MY FELLOW PILGRIMS

 As often happens to me during Lent, I've been meeting various friends and acquaintances -- and strangers  too -- via phone or email or letter who tell me that they're reading the assigned chapter of "Pilgrim Road" each day. The book is a series of reflections, each set in a different locale in Europe or South America, that offer thoughts appropriate to the Lenten Journey. 

The metaphor of life as a journey seems to be part of most cultures, even very ancient ones. The Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures refer to important journeys that change peoples' lives. So, the framework of a forty-day journey to Easter appeals naturally to many religious people. The stories in "Pilgrim Road" are accounts of my experiences during a sabbatical year when I traveled as a solo pilgrim through Europe and South America. But This book held a big surprise for me.

After "Pilgrim Road" was published, it began to morph into something I hadn't intended when I wrote it:

it has become a literary vehicle that creates a bond among its readers, uniting them into a pilgrimage group, like those in the Middle Ages that made perilous journeys to Compostela, Jerusalem and other pilgrimage sites. There are evidently a lot of people who, like me, get the book off the shelf every Ash Wednesday and journey with it to Easter Sunday. 

So when someone tells me "I'm reading your book each day," I always tell the person "You have a lot of company! 

You're part of a big pilgrimage group that's been growing over the years. Welcome!" There's something about being part of a group of like-minded souls, especially if they are from all over the place. In a pilgrimage group, people would help one another along the road in lots of different ways, but I imagine that one of the most important ways must have been by simply encouraging one another by their presence.

Lately I've heard about book study groups and even simply friends who get together regularly to discuss what they've been getting from "journeying" with the book. Those who can share their experiences with others certainly have the advantage over the rest of us who are reading it alone, with nobody to talk with about what we're reading. The difficulty of our particular pilgrim company is, obviously, that most of us never see one another, we don't even know who else may be on the road with us, or how many we are. But I draw encouragement every day from the thought that there are all these people that I know, as well as many, many more who I'll never meet, who are traveling with me and praying for me as I do for them.

I should say that I consider this book a gift from the Lord for which I can take only a tiny bit of credit. Each time I read a chapter I find something new in it, and I thank God for using me to put it into print.

I'm curious to know how many of the readers of this blog are part of the pilgrim company. If you're reading "Pilgrim Road" would you mind encouraging the rest of us by simply leaving a quick comment (and maybe where you are from) in the "Comments" box. (I won't put you on a mailing list or sell your email address, pilgrim's promise). I just think it could be interesting and fun for us. Nothing wrong with having a little fun during Lent, right?

BACK ON THE ROAD

MY TREASURED TRAVEL JOURNAL

I always enjoy re-reading my travel journal from my sabbatical journey of 18 years ago. Because I was traveling alone I had time to record a lot of vivid impressions both visual and emotional right on the spot; these images fill two notebooks and several photo albums. I especially love reading about July, when I visited Rome, Monte Cassino, Paris, Strasbourg, and Konstanz in the Alps. 

 

This journal has come to mean more and more to me over the years as a way of reminding myself of how God watched over me and gave me all of these great experiences in those beautiful places where I met such interesting people.

Well, this Thursday I began rereading Prayer is a Hunger by Edward J. Farrell (1972, Dimension Books), and soon came upon this paragraph:

One barrier to real prayer is a lack of courage, a lack of perseverance. Why do we often choose so low a ceiling? There is nothing sadder than to “settle” in one place; to build walls, to travel no longer on the Abrahamic journey. It is perilously easy for us to be no longer on our way to Jerusalem. Yet we must go on this journey. (pp. 18-19)

POW!  

Well, have you ever gotten socked in the jaw by a sentence in a book? The punch caught me with my guard completely down. "It is perilously easy for us to be no longer on our way to Jerusalem." I had no nicely phrased excuses, no rationalizations, no place to hide. I just sat there in my chair and glanced guiltily to my left, where my travel journal always sits. 

I heard the voice of the Lord asking me, “Why have you settled down and built comfortable walls? Don’t you want to continue on the journey? Or maybe you’re not sure that I’ll go with you this time.”

Wow! I hadn’t realized that I’d “settled down” quite that much, and was unaware that I’d retired so completely from walking the pilgrim road. The experience has opened my eyes to the exciting journey that I’m on right now, including a new novice to help and a new writing project. Now that the Lord’s gotten my attention, I hope that I’ll continue to keep moving along the road to Jerusalem. 

ON THE ROAD WITH BENEDICT 

In the Prologue to his Rule for monks, St. Benedict encourages the potential follower with these words:

See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life. Clothed then with faith and the performance of good works, let us set out on this way, with the gospel for our guide, that we may deserve to see him who calls us into his kingdom. (Rule of Benedict, Prolog 20-21)

My the Lord keep all of us on the right road!

French road lined with plane trees

MY BELATED EASTER PRESENT

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A SURPRISE EMAIL

I get a few emails and notes each month from people who have enjoyed reading one or another of my books. There are usually several at Easter, when readers want to let me know that they have just spent the forty days of Lent on pilgrimage with me via my book Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey through Lent.

On Tuesday I opened an email entitled “My ‘shared’ Lenten journey” expecting to find just such a thank you. I love to hear from people who have benefited from my writing. But this time what I got instead was something much more beautiful than a simple thank-you; it was a glimpse into a mother’s soul. Since I have not asked her permission to share her email on my blog, I’ll just give you the gist of it.

A MOTHER AND HER SON

This Lent, she told me, she and her son shared their Lenten journey every day by using my book (to which he had introduced her), and she had then used the book as a guideline for her personal journal which she shared with her son via letters. Why letters? Because he is currently serving a long sentence in prison!


As part of our great group of Lenten “pilgrims” who were reading the assigned chapter for each day, this mother and her son strolled together along the cobblestone lanes of Canterbury, crossed a Bolivian river in a jeep, took the Amsterdam-to-Paris train overnight and visited a Cistercian abbey on a rocky islet in the Bay of Cannes.

For the son it must have been rather poignant to be able to “escape” his cell for a few minutes each day, and for his mom it must have been just as special because she was sharing those same moments with her son and then sharing her thoughts with him about what she had seen along the pilgrim road.

A pilgrimage is supposed to leave you changed. From what she said in her brief email the journey had indeed helped both her and her son to grow closer to the Lord through the cross. She didn’t say so but I’m guessing that the forty days of sharing must have helped the son and his mother grow closer to each other, too. You can imagine how gratifying it was for me as a writer to know that one of my books had played a part in that life-giving experience.

EASTER PRESENTS

Since the Church extends the celebration of Easter for a period fifty days until Pentecost, I considered this mother’s email as an Easter gift to me. So I turned the tables on her by hitting “Reply” on the email and thanking her for the beautiful Easter present.

Maybe you would like join me in praying for her and her son -- especially if you were one of the many people who were on the road with us during Lent.

If you have a story about your own Lenten pilgrimage we fellow-pilgrims would love to read about it in the “comment” box below.



...............Pilgrims Leaving Canterbury
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A REAL PRIVILEGE

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ON THE PILGRIM ROAD
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I don’t usually get this personal in my blog, but I’d like to share something that happened to me in church this morning during my meditation time as I was reading the chapter in Pilgrim Road assigned for today. (By the way, I’m very conscious of the fact that there are dozens of people in far-flung places who are on the Lenten journey with me via the book; for some of us this is our fifth year together.)

Anyway, I was reading at 6:00 this morning in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Today's chapter, as some of you may remember, takes place in a bus traveling across Paraguay as the sun is setting. Of the forty meditations this is probably my favorite. Suddenly I paused halfway through the story and closed the book. I held the little volume in both hands and said to myself “How did I ever deserve to write this book?” I was just filled with gratitude to God for giving me the privilege of experiencing all these adventures and then touching so many people by sharing my meditations with them.

ON READING ONES OWN BOOK...

Most of the reflection questions in Pilgrim Road were based on my own personal challenges, some of them many years old at the time I wrote them. It's interesting to me that I still find my own questions speaking to my heart today, and can still use the book to good effect each Lent. Is it odd that my reflections keep surprising me and challenging me even though I'm the one who wrote them, or should they be more valuable to me than to my readers precisely because I wrote them from my own experience? All I know is that I've been using my own book each Lent since 2007 and I still find it "still full of sap, still green."

REJOICE!

Whether you are one of my fellow pilgrims using “Pilgrim Road” this year or simply a brother or sister in the Lord traveling with the Church toward the joy of the Easter Feast, let us celebrate the fact that Sunday April 3 is “Laetare Sunday,” when the Pilgrim People of God rejoice that Lent is now half over.
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.....Newark's Cathedral framed in cherry blossoms in 2009
......Newark's Cherry Blossom Festival is April 9-17 2011.
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THE PERMANENT PILGRIMAGE

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The chapters for Holy Week in Pilgrim Road have as a common theme the kind permanent change which our Lenten pilgrimage can bring about in our lives. As Lent draws to a close we might do well to prepare ourselves for the fact that our Christian life will continue even after the joyful celebration of Easter. Keep this in mind as we make our way together through the final solemn days before Easter.

FAIR WARNING: Get ready to keep on walking with me on a new leg of the journey after Easter! But first, let's finish what we started and go up to Jerusalem together with the Lord.

TRAVELING IN A GROUP

Several people over the past two Lents have mentioned to me that they were reading the assigned meditation in "Pilgrim Road" each day of Lent. I invited each of them to think of themselves as traveling along with me and the other readers on a "pilgrimage" through Lent. Pilgrims almost always traveled in groups rather than alone. One of the advantages of being with a group (besides the obvious ones of safety and convenience) was that you had someone to converse with on the way. This blog is an invitation to readers of my book (and others, too) to join our group of Lenten pilgrims and join in the spiritual conversation as we travel from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday.

Setting Off with the Pilgimage Group
Imagine that we are in a church in le Puy, up in the rugged central mountains of medieval France. Our group has been gathering for an hour already and there is a growing feeling of festivity and excitement in the air; we are about to set off on a pilgrimage to the great shrine of St. James, Santiago de Compostela, in northwest Spain. Many of the people in the church are carrying the walking stick and drinking gourd that mark them as pilgrims, some are wearing a scallop shell, the traditional badge of pilgrims on the difficult and dangerous eight-hundred-mile journey over mountains and across desolate uplands to Compostela. There is a spirit of joyful anticipation as we greet friends and check our supplies while waiting for the priest to send us on our way with some words of spiritual advice and encouragement, and, of course, a blessing…

Ash Wednesday and the three days following it were added to the six weeks of Lent in order to reach the symbolic number of forty days of fast and penitence (Sundays were not counted because Christians never fast on Sunday). These four days added on before the first Sunday of Lent now make a sort of "porch," a place for us modern Lenten pilgrims to gather and prepare ourselves for the journey to Easter.

The priest calls for quiet. We all fall silent and bow our heads as he extends his hands over our little group and reads from a beautiful old missal this blessing written about the year 1200:
The almighty and everlasting God, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, dispose your journey according to his good pleasure; send his angel Raphael to keep you in this your pilgrimage, and both conduct you in peace on your way to the place where you would be, and bring your back again on your return to us in safety.
In a loud voice he chants in Latin, "Procedamus in pace!" “Let us proceed in peace.”
"In nomine Domini. Amen!" we all sing in response, “In the name of the Lord. Amen!” We all turn and walk silently toward the church door. We are on our way. Come join us whenever you can!

Discussion:

What do you see as the advantage(s) of traveling with others in a Lenten pilgrimage group? Do you think it could make a difference in the way you feel about Lent?