On Pilgrimage

Friday, Oct. 07, 2016

Several people have asked me about my recent pilgrimage to Italy. I blogged about the first half of the trip (http://www.catholicpress.org/blogpost/1504092/Pilgrimage-to-Rome), but I’m still processing that grace-filled journey. So much happened during those 12 days that right now I’m tempted to see significance in everything from the delayed flight at the beginning of the trip to the bat that flew in through the open windows of the hotel’s dining room during our last dinner. 

Whether the bat will have a place in the final telling of this tale has yet to be determined. In New Age spirituality bats represent rebirth, while in the Chinese culture they symbolize happiness and joy. I believe that the pilgrimage did cause a spiritual rebirth, and I hope that will mean happiness, but now my path is toward the cross of Christ, so at the moment I hesitate to look outside Sacred Scripture and Tradition for meaning.

On the other hand, ever since Vatican II even Rome has acknowledged that different spiritual traditions contain truth, so perhaps once I consult with those more learned than I the bat will retain its place in my story.

What surprised me most about the pilgrimage was the sheer number of spiritual experiences I had. It’s true that every morning I asked God for the grace to be open to his presence that day, but I never anticipated his overwhelming response. 

Others on the pilgrimage also felt his presence, at different times and in different places. This was another lesson I learned, that God could be revealing himself to the person next to me while all I saw at that moment was the everyday world.

That realization wasn’t accompanied by envy, an emotion that sabotages me all too often. Instead, I felt a calm acceptance: God was not favoring them over me; they were receiving what they needed at that moment, just as God has responded when I was in need, and doubtless will again.

These flashes of insight came frequently during the pilgrimage, and to me they are as precious as the times I felt God’s presence. Here are just two examples: As I joined, on my knees, the crowd in climbing the Scala Sancta, it occurred to me that all of us are at different points in our faith journey, and we are all going about it in individual ways, but each of us seeks salvation.

A similar thought occurred while I wandered through the buildings at San Giovanni, where Padre Pio worked and is entombed. The thousands of preserved artifacts failed to hold my attention, and praying in front of his body felt perfunctory, but when I went into a hallway filled with murals depicting the similarities between St. Pio and St. Francis of Assisi I was struck by the words on the plaques. Among the quotes: “Man becomes what he admires.” 

This quote was particularly relevant, because throughout the trip I noticed how catholic our Church truly is: She encompasses with equal aplomb the austere barefoot friar of Assisi and ostentatious ceremonies of the Vatican, which I witnessed firsthand during the canonization of St. Teresa of Kolkata. Surely in the multitude of saints each of us can find one or more we to admire and strive to imitate.

During one daily Mass while we were in Italy, the priest asked in his homily whether the pilgrimage had changed us. In my case, the answer is an unequivocal “yes.” I felt God’s presence in the people, in the events, in prayer and perhaps even in the bat. How could I not be changed by those experiences?