spiritours

All Pilgrims by Nature!

pèlerins marchent sur le chemin de compostelle

In this article, Father Steve Lemay shares his vision of the pilgrim and the meaning of pilgrimage.

A child’s first steps remain etched in the memory of those who witnessed them and constitute a significant event in the beginnings of life, just like the first spoken words. Yet, it is a series of movements that will quickly become as commonplace as they are repetitive; why do they take on so much importance at the outset? The answer lies in the strong symbolic charge that this activity carries in different spheres of human existence.

Walking, as everyone knows, allows us to move from one place to another, to go elsewhere. In this sense, we refer to the motor capacity of our body whose movements we have sought to extend or replace to go further, faster… This taste for elsewhere and the clear desire to get there are not limited, however, to physical or geographical aspects; we find them in the psychic, psychological, and spiritual domains where they are expressed in terms of surpassing oneself, fulfillment, liberation from limits, the search for plenitude!

Therefore, the dusty, rocky, or flat path, winding or straight, becomes an inner reality, while always reflecting this awareness of itinerancy so characteristic of human existence. Walking to discover, to meet, and to come into being, one step at a time…

All of this also implies leaving, renouncing, abandoning, getting tired, making efforts, losing to gain, because walking also carries the risk of falling, of getting lost, if only momentarily. Exposing oneself to a certain vulnerability in order to strengthen oneself in being, journeying to conquer oneself. Here we are one step away from the profound meaning of pilgrimage!

What we have just mentioned about walking as a fundamental human experience, the biblical heritage deepens and enriches it by presenting it as an opportunity to meet not only others, but the Wholly Other. By leaving his country, his kindred, and his father’s house, Abram opened himself to the promise of numerous descendants, a people of believers. It is by walking in the desert that the People of God deepened the meaning of their call, by taking the demanding path of freedom in faith and hope.

The prophets, invested with the mission of exhorting the people to live an inner turning point, lived in the precariousness of itinerancy to encourage the discovery of the inner path of conversion. The Gospel quickens the pace by presenting Christ constantly on the move, multiplying encounters during which he would liberate, forgive, and heal, always showing the face of the Father to those who sought him.

It is while traveling that Saint Paul, the Apostle to the Nations, met the Risen One and understood that he was on the wrong path by persecuting Christians! His experience led him to travel land and sea to announce the Good News and encourage other disciples to walk in the footsteps of Christ towards the Kingdom of God.

Over the centuries, many believers have physically set out to take an inner path of conversion, who have left their country temporarily or forever to deepen their divine citizenship and the new fraternity that results from it.

Even today, the routes leading to Santiago de Compostela, Fatima, Lourdes, and to many other sacred places scattered around the world, are traveled by people in search of meaning. Testimonies abound: the steps of pilgrims leave not only traces on the ground, they also mark the heart, thus favoring the tracing of a path on which our desire increasingly easily meets that of God.

Pilgrims, we all are by nature! However, we tend to forget this because we do not always clearly see the horizon towards which we are moving. It is important to give ourselves times, spaces of rupture with a disorienting daily life that leaves us with the unpleasant feeling of going nowhere.

For this, it is sometimes necessary to leave for elsewhere, without excluding following those who shared our quests before us. It only takes one step, a first step announcing promises. And what if every day was that of our first step?

By Father Steve Lemay, Priest

N.B.: Father Steve Lemay will accompany a group of pilgrims to Portugal, Spain, and Lourdes “On the Road of the Great Sanctuaries” from October 4 to 18, 2023 (15 days / 13 nights).

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