Thoughts on pilgrimage

 One of the gifts of the Second Vatican Council was recapturing the ancient image of Christians as being a people on pilgrimage. We are God’s pilgrim people, on the move. But, where are we going? Christians have always understood the goal of that journey to be, as the Baltimore Catechism taught when I was a kid, being happy with God forever. And we expressed that rather abstract idea in one significant word, HEAVEN. 

Not surprisingly, Christians have always wanted to understand better what heavenly existence was going to be like. Doing so, we have relied on images, some drawn from Jesus’ own words – like the suggestion heaven will be like a great banquet – while other popular images for heaven are more loosely connected with the Bible, images of harp-playing angels on clouds, and of St. Peter at a desk, checking people in at pearly gates. 

We do believe that heaven will be an experience of perfect happiness because it will be an uncompromised and total experience of being loved by God for all eternity. And from our own lives we know that there is no experience which gives such happiness as knowing, deeply and irrevocably, that we are loved.

And that brings us to Mary… and to the Feast of the Assumption which we mark each year on August 15^th. The theological truth we celebrate is that after her earthly life, Mary was assumed, body and soul, into heaven, into God’s loving presence. But what is really important about this feast is that Mary’s destiny is meant to be our own. We are never to forget that we are meant to have a goal, a destiny which lies beyond this earthy life and which will be shaped by how we choose to respond in the particular circumstances of our own lives to what we know to be God’s desires for us and for our world. And if we take Mary as our model, we know that we must lead our lives, yes, with humility before the will of God, but also with great strength and conviction, the strength and conviction of a Mary who, while never totally understanding God’s use of her, chose nonetheless to live and act in trust, truly believing that the Lord would do great things for her. 

Let’s not deceive ourselves. There was not much, if anything really “glorious” about Mary’s earthly life, which had its share of confusion and hardship. But the reward for those who are pilgrims on a journey to God, doing our very best to live consistently with God’s desires is glorious indeed. May we someday, with Mary, enjoy heaven together.

Fr. Frank Reale SJ