What’s the difference in a pilgrimage and a vacation? This past November I made trip to the British Isles that was maybe a little of both. Among the places I visited were the shrine of St. Alban (the first martyr of Britain), the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham (one of the most venerated Marian apparition sites in medieval Europe), and the shared burial site of Sts. Patrick, Columba, and Brigit of Ireland. Though I prayed at each of these sites, I often couldn’t help feeling like I was a tourist more than a pilgrim, especially after hearing of the devotions that Christians of the past would keep at these holy places, like walking the last ‘holy mile’ to the Shrine at Walsingham barefoot.
The Beginning of Pre-Lent
Lent. It’s a heavy portion of the Church’s year. It is too important a season just to jump right into, so both the Western and Eastern traditions have allotted time in the liturgical calendar to prepare for it. In the West, there are three Sundays in this season, and they are counted down by their distance from Pascha. In Latin they are called Dominica in septuagesima, in sexagesima, and in quinquagesima, that is the Sundays falling closest to seventy days before Easter, sixty days, and fifty days, respectively. The first of these, Septuagesima Sunday, is a turning point in the Church year.
Ever More Fullness
When we’re first born into this world, the whole content of the world for us is simply our parents’ love: their voices in our ears, our rocking back and forth in their arms, locking eyes with them and reciprocating smiles. Soon the world broadens into proprioception, new sensations, and the discovery of objects around us. Before long we have a sense of ourselves as distinct selves in the world, and that world continues growing larger, populated with other selves, with animals and places and even ideas and concepts. In school, the world starts being divided up into “subjects,” and we learn to categorize what’s around us. Stories and experiences trigger our imaginations to fill in details, invent new scenarios, and conjecture about what reality might be like. Curiosity and imagination drive us to continue learning about the world as we grow up.