The Listening Ear

A Guide for Modern Pilgrims-7

It is the interior journey that’s even more crucial than physical travel when we make a pilgrimage. This is true both for sacred journeys as well as how we go through life.

In The Journey: A Guide for the Modern Pilgrim, Maria Scaperlanda identifies certain tools and disciplines that can help us be open to the blessings offered by pilgrimage.

Journaling is one way for us to pay attention to the well of wisdom that Spirit causes to spring up within us. She keeps several types of journals, including her 3 ‘morning pages’ that she writes just to get her juices flowing, an album ideas, images and quotes and also a regular journal where she records dates, thoughts and feeling and ‘aha’ moments.

Drawing on her Roman Catholic tradition, Maria finds meditation on the Way or the stations of the Cross and the use of the Rosary to be helpful practices. Non-catholics have also found value in pondering the events of Christ’s crucifix or using an evangelical form of the rosary.

Maria also finds the Russian text called the Way of the Pilgrim to be a helpful resource. Written by an anonymous writer who simple calls himself ‘the Pilgrim,’ it describes how the writer discovers the prayer of the heart that can be used as a way to

A Guide for Modern Pilgrims-6

In The Journey: A Guide for the Modern Pilgrim, Michael Scperlanda writes a couple of chapters on those who can accompany us on a pilgrimage. He first mentions pilgrims from the Bible who serve as guides for us: Adam and Even, Abraham, Moses, Peter, Esther, Ruth, the Prodigal Son and Mary. Each of these made a spiritual journey as they moved from one place to another.

Michael also suggests that it is helpful for us to find company along the way of our pilgrimage. They may travel with us, pray for us, or share our calling. They may also come into our lives completely unexpected. Even as we journey through life, Michael says that God will always make sure there are other pilgrims close at hand.

A Guide for Modern Pilgrims-5

One of the issues that Maria Scaperlanda explores in The Journey: A Guide for the Modern Pilgrim, is the question of what pilgrimage to take. Since a pilgrimage is a sacred journey, the kind of journey we take is as important as choosing our destination.

Maria believes that we don’t choose the place; the place chooses us. What she means is that God shows us where we might go to experience the touch of God, to come to know God better.

So how do we know that we are being called to go on a pilgrimage? Her first answer is that you just know. There’s no other way to explain it. You feel invited, even summoned to make a particular journey to a particular place.

Another way the a we know we are invited is that amazing ‘coincidences’ happen. For believers, what some call serendipity, we call the Holy Spirit acting in our lives. Not every place that we see featured in the travel section of a newspaper is inviting us to a pilgrimage. We need to listen, to pay attention to God in prayer. God doesn’t want to confuse us.

There are different places that may serve as a place to go for a pilgrimage. It may be traditional site, such as a trip to the Holy Land. Or it may be something closer, like a journey to a retreat center. There might even be pilgrimage sites even in our own backyard. How we make the journey, being open to what God might show us and say to us, is more important the destination we choose.