by Mike Hughes, Assistant Vice Provost, Graduate Enrollment
I’m a firm believer that life-changing experiences don’t ever reveal themselves to you as they happen, or, in fact, ever. I learned during the 19th Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius that God may speak quietly, gently, over time, while I sort things out – a simple way to describe a more nuanced “discernment.” Or else, He’s banging me on the head and I’m stubbornly refusing to hear him!
Richard J. Leonard, SJ, compares Lent to a pilgrimage, and wishes for us that, “No matter how soul-sore we may be by journey’s end, may this pilgrimage of hope be both life-changing and life-affirming because that’s the reward for the pilgrim’s progress at Easter.” It will come as no surprise to those who know me well, that the skeptic in me doubts that this Easter Sunday morning I will awake to a life changed or affirmed. Don’t misunderstand. Easter, to me, has all the meaning packed into a lifetime of Catholic education, family devotion, years of searching for the real and simple reasons for its penultimate importance to my faith and that of the world, and yes, joy! But on Easter Sunday morning, I will still be who I am, Lenten Journey or no Lenten journey.
Now I also know that who I am is who God wants me to be, so I’m good there. So, the pilgrimage? The journey? Fr. Leonard talks about a pilgrimage he made early in his novitiate, 125 miles through small towns in Australia, asking for lodging and food, during which he experienced hunger, harsh weather, exhaustion, but also hospitality, warmth, humor, the kindness of strangers. It’s a funny, touching story. Then he talks about the Camino de Santiago, and its life-changing effect on those who make that pilgrimage.
Let me tell you about my own experience with the Camino Ignaciano, following St. Ignatius’s footsteps through Spain. I experienced real kindness and hospitality, made life-long friends who share the bond of the pilgrimage, learned more deeply about Ignatian values, and touched on my own humility and inner conflict by staying in shared, very basic, and sometimes uncomfortable hostels and lodging. I also experienced blistering heat, blistering feet, absolute exhaustion – and failure. After four days of walking fifteen to twenty miles a day on feet so blistered that I had to walk on the sides of my feet instead of the
soles, I quit. I couldn’t finish. I had to be driven the last twenty miles.
In consolation, a knowing friend told me that that must be what God wanted for me. I knew it wasn’t
really failure, but still.
So, like my walk on the Camino Ignaciano, after which I may never know how my life was changed or affirmed, this Easter Sunday, after my Lenten pilgrimage, if I don’t awake feeling any different, that’s okay. My Creator knows.
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