outside reading

This article featured in US Catholic Magazine discusses the importance that a pilgrimage can offer our spiritual life. I found out that pilgrimages to important Catholic sites, usually where Jesus or saints traveled are important today as they were thousands of years ago. Before modern transportation, pilgrims took a prolonged journey that lasted anywhere from several weeks to a year. This extended travel really demonstrated a pilgrim’s dedication to their faith. Usually the reasons for this trip were to ask for divine aid, to fulfill a religious obligation, or to venerate an important place or object. Just arriving to a sacred place is only part of their journey. Pilgrims, by embarking on an exterior, physical journey, take an interior journey as well. Even though the journey has changed over the centuries, Pilgrimages continue to function as an important tool for spiritual growth. By actually embarking on a pilgrimage, we can encounter firsthand the global nature of our faith and our Catholic heritage. Seeing Catholics flock from all the corners of the Earth for one specific purpose leaves an unforgettable sense of community within. Overall, the purpose for any pilgrimage, near or far, is to have a physical experience to help us better understand what we cannot come to know through our senses.
Reading about pilgrimages is far different from actually taking one. Reading about the powerful emotions and feelings taken from this experience makes me wonder what triggers these reactions. The author of this article said that on one of her journeys, she, “I felt that I connected with the life of St. Francis—and therefore with Christ, whom he sought to imitate. The trip changed my life.” She also goes on to describe that the journey itself is as important as the destination. When people think of taking a pilgrimage, they usually decide on where they are going, not how they will arrive there. Looking at the journey rather than the destination itself puzzles me because I