I planned to keep a journal. I thought I would write
each day about the one thing that stood out, that shone brightest with beauty
or insight, revealed most His face. I thought I would write about the one
thing each day.
The thing with pilgrimage is that you do all the
preparation, then (not unexpectedly) you have no idea the way it will lead you,
the way God will lead you. If you are lucky, you do know only this...God
will lead you.
Decades ago under the good guidance of Fr Eugene LaVerdiere, I
was encouraged to deepen my praying with the scriptures by not relating to one of the
characters in the passage but by being myself in the passage. Think of a
common biblical story – the pilgrim disciples on the road to Emmaus - something like this painting by Josef von Führich, 1837 ...
then 'step into
the picture' and let it unfold.
This is what I experienced on pilgrimage - I stepped in,
entering the humanity of Christ, of God with us, in a new and deeply moving
way. Walking so closely at times I could feel the dust from his steps
fall upon my own feet. Terra Firma. We stood together on the same
stones, drank in with our eyes the same landscape, stepped into the same mud of
the River Jordan. There was a comingling, an incorporation that I had not
experienced before, stirring a longing in me, an interior movement, a
recognition. Uncontrived and inexplicable, like love ripened in a long
marriage. As though I had been looking all my life at his feet, his
cloak, watching his hand, accustom to his voice. When I
received communion in the cave at Bethlehem that first morning, it dawned upon
me that I do not only receive Jesus by this wondrous sacrament, become the body
of Christ, but in a very substantial way He receives me. I was not going
on pilgrimage, we were. At Dominus Flevit (God’s tears) I wept with
Him for all our resistances, on the way to Tiberius I laughed with Him in the
sea spray of Galilee, on the Mount of Beatitudes I felt the winds of the spirit
carry His words to me. The same stones that absorbed his agony at the
flagellation received my body and it's heartrending load.
If there was a one thing, this is it. It was not some
shining moment among many, some singular point of clarity and conversion, a flash
revelation of mercy and love; it took more than a moment. It was the
ongoing impact of each experience, each place, each word spoken grounding me
and awakening my senses, eucharisteo, humbling and joyful, overwhelming at
times and so very ordinary, extraordinarily human. It is the sense that
everything belongs, that the stones do sing, and it is the grace that has come
home with me, small pilgrim that I am. It is the keepsake in my
soul. Everything brings me to Jesus.
