The article by Prof. Filomena Sacco, published on the Blog of the Alfonsiana Academy. The series on the keywords of the Jubilee 2025: Pilgrimage – Post 1/2.
For believers, pilgrimage is an essential part of the expression of faith. One sets out towards a city, a sacred river, a mountain, a spring, someone’s tomb. The reasons are different: thanksgiving, request for supplication, intercession, purification. Most of the time the pilgrim seeks God and, in Him, himself. In reality the pilgrim is a seeker. Many testimonies tell that after a pilgrimage one changes, one finds harmony, joy, and peace. Pilgrimage is a practice that unites believers of the three great monotheisms: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The destination places for Christians are different; in this Jubilee year in particular the favorite destination is the papal basilicas in Rome, while in general for Muslims it is Mecca, for Jews Jerusalem. But digging deeper we will discover a profound meaning of this pious practice.
Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) described man as homo viator , a traveller in search of the meaning of his existence: «he is man on the move, he desires and hopes and thus opens himself to the future» [1] . The pilgrim is a traveler. In fact, if we consider the journey with its peculiarities, we understand and share the intuition of the French existentialist. Every journey does not only lead to a place, but is an opportunity for meeting, for relationships, one experiences the other, understood in the round.
Before leaving, you choose a destination and the means to reach it. You also take into account the effort, the fatigue that it entails, but the desire overcomes every discomfort. You prepare your luggage, you bring something with you, often only the essentials to leave room in the suitcase for the purchases of “local products”. Every trip, in fact, is an opportunity to change something. From the t-shirt with the print of the city visited to the change of personal knowledge. Continuity and transformation, we are always us, the same but different, enriched by the encounter with new people, places, culture, flavors, spirituality, religion.
Thus, the pilgrimage is an experience that involves putting yourself on the line, abandoning comfort and certainties to go towards a destination that is not only and not so much geographical, but spiritual. The pilgrimage opens to the epiphany of the Mystery that knocks on the door of the heart. The encounter transforms wonder into friendship, love, responsibility. Thus, the homo viator changes, grows, enriches himself.
In this Jubilee Year, the Holy Father Francis has called us to reflect on our being “Pilgrims of Hope.” What is the connection between being pilgrims and the virtue of Christian hope?
The pilgrimage is a sign of the journey of hope which, illuminated by the word of God, unites believers [2] . It is one of the strong signs of the Jubilee: «Setting out on a journey is typical of those who go in search of the meaning of life. The pilgrimage on foot greatly favors the rediscovery of the value of silence, of effort, of essentiality» [3] . Not only that, but the pilgrimage is also: «an icon of the journey that each person makes in his existence» [4] .
Therefore, Marcel is right in maintaining that the human being is a viator, a traveler along the roads of history who proudly advances towards his fulfilment and leaves the mark of his passage on this earth. Christian hope itself is a journey between the “already” and the “not-yet” of fulfilment. Man is a pilgrim of hope because he is called to travel day after day a stretch of the road towards God’s future, without tiredness and without worries because: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not be faint” ( Is 40:31).
When walking, everyone has their own pace, their own personal rhythm [5] . Today’s culture tempted by “everyone does it” overwhelms us in the vortex of conformism, so the pace of the individual is either like that of the masses or is left behind. Instead, it is not important to go slow or go fast, what is important is to go at a pace, one’s own pace. Of course, one cannot always walk alone, even biblical wisdom attests to this: “A faithful friend is a strong protection, whoever finds one, finds a treasure. For a faithful friend, there is no price, there is no weight for his value” (Sir 3,14-15). In respecting one’s own and others’ uniqueness, it is beautiful to have and be traveling companions.
You also need to have the right baggage, too heavy slows down the journey, too light can make you leave something important at home. Haste is not a good companion, you need to enjoy the journey, step by step, it is a walk with God. But if the pilgrimage is an existential metaphor, the words of the psalmist come to mind: “Blessed is he who finds his strength in you and resolves in his heart the holy journey” (Ps 83,6).
It is clear that the starting point is the heart but at the same time it is also the means of transport, heart understood biblically, as the entirety of the interiority of the person. The ticket is one way. Nothing of what God gives to each experience will leave us indifferent. Therefore, the attitude of humble listening is indispensable to make time fruitful. The baggage is one’s own experience. The Spirit is the mind and soul of every journey. We entrust our steps to Him, so that He may shape our intelligence and make our hearts burn again in our chest, make us pilgrims of hope, at the service of charity for the life of the world.
[1] G. Marcel, Homo viator, Translation by L. Castiglione and M. Rettori, Borla, Rome 1980.
[2] Francis, Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee 2025 “Spes non confundit” (9 May 2024), Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City, 2024, n. 6.
[3] Spes non confundit, 5.
[4] Francis, Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy «Misericordiae vultus» (11 April 2015), in AAS 107 (2015), 399-420, n. 14.
[5] Cf. Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation “ Amoris Laetitia ” [AL] (19 March 2016), in AAS 109 (2017) 311-446, nn. 294-295.
