Pilgrimage to Assisi  
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”Vade Francisco et repara domum meam”

Link:Francis's life and works

The pilgrimage to Verna ..... Assisi - Verna ..the climb to the Sacred Mount of the Stigmata

The raw stone between the Tiber and the Arno .....as Dante called it in the Divine Comedy

Why the path of Verna???:..

This Holy place has always been the focal point of the Assisi Path, since 1213 when Count Orlando donated this wild mountain to Francis, he spent all the summer periods in that rocky forest. In September 1224 after receiving the Stigmata, he left this Holy Hermitage in tears, because he sensed that he would never return, since he was already seriously ill and half blind.

In the midst of this beech forest filled with primitive energy of Creation, he entered into Syntomy with His Divine Master, to the point of being granted his pressing request: "to Share for a Moment, the same Pain of Christ on the Cross", and in that last summer??????..... he was satisfied!!!!...... Five flashes of Fire pierced him...and from that moment he truly became the Alter Christus. Spirituality feeds on Essentiality as it stated???.... Truth lies in its extreme Simplicity, therefore everything must be brought to the essence of its value.

Precisely in an era dominated by the speed of the noise of so many empty words, we feel the need to reset the dominant cultural heritage and resume the Inner Path, which as Francesco and Antonio have indicated, does not need many rules..... but it is enough to drink from time to time, at the Inexhaustible Source of the Gospel, to nourish the Soul.

The initiative also arises from the proliferation of many paths that in recent years have sprung up like mushrooms, not from internal drives but from the need for both private and public tourist visibility and therefore have lost that value of a true pilgrimage, which consists of leaving the world for a period of time and looking inside oneself with honesty and transparency, since without this it is very difficult to find the path to serenity and Self-Love.

The pilgrimage must be an opportunity to give a twist to one's going, to do an existential check-up at a certain point in life to find the balance with Mother Nature, and therefore it is essential to visit sacred places but also to frequent a lot of forest, with all its inhabitants to recreate a now lost Harmony.

Pilgrimage.. (not walking) in the 3rd millennium ... what's the point???

Where is this strong call hidden???? ... those who have had first-hand experience in this time and have tested the complexity of finding the essentials along the way such as: a roof to sleep in, water to quench their thirst and finally something to eat, ask themselves and others what is the drive that makes them move towards this adventure.

The greatest tendency comes from northern Europe, in particular Germany and France, then Canada, Japan, Brazil... and finally Italy: in recent times, even several Italians have felt the need to explore new existential experiences, induced by hidden inner motivations. Secular and religious intellectual education, not to mention today's socio-political reality, is no longer able to capture the attention of current generations.

Young people live the current cultural-religious proposals with strong detachment, regardless of the educational path received, and thus a strong need arises in them to investigate different models of deepening. It is astonishing, however, to note that many children of the most unbridled hedonism, reveal in this juncture a real courage in advancing into new "doctrinal areas" to be the substantial protagonists of their own interior metamorphosis.

Here ??...Climbing the Sacred Mount of Auvergne is a possible answer to the needs and calls of this time.

The pilgriage of the Verna???..... it is not a new path ..... since it was already included in the path of Assisi, but an opportunity to undertake it every 3 years or so, when the date of September 17 (date of the stigmata) falls on a Tuesday or Sunday, on these occasions the opportunity will be given to those spiritual wayfarers to leave from Assisi to conclude the path on the sacred mountain, or otherwise Leave from Montepaolo (hermitage of Sant'Antonio?) where Anthony's first Italian home was when he came to Italy from Portugal. Once he met Francis in 1221 he was sent as a father to a small hermitage in the hills of Forlì, where his overflowing Spirituality exploded, making himself the servant of all and the remaining time that remained to him, he spent in a small cave in meditation. After about two years the Bishop of Forlì elevated him to the role of Provincial of Romagna. At that time he was known as Antonio da Forlì, and he was a wandering missionary who traveled throughout northern Italy and spent some years in France where the Albigensian heresy had taken hold; after a short life he died (1231) in Padua where he took this name, even though his presence was only six months. He is considered a great Wonderworker for the infinite number of miracles he performed on those who entrusted themselves to his devotion... Here, after eight hundred years, the world and the church itself still need the Depth of Faith of these two Saints, to try to save once again from madness this humanity that has mislaid the Way.

Why a Pilgrimage franciscan… in Italy?

Saint Francis and Saint Anthony, the Seraphic Founder and the Learned Apostle (meo episcopus) of the Franciscan Order, are two great "figures" who have stirred the perpetual engine of humble and simple spirituality, a perpetual source for all people who are suffering from an existential aridity.

Thanks to these suppositions, the wish to offer a Pilgrimage was born aimed at fulfilling the new spiritual requirement. Differently from the past, it is a research of "movement" where the pilgrim wants to explore in primis original experiences just to open himself to the compassion of that Love "that moves the sun and the other stars".

Apparently the purpose of the pilgrim is to walk to Assisi, but in reality "he advances towards himself" to join the Divine within. The Pilgrimage to Assisi is not a recognised pilgrimage as you might suppose, but it is the fusion of many other short traditional pilgrimages, that already existed in the local sphere (See: Assisi, La Verna, Casella, Cerbaiolo, Montecasale, Montepaolo). These ways are linked to peculiar devotions and, lived in this spiritual dimension again, will give a new surge to the interior research, renewing the essence of Francisco’s doctrine. So it should be, not only the stones to testify to the stranger His Teaching, but also the renewal of the original Franciscan fraternity along the pilgrimage and in the community of Assisi itself.

The town of Assisi will be raised as a "Landmark of Universal Reference" for all men of goodwill, overcoming in this way any distinction of Culture and Belief in syntony with the Fundamental Principles of every True Religion.

Pilgrimage to Santiago and Assisi wined

Just in the month of July (2007), the councillors of Santiago and Assisi decided to twin these two towns for the common cultural and spiritual affinities, re-proposing the pilgrimage as a real source of a "new" evangelisation.

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