On Pilgrimage

During the last few weeks, I have had the privilege of attending World Youth Day 2013, in Rio de Janeiro. I had an amazing time! And lately, people have been asking me a lot about it. Many have never heard of World Youth Day. And while I don't blame them in the least, I find it very hard to describe the whole thing?

What is World Youth Day?

I would love to simply show them pictures and be done with it.
World Youth Day is this:

Photo by: http://thecatholicbeat.sacredheartradio.com

And World Youth Day is this:

Photo by: D. L. Piscoya

But the thing is, pictures are worth a thousand words, but not everybody reads them.

First and foremost, World Youth Day is an extraordinary pilgrimage. And a pilgrimage, my friends, is a tricky dame. It is so very easy, for example, to be a pilgrim, but look like a tourist. Both travel the world, and both carry cameras, and both see the beautiful sights. But the more I was on pilgrimage, the more I found myself meditating on what it is to be a pilgrim. What I discovered is this:

To be a pilgrim is to have a destination.

• Where a tourist says, "Life isn't about the destination, it's about the journey", a pilgrim will always say the opposite. A pilgrimage, such as the famous Camino de Santiago, is more than simply a journey, but a journey to a place, such as The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela,  and it is not the journey that is important, just that the destination is reached. Whatever that destination is, it is a place that is special, a place where the pilgrim in question can echo the words of St. Peter, "It is good for us to be here". My own pilgrimage destination was Rio de Janeiro, which was made special because of the presence of the Holy Father, and of 3.5 million faithful.

To be a pilgrim is to pray.

• Not only does a pilgrim have a destination, but a pilgrim has a purpose. Many pilgrims have a certain favor to ask of God or of a special saint. Many simply want to enrich their prayer life. But the unique thing about a pilgrim is that he or she prays. Where a tourist says "ah", the pilgrim says "amen". In my own experience, what is so incredibly special about being on pilgrimage is that, not only do you get to go see the beautiful churches, but you also get to participate in their beauty. For instance, we celebrated Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida in Sao Paulo, Brasil, which happens to rank among the most visited tourist sites in the world. We also had Mass at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Rio, and many other beautiful churches!

Still, with these two definers, the pilgrim seems incomplete. There is nothing too special about going to a certain shrine to pray (of course, there is everything special, but I'll get to that). Why not simply fly in for a day, and fly out? Hence, the third thing that I have found separates a pilgrim from a tourist.

To be a pilgrim is to suffer.

• One of the many things I did on my pilgrimage to Rio was hurt my feet. I wore Vibrams most days, and we walked about 5 miles every day. We suffered rain, crowds, and really, really bad bathrooms. And we do this because we are pilgrims. Because Pilgrims are not simply on a journey to 'find ourselves' or some stupid new age crap. We suffer, we pray, and we get to our destination because we wish to change ourselves. In the fires of suffering, all the shit that we have stored inside ourselves comes to the top (everybody who suffers gets grumpy, you notice), and when it does that, we are able to wipe off the slag.

The purpose of World Youth Day, and the purpose of any pilgrimage, is not only to change yourself, but by changing yourself, to change the world. Here are the words of the Holy Father:

Your young hearts want to build a better world...But one question remains: Where do we start? Whom do we ask to begin this work? Some people once asked Mother Teresa of Calcutta what needed to change in the Church, and which wall should they start with? They asked her, where is the starting point? And she replied, you and I are the starting point! This woman showed determination! She knew where to start. And today I make her words my own and I say to you: shall we begin? Where? With you and me! Each one of you, once again in silence, ask yourself: if I must begin with myself, where exactly do I start? Each one of you, open his or her heart, so that Jesus may tell you where to start.

For me, and I think for all in attendance at World Youth Day, it started with us, and that pilgrimage.

In the end, it turns out that all our lives are pilgrimages, and each little one we take to some shrine or some Catechetical site simply reminds us of that reality: that we pray and suffer our way to the ultimate destination: heaven. And that pilgrimage is always waiting for us. It starts here.