BIS Mumbai
BOSCO INFORMATION SERVICE # 3485
PRAYER TOWER ST JOHN BAPTIST
By: Bento D'Souza
BHINGAR-AHMEDNAGAR, APRIL 15, 2013: Many are called, but few are chosen for intimacy with the Lord.
A sizeable crowd attended the monthly healing prayer session conducted by Fr. James Thomas of the Tabor popular mission program from Vincentian Ashram, Kedgaon with his team of music, healing and personal testimony. The group gathered from the beginning of the 8 o'clock Sunday Marathi mass on April 14, 2013 and continued till adoration ended at 2 pm.
"The lives of our people is filled with sadness and grief'' is the observation that led the two priests of St John Baptist, Bhingar to respond by organizing this monthly charismatic experience of liberation for the people led by the Tabor priest to offer their time for the liberation of the human heart, through prayer and union with god in the healing services.
A difference is felt in the way cope with life after the monthly healing event. Surprisingly, some families from the distant villages in the parish also found time to attend. Slowly and persistently, with no coercion or pressure from the clergy, this monthly healing prayer tower is sustaining the people in dealing with the issue of their survival and the core of their existence.
<![if !vml]><![endif]>The challenge the clergy feel is that the people live with a 'poverty of hope', a world where they imagine that the future cannot be better than their past. Redeeming prayer heals the past from slaveries and addictions. It also empowers all to hope in God's new future for them, in terms of an owned rather than a rented house, a secure trust in a sound and cosmic economic future rather than a meagre salary, and a rooted trust in divine providence rather than an aversion or distaste for worldly money and earthy mammon.
A chosen few have begun the journey into the kingdom of Jesus, we hope the rest will follow, inspired by the Spirit of God. These are the 'salt, light and leaven' on the parish of Bhingar. Their contagion will infect the rest, the lost and the aloof.
BIS INFORMATION SERVICE (BIS) MUMBAI