Pilgrimage

What Are The Benefits Of A Pilgrimage? People that travel on pilgrimages, are happier, more peaceful and deal better with life situations. The opportunity to remind oneself of the ‘important things’ is much neded in a modern era of fast information, constant communication through the internet and mobile telephones. With all the modern day distractions people forget that solutions to the gravest problems and deepest pains are found in the simplest, quietest locations. If those locations remind you of our Lord Jesus Christ, a surrounding can help one become more seeking, prayerful, accessible and open to the voice of God.

People that go on pilgrimages have more faith. By having more faith and peace in your heart, you do not avoid tragedy, as having Jesus in your life, is like “being thrown into the ocean with a life-vest”.

What Are The Benefits Of A Pilgrimage? People that travel on pilgrimages, are happier, more peaceful and deal better with life situations. The opportunity to remind oneself of the ‘important things’ is much neded in a modern era of fast information, constant communication through the internet and mobile telephones. With all the modern day distractions people forget that solutions to the gravest problems and deepest pains are found in the simplest, quietest locations. If those locations remind you of our Lord Jesus Christ, a surrounding can help one become more seeking, prayerful, accessible and open to the voice of God.

People that go on pilgrimages have more faith. By having more faith and peace in your heart, you do not avoid tragedy, as having Jesus in your life, is like “being thrown into the ocean with a life-vest”.  Our link explores this some more. http://www.ranan-pilgrimages.com/christian_pilgrimage.htm

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, a Pilgrimage is…

The idea of a pilgrimage has been traced back by some (Littledale in “Encycl. Brit.”, 1885, XIX, 90; “New Internat. Encyc.“, New York, 1910, XVI, 20, etc.) to the primitive notion of local deities, that is, that the divine beings who controlled the movements of men and nature could exercise that control only over certain definite forces or within set boundaries. Thus the river gods had no power over those who kept away from the river, nor could the wind deities exercise any influence over those who lived in deserts or clearings or on the bare mountain-side. Similarly there were gods of the hills and gods of the plains who could only work out their designs, could only favour or destroy men within their own locality (1 Kings 20:23). Hence, when some man belonging to a mountain tribe found himself in the plain and was in need of divine help, he made a pilgrimage back again to the hills to petition it from his gods. It is therefore the broken tribesmen who originate pilgrimages.

Read more here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12085a.htm

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Lourdes a Life Changing Pilgrimage

Visiting Lourdes is a life changing experience. As a non Catholic I examined my reaction to this visit which was organized for me by Maison de la France in 2008.

Lourdes hosts in the region of 5,000,000 pilgrims and visitors every season, Lisieux in Normandy being the second religious site in France most visited by Christians from all over the world. On arrival in Lourdes, my first impression was driving through the small village where hundreds of children lined the streets, they were mostly handicapped; blind, cripple, deaf or dumb and some with very serious mental conditions.

The first amazing thing to see was that the children were happy, actually enjoying each other’s company and playing as best they could with each other in an environment which was conducive to understanding those who, to our eyes, are not normal. The second thing which amazed me was that at every elevator stop in the hotel in which we stayed there were wheelchairs provided by the hotel as a matter of course; hoteliers, restaurants, tour operators, bus operators who were ultra sensitive to the needs of others. The miracle began to work in my heart.

I was witnessing a miracle of love and caring experienced nowhere else in my travels worldwide. The next miracle was in the morning when we visited the famous site at the grotto where the Blessed Virgin Mary was said to have appeared to Bernadette Soubirous. There is a hospital close to the site, wheelchairs and even beds were being wheeled out from hospitals and various other accommodations in the village.

The streets were lined with uniformed Sisters and Fathers wheeling the desperately ill to the site at the grotto in the hope of a miracle healing. Some were close to death with oxygen, intravenous drips and machines attached to the beds keeping them alive. Questioning regarding actual healings were answered rapidly by our guide and they do have records of several documented proofs of healings by those who have visited the site, but the true miracle of Lourdes for me was the miracle of love.

Love literally poured out by the Fathers and the Sisters and the various hospital staff and volunteers who worked tirelessly with the desperately ill and often not pretty human beings who visit Lourdes. My final experience was in the elevator at the hotel, a Sister with a small child held the child closely while he tried to bang his head against the wall.

The Sister bent down and kissed the little boy’s drooling mouth and he calmed right down and put his arms around her. That was the miracle of Lourdes.

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Thought for the Day.

Ezekiel 31:3 

The Cedar in Lebanon

 God talking to Ezekiel compares nations to His majestic trees:

 “Consider Assyria, once a cedar in Lebanon, with beautiful branches overshadowing the forest; it towered on high, its top above the thick foliage. 

The waters nourished it, deep springs made it grow tall; their streams flowed all around its base and sent their channels to all the trees of the field”. 

The story goes on to v12 where “the most ruthless of foreign nations cut it down and left it. Its boughs fell on the mountains and in all the valleys; its branches lay broken in all the ravines of the land. 

Ezekiel can be said to be one of the first environmentalists who are horrified by the demise of majestic trees, recognizing the ecology of the birds that nest and the animals that rest in their shade. We, who are troubled when we see the desecration of trees, have ancestors who felt likewise.  If Ezekiel can call them “the most ruthless of men”, then that makes me realize my response is quite natural.

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