Jewish, and German inhabitants as well. A few centuries before these nationalities inhabited the area, the Dutch occupied it. It was then called Staaten Eylandt, which of course translates to Staten Island. My home area on Staten Island also played an important role in the American Revolutionary War. George Washington used the island as a strategic location. There was also a tavern called the Rose and Crown Tavern, in which those representatives of the British Government reportedly received their first hearing of the Declaration of Independence. Many years later, Italian Catholics started to flourish in Staten Island during the 1880s–1890s, and by 1898, the city of New York had unified the five boroughs. The Staten Island Ferry would help make our borough famous, making it a popular tourist attraction throughout the years as it served as a connection between our borough and Manhattan. The ferry provided picturesque views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Lower Manhattan. Narrowing it down to my neighborhood of Decade Point, the story goes it was named that because it took about ten years to come together the way it did, as it was one of the largest communities in Staten Island. It has barely changed a bit in all these years—made up mainly of small homes and other dwellings and sprinkled with small businesses and little neighborhood parks. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears are what the proud people of the neighborhood say went into the construction of this particular section, of this great borough. No one ever seems to move out of the neighborhood, and everyone seems to have descendants that go back generations to the very people who helped build the town we all live in.

I was born in the year 1964, at St. Anthony’s Hospital in what was to become the coldest day ever recorded in the month of October in the state of New York. For some reason, our area was the coldest anywhere in the New York area, and it would go down in history as such. It was a whopping ten degrees below zero, and when the month of October comes around every year, it remains to always be on the lips of most people, mainly the elders in the neighborhood, especially when there is a chill in the air. Everyone seems to question, will it happen again? Well, I will tell you that it has never happened before or since.

It was the tenth day of that October long ago that I had come into this world, kicking and screaming—as my parents would always say to me. I guess I had something to say. I was born precisely at 10:10 in the morning on that extremely cold October morning, as the first and only child, to Mario and Nicolette Benedetti. According to my father, who would tell me years later, my mother’s labor was so intense that she almost died having me but that God gave us a miracle instead and saved my mother from dying. Actually, two miracles, as right before I came out of my mother’s womb, the doctors said that my heartbeat had been lost for three long minutes but that it started beating again just as I was crowning. The talk around my mother’s room and apparently beyond, according to my father, is that no one had ever seen anything good come out of a dangerous circumstance as to what happened to our family that day. There doesn’t seem to be enough stories these days that use the word miracle, let alone a double miracle. My father, in years to come, would go on to tell me that he himself felt like death was near him as well, because he could not bear to see my mother in such pain. It was a very rare occurrence in those days for a man to be with his wife in the delivery room. Usually, they waited in the waiting room area and waited until a nurse usually came out with the news of the birth. The only reason my father was in there with my mother was one of the doctors on staff that morning happened to be a close friend of our family’s who lived on the same block as my parents. His name was Nunzio, otherwise known as Dr. Altobella, and when he saw what was going on, he knew he needed to come get my father. Their love for each other has always been very special and a true inspiration to many and myself as well. My father would also go on to tell me that he never wanted to see my mother in pain again. So I guess that’s why I became an only child, which is pretty much unheard of in a traditional Italian family, especially back in those days.

Please do not feel sorry for me, because I had plenty of company growing up. I had a ton of cousins between all the uncles and aunts that I had, seventy-four to be exact. Both my parents came from very large families, so you can just imagine. My father came from a family of eleven children, and my mother, from a family of ten children. And for most of my life, everyone lived somewhere in Staten Island, with many in the neighborhood of Decade Point. So, you see, I was hardly ever alone with so many cousins around. It is one of the things I treasure most about my childhood, that I had all these cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all around me. Now you would think that with all these people around me, I would get lost in the shuffle, but instead it was completely the opposite. I was the one whom everyone would always talk about because of the date and time of my birth and everything else that went with it.

Let’s first start with the temperature on the morning I was born. It was the first in a string of tens. It was ten degrees below zero as I already mentioned earlier, followed by the date of my birth, October 10, which are of course two more tens. Then there is the year 1964, which, when paired off and added together, makes two more tens . . . one plus nine and six plus four. Then comes the time of my birth, which as I already stated was 10:10 a.m. Remember how I said that my mother’s labor was so intense, well one of the reasons was because of my size. I was a pretty big baby . . . ten pounds, ten ounces to be exact. So that would make it at this point . . . nine different tens. And do I dare say, in order to leave no stone unturned at this point in my story, there may have possibly been a tenth occurrence of tens related to my birth as well, as perhaps I may have come into this world fully at ten seconds past that tenth minute at the tenth hour? But that is something that probably only God knows for sure. It sounds like one big coincidence . . . right? No, not to my parents. To them, it was not a coincidence but an omen, a sign from God. That something very special was given to me at birth that would stay with me for the rest of my life. According to my parents, this good omen would provide some type of guiding force by God throughout my whole life, and all I had to do was believe in it. The rest of the family went with this notion as well, like I was everyone’s personal lucky charm. It is all anyone ever associated me with, especially during my young childhood. So you can imagine how many times this fanfare with all the tens came up during all my birthday parties. But not only my birthdays, everyone else’s birthdays and birthday parties too. It seems like that’s all everyone talked about . . . all the time! With all those cousins, it just became overwhelming at times. I did my best to just smile and let everybody say whatever they wanted to say about it, but it sometimes made me feel weird. But for the most part, it was crazy, in fact at times . . . beyond crazy!

I do recollect from my earliest memories of four or five years of age that I kind of enjoyed all that special attention from my very large and very loud Italian family of mine. One would think that it would be impossible to get tired of feeling so special, from all the different types of either verbal or physical compliments such as, getting kissed on the head or cheek or slapped on the back or a light friendly punch in the arm, but it felt great for a long time. To tell you the truth, it did start to lose its luster by the time I became a teenager. Yep . . . by the time I was thirteen, I had begun to feel a bit like the whole number thing was beginning to suffocate me somewhat. It was about that time in my life that certain occurrences began to shake me up a little. I will come back to that time in my life in a little while, but for now, I will continue to enlighten you about those earlier days.

In those early years, I was very babied by both of my parents. Though, I think this is probably normal when you are an only child. They were always telling me how special I was, and they somehow made me believe in that very sentiment. In fact, my father tells the story to anyone who would listen. Later in the evening on the day I was born, he stood on our porch, and while looking toward the heavens to thank God for mine and my mother’s good health, a very strange occurrence happened. As he whispered his thankful prayers to God, he swore that the thousands upon thousands of stars that were out that night seemed to all somehow be moving ever so slightly in such a way that to him they appeared as though they were all dancing. That they were all dancing for joy because I was born and that there was something very special about me. I would hear him tell that story many times throughout my life, and every single time, a small tear appeared from the corner of his eye. I never forgot that story, because it made me feel good inside.

I did not get a big head from all this praise my parents bestowed upon me, but it sure made me feel great . . . like being a winner of a particular competition, all the time! They would both brag about me to anyone with ears, and that was just about everyone, I would think. I was their golden child in their eyes, and I could do no wrong, even when I did. Oh . . . it just dawned on me that I have not mentioned my name yet . . . it’s Pio. Yes, I know, not your typical name. My parents named me after Padre Pio, a monk who lived in the little town of Pietrelcina, in Southern Italy. His full birth name was Francesco Forgione but was given the name Pio when becoming a monk. So he would be known to all as Padre Pio from then on. It just so happened to be the same town my parents came from. I would hear many stories about him growing up in our household. How he felt close to Jesus from early on in his childhood. This very special man devoted his whole life to God, and I know that these stories I heard growing up definitely affected me in a very positive way. I would tell myself I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. I loved seeing pictures of him on our walls at home, along, of course, with pictures of Jesus Christ, the Holy Virgin Mary and St. Joseph, and many other pictures of different saints as well. The main story that I heard repeatedly was how he received the wounds that Jesus Christ bore on the cross during His Crucifixion, called the stigmata, on his feet, hands, and side, in 1918 while in church, in the city of San Giovanni Rotondo, in the Apulia Region. It was there that he would be known by the locals as the saintly friar. He ended up having the stigmata for fifty years, losing blood every day until the day he died. He passed away in the year 1968.

About two years before Padre Pio died, my parents went back to Italy, taking me as well and made sure we found time to go see Padre Pio at one of the many Masses he would lead. This was not easy, because by this time he had accumulated as much popularity as any priest on the planet, and the crowds of people would come from all over just to get a glimpse of this holy man of the cloth. My parents would tell me that after this one particular 8:00 a.m. Mass, which lasted about two hours, opposed to the normal one-hour Mass because of the abundance of people that flocked to a Mass he was to preside over, so they could not only see this special priest and be in his presence, but also receive Holy Communion from him as well. My parents pushed and shoved their way toward this special and popular priest so they could have Padre Pio give me a special blessing. They did just that, and as they got close enough to be in reach of him, they said that I, being held by my mother in her arms, reached out and grabbed Padre Pio’s hand, and as I did that, the peaceful priest looked at me immediately and smiled. My father happened to look at his watch and noticed that it was 10:10 exactly. The holy man then touched my head and gave me a blessing, motioning the sign of the cross in front of me at that very moment in time. My father shouted out to Padre Pio, We named him Pio after you, Padre! He smiled again, and once again motioned the sign of the cross in front of me. One could say that I received a double blessing that day from this humble and holy man of God. My parents would say how my energy level rose to a new high, my whole body becoming quite animated, and I had smiled the biggest smile they had ever seen on my face after receiving that very special blessing. My father, when telling me this story, always mentioned how he and my mother wept together that day. I was not yet two years old, but an odd thing occurs when I close my eyes and concentrate on that moment so many years ago; I actually can remember that moment in my life so vividly. Many years later, Pope John Paul II canonized in Rome Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, thus making him a saint, loved and adored by many, myself included. In time, I would come to realize that the saying Everything happens for a reason is so very true and never to take those words lightly.

According to my parents, I would learn when I got older about a bizarre occurrence and at the same time an extraordinary experience which happened on our flight home to New York from Italy. When we left Italy, the weather was warm and sunny, but by the time we were less than two hours away from our landing in the Big Apple, the scenery had changed for the worse. Intense looking monochrome clouds in shades of gray darkened the morning sky to appear as night. An electrical storm was in place, and we were apparently right in the middle of it. A heavy rain pummeled our plane, and my parents would tell me it felt like they were back on the Andrea Doria, the famous Italian ocean liner that my parents actually came to America on, during one of those rough patches they felt while out on the open sea. My parents told me how they both said the Rosary together during this very scary time, and of course the most concern they had was in regards to me, their little bambino. There was a point my father had told me that the plane dropped thousands of feet in one swoop and that had made some