On Pilgrimage

Before I embarked on my trip to the National Eucharistic Congress last summer with a group from my archdiocese, we had an orientation meeting. At that meeting, the coordinator of the trip shared with us “The Five Rules of Pilgrimage.”

If you’re not familiar with them (I wasn’t), here they are:

1. Don’t complain.
2. Don’t complain. (It’s so important, it’s listed twice.)
3. When you see a bathroom, use it.
4. When someone offers you something, receive it.
5. When someone asks you for something, give it.

It’s great advice for a pilgrimage, but more than that, I think it’s great advice in general. So when I read today’s Gospel and I hear Jesus say essentially the same thing to his disciples as they set out to evangelize (well, minus the bathroom tip, but those weren’t as much of a thing in biblical Judea), I come to an important realization.

The whole Christian life is a pilgrimage.

Too often, life falls short of my expectations. An opportunity didn’t work out. A day didn’t go the way I planned (like, at all). A person didn’t accept me. And I ball up my fists and stomp my feet like a full-grown Veruca Salt, and I yell: I cannot work in these conditions!

And then, I imagine God, on his celestial throne, sighs and opens the Book of the Gospels (surely he keeps it handy, don’t you think?) to Luke, Chapter 10. And he whispers in my heart what he said to his disciples 2,000 years ago.

Don’t complain. Be open and give of yourself, and in turn, receive what comes your way, whatever it is. If it’s good, rejoice. If it’s not good, move on. And in the end, remember where you’re headed — the place you’re trying to go.

Oh, and again: don’t complain.

©LPi