I have been privileged and greatly blessed to have led many pilgrimages. Special Masses with special preaching at special places. A pilgrimage is a step out of the ordinary and everyday life. It is an immersion into sacred places and holy ground.
Travel itself, especially international travel, can be humbling. Pilgrims are typically in unfamiliar territories and dependent on guides, bus drivers and hotel staff. Yet it is up to each pilgrim to find the deeper spiritual meaning within the whole experience.
Father Charles Lachowitzer
For many pilgrims, the trip results in a changed perspective and a once-in-a-lifetime, unforgettable chapter. Some will never again have the same understanding of the Mass as they had before the pilgrimage. God ever so graces and blesses the pilgrim traveler.
There is a dimension of a pilgrimage, nevertheless, that does not appear on the brochure: With gratitude to God for the opportunity, the pilgrims are responsible to share their spiritual insights gained from the trip.
At the time of this writing, Pope Francis is preparing for his trip to Canada. He plans on bringing a message of sorrow and apology for the treatment of Indigenous peoples in residential schools. It is a recognition of the blindness of national and Church leaders to the inherent and inviolable dignity of the First Nations Peoples of Canada.
The horror of the residential schools was the intent to eradicate tradition and language. It was a mistaken viewpoint for the citizenry as well, in Canada, the United States and throughout the colonial powers of Europe. While progress has been made, to this day there are continued practices by other nations to erase the differences in some peoples within their own lands.
I noted with profound interest the use of the term “pilgrimage of penance” for the Holy Father’s trip to Canada. All Catholics are invited to accompany Pope Francis with our prayers as he reaches out on behalf of the whole Church.
It is anachronistic to take today’s awareness and with angry condemnation judge the past. Awareness is a painful process that sometimes takes generations. We have experienced that ourselves in this archdiocese following the 2013 tsunami of scandal over the sexual abuse of children by clergy. It was with the humility that comes from humiliation that we continue to be a Church of healing for the survivors and their families and friends.
As with our own archdiocesan difficulties, the tragedy in Canada and the Indian boarding schools in the United States, we cannot simply discount and ignore the cries of pain because they are not our fault. The sins of the world in all peoples in all times were not the fault of Jesus either. Yet our Lord Jesus Christ bore all this suffering on the cross to conquer the powers of sin and death with the power of a greater love.
This is the essence of the virtue of charity. It is not just our own personal sins we bring to the mercy of Jesus, we also carry the sins of the world. St. Paul reminds us in his first letter to the Corinthians, if one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers (1 Cor 12:26). That is, we who are part of the One Body of Christ share in the sufferings of the entire Church. It is the deeper understanding of discipleship that we bear the wounds of Christ.
In communion with Pope Francis, we are once again brought to our knees in contrition for the sins of the past. It is unfortunately the present sin of omission to be indifferent or preoccupied with our own challenges to not hear and not respond to the pain of others.
We are an imperfect people in an imperfect world. We are a pilgrim people in a pilgrim Church. Our entire lives are a “pilgrimage of penance.” It takes the virtue of courage to look at the past ugly chapters in our lives and in our world in order to listen to present hurt and anger. It is only when we kneel together in penance for the sins of the world that we encounter the person and real presence of Jesus Christ. It is his healing hand that reaches out with mercy so that we can all stand together for the common good of all God’s children.
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