A month ago, we were in Lourdes under a blazing sun, cooling ourselves with glimpses of the River Gave de Pau as it ran alongside the Sanctuaries. This past weekend, we watched the news and the Shrine’s own YouTube channel dumbfounded as the rain-swollen river overflowed its banks, driven by storms in the Pyrenees. About 500 pilgrims, including malades seeking healing, had to be evacuated from riverside hotels like the one where we stayed. Water rose more than four... Read more
Last week I had the great joy of talking with writer, speaker, and broadcaster—and my neighbor at the Patheos Catholic Channel—Pat Gohn about my recent pilgrimage experience, and about pilgrimage as a spiritual discipline and a metaphor for the journey of faith. Pat is a devoted pilgrim herself, and has a particular love for Fatima, the place that most moved and surprised me last month. Pat recorded our conversation for her Among Women podcast (#148: Coming Home on Pilgrimage), and... Read more
Everybody else in Paris was lined up to see Lady Gaga. But we were gaga for another Lady. Pilgrimage 2012, Day 10: Lourdes to Paris We left Lourdes early on a Sunday morning, bidding our bus drivers farewell and gathering at the Gare de Lourdes to catch the high-speed train to Paris. We were clustered in little groups throughout several train cars—our guides Guida and Francoise later confessed to putting some time into choosing who would be compatible with whom... Read more
We burned prayer cards last night at my friend Michael’s house, on a truly cold evening under a last-quarter moon. It’s an annual ritual, one that Michael—Director of the Stewardship Office of the Cincinnati Archdiocese—started a few years ago. As part of our annual archdiocesan appeal, we send donors a prayer card with their thank you letter from the Archbishop. We invite them to list their intentions on the cards and return them, to be prayed for at the three... Read more
“There was everything hostile to my peace—an incalculable crowd, an oppressive heat, dust, noise, weariness; there was the disappointment of the churches and the image; there was the sour unfamiliarity of the place and the experience; and yet I was neither troubled nor depressed nor irritated nor disappointed. . . . To leave Lourdes at the end was like leaving home.” Msgr Robert Hugh Benson, a convert from Anglicanism, wrote these words in his memoir of a visit to Lourdes... Read more
An hour in the Pyrenees, and you suddenly understand the deep ties between geography and belief. And you get a clue about why we’re always fighting over territory. Gerald O’Hara was partly right: “It’s land, Katie Scarlett! . . . Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for, worth fightin’ for, worth dyin’ for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.” Of course it doesn’t, really. But since Eden was foreclosed on, that’s the story we... Read more
Pilgrim Pop Quiz: What’s the oldest Christian pilgrimage shrine in Europe? Hint: It’s associated with St James (Santiago, as they call him in Spain), but it’s not the one from that movie with Charlie Sheen’s dad. It’s in Zaragoza, where the ancient and the thoroughly post-modern meet for tapas, and neither one blinks. Pilgrimage 2012, Day 7: Madrid to Zaragoza When you say Spain, Santiago, and pilgrimage, everybody thinks Compostela, the purported resting place of St James the Greater, who... Read more
On the walls of a museum, we come face-to-face with two views of life. Both have the power to shake us to our roots. Both look like madness. And both are roadmaps of the human journey. But only one is true, and you can tell it by the tears. Pilgrimage 2012, Day 6: Madrid [A note to the patient pilgrims: After wrestling with jetlag and some personal baggage—not the kind subject to customs inspections, but carried with me on... Read more
Not every encounter on the pilgrim path is with Christ and his saints. Not every experience is a mystical insight. Not everything you learn has spiritual significance. But it’s all part of the road. It’s worth taking a breather to note some of the things we’ve learned and experienced and encountered on this pilgrimage. They weren’t necessarily on the agenda, but they’ll stay with us at least as long as the dates of the Spanish Reconquest or the number of... Read more
To build castles in Spain is an 800-year-old idiom meaning to daydream, to indulge in idle fancies. But we spent a day with Teresa of Avila, who built an interior castle in Spain as solid and lasting a fortification as the walls that circle the city of her birth. Pilgrimage 2012, Day 5: Salamanca to Madrid, via Alba de Tormes, Avila, and Segovia Spain’s an odd place. It looks golden and sunny, with yellow plains stretching out under bright blue... Read more
Egregious Twaddle
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