A few months ago, a friend of mine asked if I would make a pilgrimage with him. The details were that we would be in the Ozarks of Oklahoma and we would be walking for two days. Said friend at a relatively young age has completed several pilgrimages already – Chartres being notable among them. He did this one last year. Also, he’s in great shape. Nonetheless, I agreed to be a pilgrim because (if you couldn’t tell from these pages already) I’m a sucker for devotions. Like so many other times in my life, it sounded like a good idea and so I pressed forward without much thought, knowing that if God willed me to complete the march, He would give me the grace to do it. Plus, the benefits of a pilgrimage are many and I need all the grace I can get.
Cut to last Thursday morning. I picked up one of the parish priests who was coming along as our chapter chaplain, my previously mentioned friend, and two other young men who are friends of the family and had flown in from the east coast to make the journey with us. The drive up from Texas to Oklahoma takes about five hours and we had a thoroughly good time in the car. Like a group of college kids on a road trip, we laughed, shared stories, and even stopped at Buc-ee’s for snacks. OK, nobody stops at Buc-ee’s for just snacks. I don’t think I’ve ever left that place without having dropped at least $200. There was a funny moment as we approached a billboard in the distance while driving down a country highway on an Indian reservation. My friend excitedly said from the back seat, “Look at that! The Infant of Prague on a billboard. How cool!” Only as we got closer did we realize it was some Cherokee woman in a red robe and she was advertising for a dispensary.
If you’re wondering how I prepared for this pilgrimage, well… I didn’t. About the only thing I did was to formulate the intentions for which I would be praying and I held onto those with solid conviction. Fear not, the readers of this blog were in there, each and every one. Of course, I was praying for my family, our priests, some friends who are going through a difficult time. But I didn’t “train” for the physical demands. I’m 47 years-old. I’m in decent shape. I smoke. “It’s walking,” I thought to myself. “How difficult could it be?” After all, I’ve spent much of my life walking. I grew up in a northeastern city where travel by foot is often the fastest way around. I’ve walked all over the island of Manhattan for years on a daily basis. I know how to walk. Granted, I’ve had my spine fused a few times but that’s never really been a hindrance to too many tasks. It’s had to tie my shoes some mornings but I manage. Also, hula hoops are not my strong suit.
We checked into our campsite and unloaded. I drove the truck to the Abbey where the pilgrimage would end two days later, and got a shuttle back to the campground and went to bed.
In a tent.
I’ve mentioned before that I don’t generally enjoy camping as I don’t like to mock the homeless. I find it in poor taste and uncharitable. But three thousand other pilgrims were doing it so it couldn’t be that bad, right? And the truth is that it wasn’t terrible. I had a small, inflatable air mattress (for my back), a pillow, and a sleeping bag. With my three friends I bunked down in a tent in a field and went to sleep.
And then it began.
I tossed and turned all night. I suddenly felt nervous about the undertaking at hand. On the first of those two days we were slated to walk somewhere between 20 and 25 miles. “OK, it’s just walking,” I kept telling myself. At 4:45 in the morning I finally gave up the hope of meaningful slumber and got up and out of the tent. A handful of other pilgrims must have had the same idea based on the small army of headband flashlights I could see fumbling around in the dark. I got some coffee, lit a smoke, and leaned against a tree praying my morning prayers. “Lord, if Thou wilt, give me grace to complete this pilgrimage for love of Thee.”
By 7:00 we were on the move. A column of three thousand Catholics marching in lockstep in the dark down a country road, the sound of a bagpipe playing from the campground behind us, and the rising sun peeking over the horizon was magnificent. And for the first two or three hours, all was fine. I chatted with my friends, caught up with our priest, and thought to myself, “This is a piece of cake.” Of course it was cake. We were on asphalt for the those first three miles. Suddenly up in front, as we came down a slight decline, I could see the column turning. It looked like they were turning into the woods. I had no idea what was going on until my chapter reached that point and we too, like Pavlovian dogs, simply followed where we were lead – 90 degrees right and right into the woods. My instincts were correct.
This is where the true pilgrimage began for me, where the weight of what I was doing began to be felt; not on my shoulders but in my spine and in my left hip and on the soles of my feet. For the remainder of the day, what had started as a flat, somewhat curvy blacktop road had morphed into a narrow, bumpy, gravel and stone mixture of dirt and dust. There were trees on eaither side occasionally and sometimes open air meadows. Stone bridges were crossed over dry creek beds far below. But still we kept marching. Then came the hills. You know, I had a tracker on my watch that tells me the elevation change from the start to the end of the first day was an average of 1200 feet. Minimal breaks – as in two. And one was for Mass in a field.
By 11:00 I had begun to question what I was doing and what had happened with the remnant of sanity my kids hadn’t snatched away from me. But I looked at the road and glanced back and forth. The three thousand fellow Catholic families and priests all marching in unison gave me hope and courage. I was fortunate to be walking side by side with my priest most of the time. “I have one rule for this chapter,” he said. “No complaints.”
Roger that. Also, did I mention that a friend had all but dared me to drop out before we even began? He dint think I’d be able to do it. And I’m a guy so you know I wasn’t going to let him win.
But here’s where the real Grace started to build. Right after Mass we headed out again for another fourteen miles. The roads were getting rougher. The weather was getting hotter. My blisters were getting – just use your imagination. I trudged on and felt empty. I hadn’t eaten and my soul was dry. We were chanting the rosary using that pilgrims chant version of the Ave Maria and it was starting to grate on my nerves. Then Father picked up the bullhorn and announced he would be reading the Stations of the Cross. It was 3:00. It slowly started to make sense to me. Our Lord trudged on over similar roads up another Hill. He stepped on rocks. He had dust in his face. With each station and each verse of the Stabat Mater, I could feel more life. I was still in immense pain and it would only get worse but now I felt like I had a purpose.
I kept whispering to myself: “All for Thee, my Lord. All for Thee, my Queen. All for Thee St. Joseph!”
The thing is when you do something like this that will be an instrument of grace, the evil one tries to pull you down. The more you try to draw near to the Cross, the more he wants to snatch you away. As we were descending one steep hill, the words “You were supposed to protect her” popped into my head. I knew it was an evil thought about my twin sister and the fact that I survived that house fire when we were four and she hadn’t. Get behind me, Satan. But it stuck in my brain for a few hours. It was over 40 years ago. I had never thought that thought. And it hurt. It hurt because it’s a lie and he’s the father of lies.
It hurt more and more as my body began slowing down and I started to give into human respect wondering why everyone else seemed to be doing great and I was struggling up my fourth switchback wanting to take the next shuttle to camp that passed by.
I couldn’t do it anymore.
I turned to my friend walking beside me and asked if he would wait with me while I rested. He did. He’s a good man; didn’t want to leave me. After a few minutes he bid me to keep walking even slowly and we made it over the hill. Eventually we caught up with our chapter.
“Wanted to show you something,” he said as we moved in on the group of fellow parishioners. He pointed to a young teenage girl walking directly in front of us. He didn’t have to say a word. She was clad in a long skirt with a bandanna wrapping her hair. She carried a backpack. On her feet? Nothing.
She, this young girl, this joyful pilgrim singing the rosary, was walking barefoot over the gravel. Turns out she had been walking barefoot the whole time.
The shame, that I ever thought of giving up and spiritually abandoning my Lord on this Via Crucis. As traces of red followed behind her like a trail of victory, I knew I had to finish.
That is what I wanted to share with you all in this post. Our trad Catholic world is miniscule. We are the definition of marginalized. We are spat upon by the hierarchy, misunderstood by fellow Catholics, and hated by the world. But we have that girl and she has the grace to become a great saint and to inspire others.
That night I went to bed early after plodding 70,000 steps. I arose refreshed (even got up before the pipers made their alarm clock route in between the tents at the campground). I said my prayers. I lit my smoke. I had my coffee. I put on two pairs of socks and laced my shoes.
And fourteen miles later, I received My Lord at the Abbey Church and thanked Him for giving me this pilgrimage.
Laudetur Jesus Christus!
Harvey Millican's Blog: Musings of a Trad Dad 