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Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata |
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of our Lord Jesus Christ |
The Sacred Stigmata, our Titular Feast
The Sacred Stigmata is our titular feast and devotion of our origin in the Church of the Stigmata. We have its theological foundation in Lk 24:36-48: “ ...Look at my hands and my feet... He showed them his hands and his feet... The Messiah there should suffer (the Passion and Death) and rising up among the dead people on the third day”. The cross of Christ changed the concept of suffering and death: to die is to finish of being born; pain and death are instruments of the Redemption.
Stigmata and Cross a single mystery. They were not necessary, but were the more effective mean to attract the hearts of each one of us (Jo 12:32), in order to we can understand the gravity of the sin (1Cor 15:3) and the dimension of His love for us (Jo 13:1).
The crucifix is the compendium of the Passion of the Lord, a “Book written in the wood of the cross not with ink, but with the blood of the Wound of Christ” (Saint Catherine of Siena). It is the “Book of the Life” (Rv 20:12), “written for inside and for outside” (Rv 5:1), where we read the History of the Salvation! “For outside” we are able to read what we can see in the surface: the physical suffering, the phlegm in the face, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the wounds caused by the carrying the gallows, the dry mouth, the signals of the blows and the strokes with whips, the condition of corpse, the five wounds of the hands, feet and breast.
“For inside” just the contemplatives can read it, as they area able to catch the vibration of Jesus's Heart, reflecting His infinite love for the declined man, the merciful for the sinners, the compassion for the sick people, the bitterness of the Gethsemane, the tenderness for the children, the friendship for His most closes, the love to the family, the sadness for the impenitent Jerusalem, the admiration in front the nature, the preference for the humble people. Example of whom read for inside in St. Peter Chrysologus, a saint from the Vth century. Meditating in front the crucifix, he heard Jesus whispering to him:
“Perhaps the enormity of my sufferings caused for you may are perturbing you. Do not be afraid. This cross did not injure me, but injured the death. These nails did not cause me pain, but set more profoundly in myself my love for you. These wounds do not make me groan, but introduce more intimately you in my Heart. My body, when stretched out in the cross, does not increase my suffering, but dilate the spaces of the Heart to welcome you. My blood is not a loss for me, but it is the price of your rescue!”
Conclusion:
Christ’s sacrifice is the supreme Gift of Mercy!
The Mystery of the Sacred Stigmata opens up for us these clefts in the Rock from which the Church and her sacraments are born; the Wound in the Side are seen to be the opening of the Tabernacle of the Most Holy Trinity .
As we read in the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter, “Mercy Sunday” - when Jesus showed His side, His hands and His feet, He breathed on the Apostles in a new and more sublime act of creation: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit… Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them…!’
This is the God of Love Who comes to us in the most sublime way possible to us in Holy Communion: God is love!
Prayer:
O God, who by the Passion of Your only-begotten Son, and by the shedding of His precious Blood through His five wounds, did restore human nature when it was lost by sin; grant us, we beseech You, that we who venerate on earth the wounds suffered by Him, may be found worthy to obtain in Heaven the fruits of that same most precious Blood. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
Bibliography:
Sagrados Estigmas - Pe. Mário Zuchetto, CSS - 2002 (Portuguese language)
A Few Reflection on the Feast of the Sacred Stigmata - Rev. Joseph C. Henchey, CSS - 2004
Opening Prayer of the Mass of the Feast of the Sacred Stigmata
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