This is a simple story, but one that carries within it a deep wellspring of tenderness and hope—ready to be felt by anyone who opens its pages with even a measure of the openness and trust that seem to have animated its author throughout.
It is the detailed account of a journey undertaken on foot from Bologna to Lourdes by a woman who, as she writes, has "passed sixty and been married for thirty-six years, with seven children, two daughters-in-law, three sons-in-law, six grandchildren, and a seventh on the way."
She is driven, as she puts it, by "a desire to live in continual prayer and deep meditation, to find silence within myself and around me, to see my life in light of God's design, to bring to Mary the material and spiritual needs of all those I love and of all people."
Across 42 brief chapters, the author describes the 42 stages of her pilgrimage—undertaken with no plan except the direction to follow, and with food and shelter left almost entirely to Providence.
In this search for complete and trusting surrender to God, the pilgrim places herself in the humble position of asking bare necessities from perfect strangers she meets along the way. This self-denial, both deliberately sought and lived with discernment and cheerful self-irony, seems to be the key that opens her entire person to the fullness and depth of sensation, impression, and experience found in her "long walk."
What emerges is the moved and peaceful weeping shared with someone in the middle of a road who asks why she journeys, or the clear voice singing the Magnificat stirred by the beauty of nature—behaviors that, far from appearing as signs of a troubling "pathological" state, seem in the context of pilgrimage entirely natural and spontaneous, inviting the reader to share in them.
Beyond this lies the true value of the "walk" itself, which the book fully reveals. It is symbolic value—expression of the deepest meaning of our existence—unveiled through the intrinsic worth of this slow, foot-paced journey. Traveling in a day distances that would take twenty minutes by car, the pilgrim can truly possess and take into herself the things she encounters, the places where she finds herself, the people who animate these places. She herself thus fully lives the meaning of her constant movement, tasting it deeply and completely, not hurrying through it or letting it slip away, so that at journey's end, her hands are full.
There are various ways to savor this account of a modern pilgrim. I have enjoyed it day by day, following her step by step, while my own daily life unfolded in parallel: it has given me occasion for joyful reflection and inner contemplation. The pilgrim's experiences, told with such unshakeable faith and trust in the inevitable good outcome of all things, have gently but powerfully invited me into these depths.
- Francesco Bertolini, 1989