God’s Words for the Pilgrimage #1 Twentieth Century Man and the Pilgrimage Process

 

God’s Words for the Pilgrimage

The Word of God has something to say to the pilgrim of the twentieth century as well as to those of all times. It also has a specific role to play in the pilgrimage.

The Man of the Twentieth Century and the Pilgrimage

People on trek in Bulgaria

Pilgrimages respond to a need of modern man: to get out of the restrictive framework of his daily life (the whirlwind of business, the infernal cycle of money, the inhumanity of working conditions). He wants to experience his freedom, to find himself outside the noise of the street, the ringing of the telephone, the stinking atmosphere of the cities. The paradox of civilization is that the phenomenon of urbanization goes hand in hand with that of tourism. City dwellers willingly become nomads for a whole series of « exoduses » that multiply all year round.

On the spiritual and religious level, this need will be expressed by a more or less conscious call to take advantage of the holidays to take stock of the « essential », that is to say, in relation to the meaning of one’s life and death, in relation to one’s vocation, in relation to God and to Christ: the need to pray, to « recharge one’s batteries », to « re-immerse » oneself in some place where God speaks more to the heart, « as a friend speaks to his friend… »

The Pilgrimage Process

Individually or in a group, the pilgrim (or tourist) sets out; he stops for a few minutes, a few hours, one or more days in one of those « places where the ‘Spirit’ blows », as Maurice Barrés once said. The ‘Sanctuary that welcomes him is then for him the providential ‘haven of grace’ where he will be able to stop, to catch his breath, to free himself from the burden of his ‘sins’, to discover the true name and the true face of the one whom he has come to ‘meet’ and who is ‘love’, to set out again at last after having ‘rectified the position’ and renewed his ‘commitment to the service of men, his brothers’. However short his stay lasted, his pilgrimage also allowed him to meet another face of the Church. He suddenly finds himself shoulder to shoulder with men and women of all origins, of all social classes, of different colours and races, and as if swallowed up for a time in the crowd of those « poor » who put all their hope in God, hitherto unknown people in whom he discovers brothers and sisters, to whom he unites the same love. The presence of the sick in the midst of the pilgrimage will help him to become aware of the problem of suffering and of the responsibilities that flow from it for him towards his most disadvantaged brothers and sisters.

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Preceding

1. What is a Pilgrimage?
2. Encouraging eachother
3. Prayer at the beginning of our pilgrimage
4. Beginning of a Pilgrimage