Icon of Holy Mother of Guadalupe in India
Icon of Holy Mother of Guadalupe in India
24 Jan. 2014 – 04 Febr. 2014
Report of Fr. Ioan Chisarau, Romania
India – a huge country
India is a huge country as size (ranked 7th place in the world), especially as the number of inhabitants, over 1.2 billion people, second after China. It is a federal state composed of 28 states and 7 federal territories and it is the democratic state with the largest number of inhabitants.
Tamil Nadu is the state where I was with the icon of the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe, it is one of the 28 states of India, located in SE of India with an area of 130,058 km ² and a population of over 72 million inhabitants.
Most of the population is Hindu ≈ 88 %, Christians being a minority, comprising 6.1% of the population, that is 3.8 million Christians, mostly Catholics.
Father Michael Suresh is part of the Diocese of Chingleput, which is under the charge of the Archdiocese of Madras (Chennai). In this Archdiocese are the famous sanctuaries of the Apostle Thomas – St. Thomas Cathedral – located near the Bay of Bengal and Mount St. Thomas the Apostle – where the Apostle was martyred in year 72 AD.
Traces of St. Thomas the Apostle
Here is the tomb of St. Thomas, above which stands the magnificent Cathedral.
In the chapel of Mount St. Thomas is a cross which was made by the Apostle himself and that bled several times over the centuries, most recently in 1704. Blessed John Paul II visited the shrine in 5 Feb. 1986.
In Chennai there is a reminiscent place of St. Thomas, a smaller mountain where the Apostle preached and prayed in a small cave that preserves the elbow imprint of the great apostle. There is also the spring of St. Thomas the Apostle that gushed from the rock at the apostle’s prayer and which is flowing today after almost 20 centuries.
Vailankani, Lourdes of Asia
At about 350 km south of Chennai is Vailankani, the Marian shrine where Our Lady is venerated under the title of Our Lady of Good Health, India’s largest sanctuary called Lourdes of Asia. Here you can find a Way of the Cross that the faithful pass through the knee, as well as a perpetual worship chapel, a great joy for me, since in my parish there is such a Chapel for over 7 years.
The stories of the priests from there talk us about many conversions of Hindus to Christianity. I hope that with the arrival of the Icon of Guadalupe unpainted by human hand more Hindus will make the step towards the true Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And signs in this regard were plenty : hundreds of Hindus came to the icons, many of them with tears in the eyes. Dozens of couples who could not have children passed through the icon and prayed for the gift of having children.
I insist to say that before the icon passed not only Christians, Hindus, but also Muslims. Our Lady of Guadalupe was greeted everywhere with joy and enthusiasm, both from adults and from a large number of teenagers and children.
The pagan culture is intertwined with the Christian
On the streets of Madras and on the other cities of India you can see cows walking careless, the drivers have to avoid injuring these animals considerated sacred by the Hindus in India.
Then another oddity is that the homes of some Hindus, together with their deities such as Ganesh – the elephant god, Anumar – monkey god and Shiva, Krishna it is also the icon or the statue of the Mother of God which Hindus venerated as a powerful goddess which helps them in their needs. Of course, if these Hindus become Christians they abandon this heresy, but as long as they remain Hindus they consider Holy Mother a goddess.
The preparing for becoming a Christian (catechumenat) in Tamil Nadu takes about a year and a half, followed by baptism and the new baptized receives a new Christian name. Usually, if a family member converts, the whole family converts and there is no hatred against the converted as in the case of Muslims, for example.
The icon pilgrimage
At the invitation of Father Michael Suresh whom I met at Medjugorje, 3 years ago, on Mount Krizevac, I began a pilgrimage with the Holy Icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Protectress of unborn babies. I have to mention that in India there is the myth of overpopulation, the Indian government encouraging small families with 1-2 children or any and discouraging large families by denying them any help.
The Icon pilgrimage began with the episode of its transporting in a cylindrical tube and reassembling it in the parish of Father Michael. Everything went well, Our Lady came to the land of India and the pilgrimage began in the first parish in Maligapuran – dedicated to St. Anthony, a smaller parish, but at the Holy Mass came also Hindu people to see the Holy Mother.
I should mention that the Hindus of Southern India are very favorable to Christianity and especially to Catholicism, conversions being numerous.
The second town visited by the Guadalupe Holy Icon of the Mother was Mnkandihai – initially I was at the first parish in that city, Our Lady of Presentation, where we made a big procession around the church with the Icon, then the Holy Mass with the veneration of the Icon.
Literally, the icon of Holy Virgin was „suffocated ” by hundreds of devotees including many Hindus. In the second parish of the city, we were begged by the pastor of the place to come because he is facing a serious problem caused by the class (caste) system, specific in India. Unfortunately, Hindus converted come also with discriminatory system that determine (in many parishes) not to participate at Mass together, but separately, after castes!
But the miracle occurred! When Our Lady of Guadalupe came everybody gather at the Icon no matter of class affiliation.
At Thiruporur – at Infant Jesus Church, the same extraordinary atmosphere of emulation: the Holy Mass followed by veneration of the Icon and the individual blessing of each believer.
In 31 January we stopped at Papanalur, another small town where the parish priest was surprised to see many Hindus coming with tears in their eyes.
On February 1, the Icon was displayed in a branch parish of priest Michael from Vedathangal where the priest arranged a cave of the Holy Mother of Vailankanni, Our Lady of Good Health. The Holy Mass was held in front of the cave, and the Icon was venerated until late in night by hundreds of faithful who came from all around the cave.
Tachiur was the last town that Our Lady of Guadalupe visited, the Church „Our Lady of Good Health ” built by French missionaries – the city was part of the former French colony of Pondicherry. And here were happened all the bad things because of the class system – for 12 years the church was closed due to sometimes violent clashes between members of different class. And this was done with the icon of the Holy Mother of Guadalupe, followed by Holy Mass and the worship of the Icon.
In all parishes, the sermons were pro-life, the faithful people are warned about this great sin that is abortion and about his physically, mentally and emotionally consequences. There were many physical and spiritual healings, the parish priests being surprised in the first night by the Hindu population confluence in their cities.
Father Michael Suresh activity
A word about the work of Fr. Michael Suresh: a worthy priest who has a primary school in his parish with 220 students of all denominations – every day, the priest gathers the littles of the 22 villages in his parish from the surroundings of Vedathangal. Each day begins with the Our Father and Hail Mary prayers and ends so. If the priest would have more funds he could double the number of young children who can learn to read and write and thus to find, as they grow, a better job.
Poverty in these areas is unfortunately present – many families live in huts, although building an authentic house would cost only 3000 euros.
Father Michael himself would like to take over these pilgrimage with the Icon of the Holy Mother throughout India, not only in the state of Tamil Nadu. We are up to acquire a new copy of the Icon of Guadalupe to circulate throughout India.
Thank the good Lord and the Holy Mother for these blessed days that once again we could see the extraordinary emulation that the Guadalupe Icon did in faraway India!
Fr. Ioan Chisarau, president
Association Gift of Life, Romania
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