Special Empowering of the Holy Spirit – Fr Armond Madhavath OFM Cap

Fr. Armond Madhavath OFM Cap

A Simple Franciscan Capuchin Friar

Special Empowering of the Holy Spirit

God in His plan had preserved a precious gift for Fr. Armond which he received during the first charismatic retreat at Christ Hall in Calicut in January, 1976. It was during this retreat that he felt an inner call of the Holy Spirit which he had deepened by participating at two more retreats at Kottayam and Bangalore in the same year and felt fully bathed in the Spirit of the Lord. Prompted by the Lord along with Fr. Grecian Capuchin and Fr. A.K. John and the support of few lay leaders the first Charismatic retreat was preached at Assisi Renewal Centre Bharanganganm in Malayalam from 24th September to 271h, 1976. This was the humble but spirit filled starting of a historic movement in the Kerala Church that spread gradually to all over India and now to the whole world. However things were not very smooth for Fr. Armond to continue this new mission and the new style of retreat. He worked hard, defended prayerfully to convince the friars about the need to have a retreat centre for the lay people to stay for a week and make retreat to renew their life. He travelled a lot from North to South of Kerala to form small prayer groups to initiate people into this powerful renewal movement. Fr. Armond used to invite a lot of preachers to Assisi for preaching and famous preachers like Fr. Mathew Naikamparambil VC and others had their initial experience of preaching at Assisi Renewal centre. Innumerable people benefited by the dedicated service and silent prayers of this simple Capuchin called Fr. Armond. He was a solace of consolation for the drug addicts, broken families and people with all sorts of problems and sickness. He used to go to families and pray for them bringing healing and God's grace upon the family. Yet another way of bringing renewal was initiating lay people through Charismatic prayer groups where people would pray spontaneously reading and sharing the Word of God. Fr. Armond thus became a powerful tool in the hands of God to bring a new wave of charismatic reform through Assisi renewal centre for long seventeen years.

Now it was his feeling that he should begin his ministry in Malabar by starting a Charismatic centre at Iritty for which the permission was not granted easily. The untiring efforts and unwavering trust in the Lord, which were the two key tracks of Fr. Armand's life finally yielded fruits. The superiors granted permission to him to move to Iritty with the new mission of starting the Vimalagiri retreat centre from the scraps. The beads of the Rosary became the source of his strength and his devotion to our Lady inspired him to name the new centre after the Immaculate Conception of Mary that he started on 22nd June, 1996. To establish a retreat house in a remote place like Iritty, .some twenty years before was not an easy task. As usual Fr. Armond turned to God for help and strength. Slowly he saw people coming with various offers in kind and deed from the neighbouring parishes and his extreme simplicity and humility won the hearts of people and they all became his benefactors, volunteers and prayer group people. He became a true sacrament of love and divine power for all who visited him. Fr. Armond had composed a hymn of Trinity in four lines which became the music of the centre and all began to sing those lines at all gatherings. It was his great desire to preach a retreat on the themes of Trinitarian love that he experienced. At vimalagiri a Trintarian retreat was started along with other types of retreats and Bible conventions annually. In a very short time of three years Vimalagiri retreat centre turned out to be a much sought after retreat centre by thousands. Fr. Armond was not crowd-puller preacher, nor a mighty miracle worker. But much beyond all these external expressions he was genuinely a holy and prayerful person with extreme humility. People would flock to him inspired by the inner tranquility and the radiating spiritual powers that they began to look at him like a saint is no exaggeration.

The one line story of Fr. Armond Madavath’s seventy one years of life on this earth could be summarised as, a heart that experienced the Trinitarian love intimately and shared this love joyfully in a charismatic way with the touch of Franciscan simplicity.

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