I took part in only a few pilgrimages with the Italian Faith and Light communities—just twice. The first time, perhaps in 1978, a pilgrimage was organized to Loreto for the Faith and Light communities of Rome: we could not have been more numerous, as the available spaces would not permit it. We were welcomed with vigorous benevolence by the bishop of Loreto, Loris Francesco Capovilla, who had been the personal secretary of John XXIII and who died a cardinal and centenarian in 2016. The second time was in 1991 for a famous pilgrimage, twenty years after the first international Faith and Light pilgrimage to Lourdes, which did not yet bear that name but from which the idea of founding the Faith and Light community took shape. In 1991, then, we traveled by train to Lourdes with the Italian national pilgrimage presided over by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. Many communities joined us there, coming from across Italy. The Romans departed from Ostiense Station.
A pilgrimage is always a profound human adventure: you know where you are starting from, but you do not know what you will find or how you will return home.
A pilgrimage is always a profound human adventure: you know where you are starting from, but you do not know what you will find or how you will return home.I have had other personal experiences at Lourdes. In 1964, I went there with a pilgrimage from my diocese in Belgium to accompany people with health difficulties; a month later, I entered the novitiate of the Belgian Francophone Jesuits. That pilgrimage was very important to me. In 1976, a month after my ordination to the priesthood, I accompanied about eighty young people to Lourdes again: a group of Belgian youth who had given themselves the name Faith and Light. These young people had indeed had the intuition of sharing moments of life with people with disabilities, yet without knowing that Faith and Light was already the official name of a movement in Italy and, perhaps, also in France. For the Belgian youth, the name Faith and Light did not mean for everyone a life of friendship that involved daily life (our fourth dimension). The group met only on the occasion of the summer pilgrimage, every year, to Lourdes. In short, my experience of pilgrimage has always been connected to important moments in my life as a Christian and Jesuit priest.
A pilgrimage is always a profound human adventure. You know where you are starting from, but you do not know what you will find or how you will be once you return home. The journey outward is one of purification of our past life, of liberation from the conditions of daily existence—an occasion to recognize that we are not usually attentive to the people with whom we live in our different settings, even in our own families. Often we go on pilgrimage to take stock of our personal daily life.
A pilgrimage is an experience of conversion. To set out toward a destination you do not know, with the aim of having a spiritual experience with other people, invites you to be open to the stranger—first of all, to the people walking with you. We are all uncertain during the journey, and we need one another to give us strength as we move toward unknown situations; this, at least from three points of view: the world we are going toward, the world that all of us together are, the world that is mine and that I myself often carry with me in perplexity. Even though the people we travel with in these circumstances are physically near us, walking alongside them we discover that we do not truly know one another in depth. During a pilgrimage, human relationships are purified of the masks of daily life, and we experience a possible deeper friendship.
During the train journey, we sing, we discuss everything, but we can also speak to one another with a new, free attention—that of the heart. We make our hearts receptive vessels for the words the other shares. With the time spent traveling and communicating with one another in a personal and deep way, it sometimes happens that the experience becomes too intense. Then comes the desire for silence—not to make ourselves deaf, but rather to imprint more deeply in memory the things that others have entrusted to us, to savor them in the heart, to reflect a little on ourselves and become aware of the feelings that others have awakened in us when they spoke of their lives. Perhaps I will remain silent also to pray quietly, to offer to God who listens to us the words I have heard from my fellow travelers and that have been meaningful to me—perhaps even challenging and demanding for my life. I will pray with a certain secret joy when I speak with the Lord of the encounters he has given me, encounters that call me to change something in my daily life.
When we arrive at our destination, our way of being has gradually changed a little. At Loreto or Lourdes, we experience a new presence—that of Mary. We see that she enters the heart of all, that all desire to speak with her with great trust. No one seems to think only of themselves, nor only of the Mother of Jesus. Instead, we care for one another so that all are well, with contented hearts, joyful, eager to love, to share a moment of friendship. We thus make the same experience of Mary; we feel within us her same sentiments and desires. We experience her willingness at Nazareth to walk unknown roads to bring Jesus to the world. At Lourdes or Loreto, we receive a mission; we are invited to follow Mary's vocation or mission, which is to give the Son to the world. Just as Mary treasured in her memory all that Jesus did, so too in my life I will remember you who, at Loreto or Lourdes, spoke to me of yourself, and I will make room within myself for the story you have entrusted to me.
The outward journey was a journey of purification or liberation.
The journey home is also a journey through memory of our daily lived experience, with the desire to live day by day the dynamic of the Gospel, with Mary, with Jesus, in the light of God the Father's love for all humanity. The time available at Lourdes is indeed enough to share the cares of life and the joy of the pilgrimage days, seated in small groups on the grass in front of the grotto, beyond the river called the "Gave".
There is enough time for prayer and liturgy, to celebrate the Eucharist together in the Pius X Basilica; there is enough time to be in silence and recollection together—for example, climbing painfully with those in poor health the way of the cross on the Lourdes hill, not far from the grotto of Massabielle. All this time can become an act of thanksgiving to the Lord for the gift of friendship, a word, a person perhaps I did not know was so close to me, for a discreet accompaniment in our daily anxieties. The time of sacramental reconciliation with the Lord is also important and meaningful.
When the moment comes to return home, our heart is renewed, full of projects that give hope and joy, energy and readiness for the benefit of our Faith and Light communities, with the desire to add new chapters to their story. OL
* Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome and spiritual assistant to the Roman communities of Faith and Light