“Our entire life here on this world is a pilgrimage, a word that embodies adventure, journey and quest all in one”
The Ancient Pilgrim
Sometime in the late 4thcentury, around the year A.D. 380, a “woman of means” went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We know this because she left behind a record of her travels. So we know that people were embarking on pilgrimages to the Holy Land as early as the 4thcentury and quite possibly earlier than that.
People take pilgrimages for all sorts of reasons, to fulfill a promise, maybe to thank God for favors received, or as penance, or perhaps just to close the distance between themselves and God by experiencing those places connected with the life of Christ.
Many people still take pilgrimages today but imagine if they had to do so without modern transportation, no cars, buses, airplanes, luxury cruise ships, not even a bicycle. This was the reality of the medieval pilgrim. Sea travel was dangerous and ships sometimes were lost en route to their destination. They had to contend with bad food, little in the way of comfort, such as having enough straw to sleep on, and of course sea sickness.
On land the troubles continued. The pilgrims tended to travel in groups to protect themselves from outlaws and thieves. They often slept in open fields, courtyards, or under the colonnade of some sympathetic host.
These trials were borne, more or less happily, because they were seen as a test of faith, that suffering in this life would bring rewards in the life to come.
A Journey to the Sea
There was once a young Australian boy who lived many miles from the sea. His teacher once expressed to him that her greatest desire was to see the ocean. But her age and infirmity and the distance she would have to travel, along with its hazards, prevented her from doing so. So the young boy hit upon the idea that he would bring the sea to her. He set off one morning and walked in the direction of the coast. It took him many days to get there. Enduring hot days and cold nights and the danger of wild dogs he finally reached the shore. He took an empty bottle he had brought and filled it with water from the flowing tide. Then he turned around and started the long journey back. When he arrived home and presented the bottled ocean to his teacher, she was moved to tears.
“Thank you for this gift,” she told her young student, “but it was not necessary for you to make such a difficult journey for my sake.”
“But teacher,” replied the boy, “the journey was part of the gift.”
Life’s Journey
Life as a journey is an apt metaphor. It is the idea that at the end of your life your honors and achievements are less important than the path you took to get there. But a journey with a specific purpose becomes a quest. When the purpose or mission of a quest is spiritual in nature it becomes a pilgrimage.
Our entire life here on this world is a pilgrimage, a word that embodies adventure, journey and quest all in one. We are on the path to eternal life and our mission is to purify ourselves so that we are fit for that life and to bring with us as many people as we are able to.
When the world seems to conspire against us, when we feel that we are constantly out of sync with society, that is simply God reminding us that this is not our home. We are strangers in a strange land, just passing through. We are made for something greater than this world.
The life journey of the artist is a strange one. It is sometimes beautiful, frequently frustrating, but always weird in wonderful ways. Throughout our lives we continue to grow and nurture and develop our artistic talents. God has placed on our hearts a drive to use our gifts to evangelize the world. Each of us develops a unique expression to those gifts, we are drawn to a particular genre and style and spend our lives honing our talent. Along the way we are frequently tempted to emulate the success of others, but that never works out.
Stay true to the vocation that you believe God calls you to. It does not matter if it is not financially successful. It does not matter if the world “gets it.” If it is what you are called to do, do it anyway.
It has been said that our talent is God’s gift to us, what we do with it is our gift to God. Stay on the path, be true to your own particular combination of talents and abilities. Spend your life’s journey trying to discern the exact expression of your gifts. Like any journey, along the way we will experience joy and sorrow, good times and bad, exhilaration and defeat. But we can persevere through all that because we know we are not alone, we have our brothers and sisters in the faith, and we have Christ who walks beside us every step of the way. We are all on the “road to Emmaus.” Then, at the end when you return home, you will have made the journey, part of the gift.
We know that God can bring good out of evil and so we have the strength to bear the blows inflicted upon us by this fallen world without flinching. In the end, Christ’s victory over this world will be ours as well.
Pax vobiscum
Great essay. Was that Egeria? Joel