When we have been away on pilgrimage, we eventually come home, but we are not the same as when we left. We have been changed and marked by all we have experienced. We hold memories of sacred moment of encounter. We have accessed inner strengths and gifts we did not know we had. And just maybe we have met a different face of
God.
We come back with gifts for those we left behind, not objects, but gifts of what we have experienced, of hopefully a deeper sense of ourselves and God. It can be disconcerting to return after a profound experience to find things much as we left them, and others not all that interested in hearing about the finer details of the journey. But the gifts and consolations of the
journey are meant to be treasured, savoured and lived into. We need time to integrate all that we have received and to share it. To remember what our eyes have seen, and our ears have heard.
The bigger journey of our life’s pilgrimage continues, but what we live in the graced moment of an intentional sacred journey (whether to an external physical place, or to a new place in our inner life), is something that is indelibly printed on our souls.
When you hear the invitation to go on pilgrimage, go! It is a gift beyond imagining.
