A Lenten Pilgrimage: Notes to Myself

(This is more a note to myself than anything else. How are you pursuing your Lent this year?)

The Church calls us to renewed prayer, fasting, and almsgiving during this season of Lent. This year, I have chosen the theme of a pilgrimage as my guide. The comparison of our sojourn here on earth as a pilgrimage is not new (cf. Gen 47:9, Ecc 7:1, and especially Heb 11:13). It was a favourite theme of Saint Augustine, which he used repeatedly in his sermons.

Toil passes away, rest is coming; deceptive delights pass away, and the good is coming which the faithful soul has been longing for, and for which every pilgrim exiled in the world is fervently sighing: the good home country, our heavenly home, our home with the angelic peoples, our home country where no citizen ever dies, where no hostile alien gains admittance, our home where you will have God as your everlasting friend, and where you need fear no enemy.

(Saint Augustine, Sermon 38)

Of course, the idea of us being God’s “pilgrim Church on earth” is found throughout the Sacred Liturgy, where it is probably heard most often in Eucharistic Prayer III.

So how specifically is Lent a pilgrimage?

These are the days of penitence, when we walk towards the death of God on Good Friday. Then we shall mourn a while at His tomb before His glorious resurrection on Easter.

Prayer

So on these days of Lenten pilgrimage, I am increasing my prayers in attending daily Mass four days a week. On my walks, I pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy (or a variation of it), usually twice a day.

I have recommitted myself to the Divine Office: for Lent, I have taken up the old Brevarium Monasticum, from which I am praying Lauds and Vespers. I have occasionally added Compline from the Roman breviary.

Fasting

In addition to abstinence from meat on Fridays, I am (Roman) fasting most week days. Francine has been packing me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich each day, which I am eating on my walk back from noon Mass.

Fasting does not just mean giving something up (although I’m doing that as well), it also covers mortification of the flesh. Now, I’m not going to go the route of the flagellants, or even Opus Dei. In keeping with my pilgrimage theme, I’m walking.

I’m walking to Mass each day, though the route is pretty short.

I’m also walking from the train station in Seattle to my office each day (and praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy en route). Then in the afternoon I do the same thing in reverse. In the afternoons, I take a somewhat circuitous route, as my goal is to total at least two miles a day.

Yesterday, I somewhat exceeded that, as I walked home from the Tacoma train station in the evening. I did take a bus up the worst two blocks of the hill, but my total yesterday was probably close to four miles.

The whole point of this, of course, is to focus our day on God.

The abbot Daniel used to say, “Even as the body flourishes, so does the soul become withered: and when the body is withered, then does the soul put forth leaves.”

(Apophthegmata Patrum – The Desert Fathers)

Almsgiving

Oddly enough, my right hand has no idea what left hand is doing.

Now, the question of course might be, “am I sticking to my plan?”

Mostly.

There are better days and worse days. The thing to remember is that Lent starts again each day.