The celebrations for the VIII Centenary of the Stigmata

On September 17 we will celebrate the VIII Centenary of the Stigmata, the third stage (after the approval of the Bull Rule and the Christmas of Greccio) in the journey of the Franciscan Centenarians, who help us to retrace – and often to rediscover – the last years of the life of St. Francis. 
For our Seraphic Father it was a period of pain and love, characterized by the deep desire to follow Christ and conform himself totally to Him.

The encounter with the Crucifix, who impresses on his heart and body the signs of love, is summarized by St. Bonaventure as follows: "The true love of Christ had transformed the lover into the very image of the Beloved" (Major Legend 13, 5, FF 1228). 

Celebrating the Centenary of the Stigmata as a Franciscan Family is an invitation to recover in our daily lives that dimension of prayerful and contemplative silence that confronts us with the essential, that allows us to recognize the desire for the infinite that resides in our hearts, that allows us to listen to ourselves, to others and to God.

"From wounds comes new life": after receiving the sacred stigmata, Francis went out to meet the poor, the sick and the needy to touch them, to transmit divine love to them. Remembering and celebrating the Poverello of Assisi touched by the Crucifix urges us to go out of ourselves to "touch the suffering flesh of Christ in others" (Gaudete et Exsultate, 37) and, at the same time, to allow ourselves to be touched and challenged by the many dramatic situations of pain and suffering in which so many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world find themselves.

See the programme of celebrations