Dear Friends,
As part of the Jubilee experience at Cabrini, I and 45 of your fellow parishioners are going to become “real” pilgrims, going on a traditional pilgrimage, following the path St. Paul took 2,000 years ago. When the Holy Year was announced by Pope Francis, he invited all of us to become “Pilgrims of Hope”. Special graces were being offered by the Church for those who chose to complete either a long pilgrimage or a short one closer to home.
Our “Footsteps of St. Paul Pilgrimage” leaves on Tuesday. We begin the journey in Athens and then on to Corinth, Ephesus, Patmos, Thessaloniki, Phillipi, and end in Rome. We will be part of an audience with Pope Leo on October 4th. Throughout the pilgrimage we will be holding all the parishioners of St. Frances Cabrini in prayer. I trust you will be feeling those special graces coming your way.
The concept of a pilgrimage has a long tradition, even before the Catholic Church began. It started with Abraham being asked by God to go on a journey. Perhaps, it is even rooted in our human nature—an idea, undying through the ages, that life is a journey towards, or in search of, the holy.
Many of the great novels and stories throughout time have been wrapped around that idea. All those stories spin variations on the plot that begins at a metaphorical “home,” moves away through adventure and danger, and returns home changed. These stories put their characters on roads and in travel, to take the opportunity to speak directly about the reader’s experience; to define the journey’s contours, so to shape its meaning, and finally come to represent profound interpretations of life itself. Whether the author is Virgil or Cervantes or Tolkien or Cormac McCarthy, the journey is really about life and making sense of it.
The book of Hebrews helps us to remember this truth when the author speaks of the journey of Abraham in Genesis, who was “looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” Hebrews goes on to reveal that, like Abraham, the saints “are seeking a homeland…They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” The heavenly country is the glory of heaven in a permanent home.
Pilgrimage invites us to leave home to discover home. It invites us to follow the footsteps of others and, by sharing a common path, reveal a God who is not distant but a God who is close. Pilgrimage invites us to see new places and people which, in turn, encourages us to see as God sees – the world filled with wonder and love.
I invite you to join us in prayer each day as we journey. We leave September 23rd and return October 6th.
Peace,
Fr. Damian