Pilgrims of Hope

Photo by WIX

This week, I'm leaving for a Holy Year 2025 pilgrimage to Rome. As with everytime I have an extended absence, I've been bouncing around from project to project, trying to get three weeks ahead of myself so that I'm not worried about how I'm going to be three weeks behind when I return!

We tend in everyday living to become mired in what is immediate, tangible, satisfies our present needs. Today's gospel (Luke 21:5-19) challenges us to think beyond the present (or even beyond three weeks) to what really is critical to us: the end of time and the life we do or do not secure for ourselves. Our whole life is a choice about end times.

This Sunday is a reminder that we secure our Life at the end of time through fidelity to Jesus' name in the present time. Only the irrefutable and irresistable wisdom of Jesus gives us the strength and courage to be faithful to the end. Pope Francis noted this at the final gathering of the Synod on Synodality when he said, "Journeying together with everyone - everyone, everyone together, is a process in which the Church, submitting to the action of the Holy Spirit, and sensitive enough to capture the signs of the times, continually renews herself and perfects her sacramental nature, in order to be a credible witness of the mission to which she is called, to unite all peoples into the one people awaited at the end, when God Himself will ask us to be seated at the banquet prepared by Him"(Opening Address, October 2, 2024). Through our perseverence, we discover that what we thought was the end is really a new beginning: God's gift of eternal Life to those who are faithful.

Every choice we make now - as individuals and as Church - bears import for our eternal future. Each choice to be faithful to Jesus' name is a new beginning: a deepening discipleship, a growth in widsom, a strengthening of unselfish love, a fuller bonding in the Body of Christ, a realization of Jesus' saving mission. Each choice to be faithful stretches us toward the final new beginning : fullness of life in God.

And so I pack my bag as a Pilgrim of Hope. Reflecting on the notion of pilgrimage,

Ellyn Sanna notes that, in most of our common journeys, "the middle is just the way we get from point A to point B. But in pilgrimage, the 'middle' is the transcendent part, the part where inner renewal occurs." True, "Without a destination there'd be no pilgrimage, and yet at the same time, the destination is not the transformational force." It is always the journey. So in reality, isn't our entire life a pilgrimage? Where will it lead us if we truly listen?