Although, on his journey towards Jesus—the true anchor of hope and Hope itself—Saint Francis of Assisi not only found the freedom to be himself and to live what God had created him for, as he experienced in the embrace of the leper. Saint Francis was, in turn, embraced by God’s mercy and remained within that embrace all his life. It was an embrace which, day after day, bound him ever more closely to Jesus, who took upon himself our leprosy and by his wounds redeemed us—so much so that in the end Francis himself experienced this in his own body in a real way, when on Mount La Verna he received the stigmata of Christ.

In the encounter with Christ along our journey, the healing we received was a liberation of soul and heart rather than amnesia or forgetfulness. Traumas became memories that shape the present and the future with hope. Wounds and bitter experiences became a source of wisdom and compassion. It is precisely the wounds of the crucified and risen Lord that Thomas the Apostle touches and truly believes, and thus becomes a witness that this Jesus is truly God made man and that he became Lord through his self-emptying unto death, even death on a cross (see Phil 2:6-11).

It is the same transformative process which the pilgrim of hope undergoes if he has truly encountered the Lord: the transformation of his own wounds into those of the Lord. This does not mean that we shall no longer feel pain, or that the wounds of our life and existence will disappear. It means recognising and accepting the grace from God to let our woundedness become a source from where the fountain of his grace flows: “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37-38).