By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: After the successful 13 hour long pilgrimage on Wednesday, over two thousand parishioners of St. Stephen’s Parish, Sawsymper, prayed the Way of the Cross on Good Friday walking from the Parish Church to the Hill of Symper. This act intimately reminded them of carrying of the cross by Jesus to reach Mount Calvary. They started their ‘Via Crucis’ (Way of the Cross) at 12 noon and ended it at 5.00 pm.
Prior to the Way of the Cross, Rev. Fr. Nolibar Khongshun, the Parish Priest, exhorted the faithful to take this customary practice of the Catholic Church in a spirit of devotion, prayer and reflection.
On the hill top of Symper, Rev. Fr. Auggie Khrawlang Warbah, the Assistant Parish Priest, invited the faithful to recall God’s presence on the Mount “El-Shaddhai” (God on the Mount), and led them into a faith-filled prayer.
He said like the miraculous healing of the people when the Most Blessed Virgin appeared to the three siblings, Lucia, Jacinta and Francesco and to thousands of the faithful on October 13 1917, the people who took part in the way of the cross, will receive God’s love, grace upon grace, and wonders of healing from untold sufferings, in spite of their tiredness after the 13 hour pilgrimage carried out on Wednesday last from Sawsymper to Shillong.
Down the mountain, the faithful were engaged in a prayer till they reached the Church for other religious ceremonies of the day.
The priests conveyed to the faithful that occasions of this sort are rare, to be in communion with the Lord in his sufferings, so as to enable them to have a share in his glory too.