Pilgrimage – Catholic Writers Guild

Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. (Jeremiah 6:16)

In 2016, something amazing happened to me. I was able to get two spots on the Catholic Channel’s lottery for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I could hardly believe this dream might come true. My husband was reluctant at first, but one look at the itinerary and he was all in. “These are all real places that still exist?” he asked. My assurance they are was all he needed.

A Life-Changing Pilgrimage

I always tell people that a pilgrimage, particularly to the Holy Land, is life-changing. For me, this journey facilitated multiple changes. From meeting a group of women who would become my closest friends, to discovering more about myself and God’s plan for me, to going from a writer to speaker and pilgrimage leader myself were things I never imagined would happen. Since that trip, I have gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land once more as a pilgrim and once as a leader (my second and third chances at leading have been on hold since the October 6 massacre). I have organized and led two pilgrimages on El Camino (one for myself and two friends and one for thirty-three pilgrims), one pilgrimage to Italy, and several “local” pilgrimages. Next month, I’m taking 43 pilgrims to France!

Ever since that first pilgrimage, I have felt like a different person. No that’s not quite right. I have become a different person, someone whose life has been turned in the right direction. Where God always had a place in my life — one that was dictated by my own needs and schedule — He now occupies every space of my life, and I’m constantly turning to Him to make decisions about everything from what I eat to what I write.

We Are All Pilgrims

What a wonderful gift Pope Francis gave us in this Jubilee Year of 2025. He has proclaimed each and every one of us a Pilgrim of Hope. The Holy Father has declared this to be a year of hope and patience as we await our call home to Christ. “This interplay of hope and patience makes us see clearly that the Christian life is a journey calling for moments of greater intensity to encourage and sustain hope as the constant companion that guides our steps towards the goal of our encounter with the Lord Jesus” (Pope Francis, Bull Of Indiction Of The Ordinary Jubilee Of The Year 2025, emphasis original). We are all pilgrims on this journey from birth to Heaven.

The Holy Father goes on to say, “Pilgrimage is of course a fundamental element of every Jubilee event. Setting out on a journey is traditionally associated with our human quest for meaning in life.” Pope Francis recommends that pilgrims travel to Rome and other places to walk through the Holy Doors, which are only open during the Year of Jubilee. However, you don’t have to travel far from home to experience a true pilgrimage!

The Pilgrimage of Life

While I’d love to have all of you join me on a pilgrimage of a lifetime, I urge you to think both smaller and longer when you consider the number one pilgrimage we all make. Our entire life is a faith journey, a pilgrimage, at times as glorious as the Sistine Chapel and then as arduous as El Camino. We are to travel this lifelong pilgrimage in the same manner Pope Francis encourages a pilgrimage abroad: as pilgrims “contemplating the beauty of creation and masterpieces of art, we learn to treasure the richness of different experiences and cultures, and are inspired to lift up that beauty, in prayer, to God, in thanksgiving for his wondrous works.” We are to see the beauty and presence of God in everything and everyone we encounter.

Like any pilgrimage, we all approach this lifetime pilgrimage with a mix of trepidation, expectation, and jubilation. There is so much to discover at each turn, so much growing and maturing to do, not just in age but in faith. Just like on the walk through Rome, we can easily become lost, tempted to follow the crowd, overwhelmed by the sights and sounds around us, and exhausted at the end of each day. Life is a continuous passage with tunnels, bridges, alleyways, cobblestones, and dirt paths. We must follow the road map that Jesus and the Church have given us and walk through this life with prayer, humility, and hope.

Life as Pilgrimage

Pope Francis tells us that, in this Jubilee Year, we are to desire peace and look to the future with hope that “entails having enthusiasm for life and a readiness to share it” so that we may “be tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters.” To do this, we must be able to follow in the footsteps of Christ, walking not just our path, but His. We are to share the Good News with the world, expressing our hope in the Risen Lord and His teachings. This is not easy. Jesus told us, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:25). He’s warning us that the walk is not always easy. There are hills to climb, rivers to cross, and heavy loads to carry, but those are what lead us to our final destination.

This year, allow yourself to fully realize what it means to be a pilgrim, but even more, a Pilgrim of Hope. Begin your journey today with small steps. Take a walk in the garden while you give praise to God for the bright green stems pushing through the earth. Walk through one of the Gospels, focusing on the times Jesus taught us to follow him, from the call of Peter to Jesus telling us, “you know the way” (John 14:4). Begin a new path of prayer at intervals throughout your day to give thanks and praise and asses your journey.

How ever you choose to walk your pilgrimage, allow yourself to be open to whatever happens along the way. I always tell my pilgrims that the number one rule to being a pilgrim is to be flexible and remain open to the Holy Spirit. Always keep your eye on the shining cathedral on the hill and your heart filled with hope.

We see in these swift and skillful travelers a symbol of our life, which seeks to be a pilgrimage and a passage on this earth for the way of heaven. – Pope Paul VI

I felt it rising in successive waves, even before the crowd leapt to its feet and the cries of “Il Papa!” began. Love. I had sensed it before, of course, with family, during Mass, in Adoration. But it had never washed through me carrying such purity, such humility, such simple joy.

The passenger, in a white automobile that weaved its way through St. Peter’s Plaza on that cold but clear late-April day in 2005, beamed his smile and waved like a provincial child enjoying his first ride at an amusement park he never expected to visit.

Those of us in attendance rode his surges of love like experienced surfers. But I asked myself, “Who is this man?” He presented quite a contrast to the impression I had gleaned from some of the Benedictine monks at the Iowa basilica where I served as an informal oblate.

I had heard about a stern taskmaster, a strict enforcer of magisterial teaching, an incisive theologian, a very different portrait from the palpable sweetness I felt emanating from the person who descended from his car and ascended to the dais.

In recent weeks, my son had described him as “a good choice to bat cleanup for the pope whose act no one wants to follow.”

We were there that day solely by the workings of Divine Providence. Our travel plans had solidified almost two years before, when my son and his fiancée expressed a desire to see Europe, once he passed Part I of his medical-school boards. When I offered to take them if they would make it a pilgrimage, my husband decided to come along. None of us knew then that our beloved, majestic world missionary pope, now Saint John Paul II, would return to his heavenly home before we undertook our journey.

As we packed our bags for the trip, we had been following daily proceedings in the Sistine Chapel for more than two weeks, and were still uncertain whether there would be a new pope in the Chair of Saint Peter when we reached Rome.

Only the day before this audience, when we arrived at Da Vinci airport, we had learned from our Roman guide that her brother who worked at the Vatican would be able to get us tickets for Pope Benedict XVI’s first outdoor public audience in Saint Peter’s Square.

I have a vivid recollection of every word that Pope John Paul II spoke at my first papal audience in 1995. He was dynamic then, in full vigor. He stood at the microphone for hours. He presented his homily himself, four times, speaking fluently in four different languages.

I recall not a word of the brilliant theologian Pope Benedict XVI’s first papal address to a crowd of pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square in 2005. I just remember the overwhelming force of his love.

In September 2022, I had the opportunity to develop a few more insights about who Pope Benedict XVI—a reticent man, a highly influential intellectual, the humble confidant of his charismatic predecessor—really was.

Birthplace of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, in Marktl am Inn, Germany

Just after dawn on a frigid German morning with a blustery wind, my group of Oberammergau pilgrims walked through the few narrow streets of Marktl am Inn into its central platz, to view Joseph Ratzinger’s birthplace. We toured the small, charming Saint Oswald’s church where he was baptized on the same day he was born: Holy Saturday, April 16, 1927.

Sign outside St. Oswald Church, Marktl am Inn, Germany: Baptismal Church of Pope Benedict XVI

This is where it all began, the overflowing well, the place where his cup of love was first filled.

I hoped I might find some answers to how a sensitive child and brilliant adult lived through so many decades of ministering to the same human frailties; and through so much social change. How did he preserve his deep faith in God’s love, and his radiant transmission of that love, throughout his entire lifetime?

How did he accept the murder of his cousin with Down’s syndrome, by the Third Reich? How did a sensitive teenager who was already deeply aware of his vocation live through repeated encounters with Nazi evil—beginning with his first, but not last, conscription into their military forces at the tender age of 14?

On the left wall of Saint Oswald’s church, as one enters the tiny entryway, is hung a glass case clad in steel. It displays new parish “arrivals” for the current month, baby pictures of the infants most recently baptized into the parish. On the right wall hangs a sturdy matching case that features funeral program photos of recent “departures.”

Joseph Ratzinger’s own last words complete the circle: “Jesus, I love you.”

May perpetual light shine upon His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, and may his lifelong lessons about the healing power of love continue to enlighten our troubled world.

Scale model of St. Oswald Church, inside the church, Marktl am Inn, Germany: Baptismal Church of Pope Benedict XVI

Tag Archive for: Pilgrimage

We Are All Pilgrims

A Life-Changing Pilgrimage

We Are All Pilgrims

The Pilgrimage of Life

Life as Pilgrimage

Who Do You Say That I Am?

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