My name is Silvia. I'm 15, and I've been part of Fede e Luce since before I was even born. That said, it doesn't make me an expert. Most of the time, I have no idea what I'm doing when I run into something new. I hate opening festivals and spring gatherings—basically any huge group event. I usually find ways to skip them, making up excuses so I don't seem like the antisocial person my mother says I am. But the real reason I don't go isn't that I love being alone. It's that I'm scared.
Scared of the new. Scared of what's different. I know the kids in my community—I know how to handle them. But strangers terrify me, and I'm afraid of being tested, because I'm too proud to take criticism.
So when someone told me about Loreto, I nearly fainted at the thought of 400 people in one place for a week.
My mother didn't even consider the possibility that I might not want to go. Instead, she extended the invitation to my grandparents. My grandfather wisely made himself scarce, but my grandmother was thrilled at the idea of the whole family together. Her genuine enthusiasm made me smile. According to my mother, I'm a heretic because I haven't been to Mass since my confirmation, and there's barely a Sunday when she doesn't lecture me: "Silvia, you made a commitment and now you have to keep it." Keeping commitments has never been my favorite pastime. (Though I should say—I don't want anyone thinking my mother is some tyrant. She's not.
She's just a little bossy sometimes, and she gets a bit hysterical and unbearable when we don't see things her way. But apart from that, she's adorable.) So the prospect of spending a week in Loreto praying instead of at the beach with a friend—with my grandmother, no less—didn't excite me. I seriously considered joining the Foreign Legion.
When we arrived, in torrential rain, watching the whole community walk through the downpour in small clusters of two or three under the few umbrellas anyone had thought to bring, I remembered something someone from my community had said at a meeting: "On a pilgrimage, the most important thing is to walk together, adjusting your pace to the slowest person, so no one gets left behind." In that rain, soaked to the bone, the faster walkers waited for the slower ones. Nobody was abandoned. There was always someone smiling, offering a word of encouragement to people like me, who were complaining about our rotten luck and already regretting the whole mad idea.
I didn't get much out of the exchange groups. Partly because they were too short to build real bonds with the Greeks and Cypriots, and partly because our group was one of the quietest. I could hear the group in the next room laughing freely during the awkward silences that kept happening with us.
Even though bad weather dogged us all week—as if testing our willpower and our ability to adapt—we always found a way to do everything we'd planned. The parties the Greeks threw, then the Cypriots, were fun, even if they were a bit makeshift. There was a relaxed feeling in the air because there's one thing that unites all of us, no matter what language we speak or what god we believe in: the desire to have fun and let loose.
I can't say the pilgrimage opened the doors of faith for me the way it might have for others. But it was a deeply human experience—especially meeting different cultures. I got to see that all humanity carries the same burdens. The only way to lighten that weight is to know you're not alone, and that even people who seem farthest away are searching for the same thing, walking the same road as you. Where it leads, I don't know. In the end, it doesn't matter, because I've learned that what counts is keeping going. But if you notice someone has fallen behind and is walking alone, you have to find the strength and patience to wait for them, take their hand, and walk with them.
Silvia T., 2011