Making A Mess/ Pilgrimage

            What World Youth Day impressed on me the most is this: that Saints are messy creatures. The Holy Father, in his address to Argentinian youth at the Cathedral of St. Sebastian famously said this: 

“What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess.”

            Obligingly, we made a mess of Copacabana beach, we made a mess of Rio de Janeiro, and ultimately, we made a mess of ourselves. Pilgrimage does that. (I have been carrying a fierce Brazilian cold for the past three weeks that doesn’t seem to want to leave). Pilgrimages are full of sand, sore feet, and sickness. They are not fun. Now, it is time that I brought the mess home with me.

            That is the nature of a pilgrimage: not only to make a mess, but to do so to reach a destination. We made messes of ourselves getting there and back again. We made messes because the destination was worth it. And World Youth Day, we found, was all the more amazing for the mess.

            But returning home, I find that the nature of a pilgrimage may be to reach a destination, but the object of a pilgrimage is to make us realize that life is simply a bigger, broader pilgrimage, one that is directed towards heaven. And what the Pope has been saying this whole time is that we need to strap on our spiritual hiking boots and get mobile. This has meant many things over the past month or so, whether it be actually giving to the poor, or leading the Rosary when no one would, or making an effort to pray the Liturgy of the Hours once in awhile. It means that I will make an effort to dress nice for Mass, make an effort to go to Confession more often, make an effort; to make a mess of myself for the sake of Him who has made a mess of himself for me. 

            It means that we can do something for Jesus that we never thought to do before, to go places we never thought to go, to become someone we never thought we could. Not, indeed, to travel the world, but to travel the field of Faith, to set out, to do something courageous for once... for Him who has done everything for us. Saints are messy creatures because they have hiked very far to reach their destination. They may be caked with spiritual mud and dust, but they have gotten so far, and they have reached Heaven.

            A few weeks ago, I was talking to our local Deacon after mass, and I was saying how disappointed I was that I did not have the privilege of traveling with anyone from our diocese. He turned and looked me in the eye. He said to me “It was your turn”.

            My friends, my turn is over, now it is yours.