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Stigmata Remembrance

As Part of our Christmas celebrations in the year 2022 we had made for the crib, the resemblance of a tribal hut with mud pasted on bamboo sticks for walls, with tree leaves and hay for roof, at the entrance of Prakruthi Mithra, and we maintained that crib till the feast of the presentation, 2nd Feb. 2024. The Crib of Greccio remembrance, for the last one year with a title since 1223 was a wonderful experience for us and it opened the door for heartwarming evangelization. As the crib created much curiosity and many opportunities to explain to Non-Christians and Christians about the birth of Jesus and the depiction of the Nativity scene by St. Francis of Assisi at Greccio, 800 years ago, and how the Crib is in every church and Home ever since. And we recited the prayer for peace together. Encouraged by this enriching experience of the Crib of Greccio remembrance and inspired by the beautiful images sent to us by Br. John Sekar, the secretary of the Province, we quickly got them printed and on the 18th of March Tuesday 2024 we initiated the Stigmata Remembrance at Prakruthi Mithra, by displaying the printed image close to the hut where we had the Crib of Greccio remembrance.

We chose a Tuesday, because it is on Tuesdays that we have a mass for the Christian community, the 19 catholic families surrounding Prakruthi Mithra, come for mass and join us for the Novena to St. Anthony. We look forward to a wonderful celebration of the Stigmata feast, as 17th September providentially falls on a Tuesday this year- 2024. As part of Stigmata Remembrance we recite In front of this beautiful image, this uplifting prayer to St Francis, which St John Paul II prayed at Mount La Verna, recalling the memory of how St. Francis encountered the Crucified Christ in such a profound way, in that holy place. The imagery, the memory, the wordings - Life from wounds, under the wordings – life grows in silence – spoken eloquently by the bamboo trees as well as the hut of the Greccio remembrance at the side, which by way of Divine design has the resemblance of Tau for the entrance, inviting everyone to enter into a spirit of prayer and devotion, and the whole natural setting provide a fitting ambience to turn the heart of every visitor to Prakruthi Mithra to God, to feel blessed and return as a pilgrim with a prayer from the heart like that of St. John Paul the II.

Pilgrims’ Prayer.

O St Francis, stigmatized on La Verna, the world longs for you, that icon of the crucified Jesus. It has need of your heart, open to God and to others; of your bare, wounded feet, of your pierced hands raised in supplication.

It longs for your voice, so frail yet forceful with the power of the Gospel. Francis, help the people of this age, to recognize the evil of sin and to seek purification from it in penance.

Help them to become free from the very structures of sin that oppresses today’s society. Rekindle in the consciousness of those in government an urgent need for peace between nations and peoples.

Instill in young people your freshness of life that is capable of withstanding the snares of the many cultures of death.

To those injured by every type of evil teach, O Francis, the joy of being able to forgive. To all those crucified by suffering, hunger and war, reopen the doors of hope. Amen.

Fr. Babu Jose Pamplany ofm
Prakruthi Mithra

 

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