7 ideas for your Summer Pilgrimage

Find yourself with an empty summer and a yearning to travel? Fear not, we hear you. Here are just 7 places to hit up should you be looking for a Catholic adventure this summer.

By Ben Hince

One of my favourite places of pilgrimage is Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. I have only been there once, but the experience was both powerful and memorable – not least because it took me a month to get there! 

Santiago de Compostela is the burial place of St James; whose relics are held in the Cathedral there. And, whilst you may journey straight to Santiago itself, the pilgrimage is probably most famous for the “camino” (path) that one takes to get there. There are various routes that you can walk to get to this holy site, all of varying lengths, and all passing through different regions in Spain. When I did it, back in 2011, I took the most popular route which starts off on the French side of the Pyrenees at St Jean Pied-de-Port; the route is known as the “Camino Frances” – around 800km of walking! 

It is a truly beautiful experience to journey to Santiago de Compostela; encountering the abundant culture of Spain. Whether you go on your own or in a group, you find that you have a unique opportunity to deepen your own prayer life as you make your way! Take some time off work, and check it out!

By Maria Clare Houston

100 years ago Our Lady appeared to three shepherd children and urged them to pray for poor sinners. Fatima has always been a place I’d wanted to go to and being the centennial made it seem even more special. Until November, you can gain a plenary indulgence by going on pilgrimage to Fatima or praying before a statue of Our Lady of Fatima.

One of the most amazing things about Fatima was the deep peace I felt there. I especially felt it in the places where Our Lady appeared and by the children’s tombs. I felt really close to the children, like they were encouraging me to pray and praying with me. I particularly felt a closeness to Francisco- a little boy who initially struggled with prayer but became so determined for holiness that he would sacrifice playtimes with other children so that he could pray the Rosary instead. The Stations of the Cross stretch over some of the more mountainous part of Fatima. Walking around those parts helped me to visualise what Fatima would have looked like to the three children. We also visited their houses where you can understand a little better what it must have been like to be in these children’s shoes.

But inevitably, I was hit with the “I’m tired of praying” feeling. I’d prayed more Rosaries in a day than I’d ever managed before, been to two Masses, and felt like I’d had enough. The example of the Fatima children pulled me through and I went back to the apparitions chapel at night to pray one last five decades.

Going to Fatima reminded me just how important the Rosary is. The Mass is the most powerful prayer we have but we can’t underestimate the power of the Rosary- A prayer which Our Lady gave us herself. The pilgrimage also inspired me to pray for other people more. It can be easy just to focus on my own life and worries, but praying for those most in need is what Our Lady urges us to do. Fatima is a very special place for a pilgrimage with a powerful message. Also, it’s so tiny that it only takes a day or two to see everything!

By Isaac Withers

I know what you're thinking. 'This guy totally just went to World Youth Day and is hoping we won't notice...' It's true, my only experience of Krakow was after a long international coach journey last July surrounded by friends. However, so much of what made that time great was Krakow itself, just small enough to get to know well in a week and just big enough to keep its mystery. I had quite a few Polish student friends out there who acted as our guides/translators over WYD and who took great joy in showing us the shot bars of the side streets, the restaurants of the Jewish quarter and the things you would overlook otherwise.

Alongside its natural beauty, Krakow is also an undeniably Catholic city. It's rich with stories of Polish saints and it's most obvious Catholic landmark is the incredible St. Mary's Basilica. However, my favourite place was the twenty-four hour adoration chapel in the main square. It was small chapel, only big enough for maybe twenty people and it had perpetual adoration in the heart of the city. I had some amazing moments of peace in there, and brought in my twentieth year there. I'd love to return there one day without the million or two young people to take it in a bit better, so if you get the chance go! And maybe try a chocolate Tabasco shot while you're there. Great stuff...

By Sarah Morton

For so many years, for me, a summer wasn't complete if I hadn't been on the diocesan pilgrimage to this shrine of Our Lady in southern France. Going at 16 with my diocesan youth service, it was more about the social aspect; finally engaging with other young Catholics, finally realising other young Catholics also liked a drink, a party, and being united in our struggles of the early get ups for mass, rather than the history of the sacred place. I will argue, however, that it's these friendships I formed over a drink after a long, long day assisting the sick and elderly on their pilgrimage, that help make up the foundations my own personal faith is built upon.

When I was 22, though, not many of my immediate friendship group were able to make the pilgrimage. And yet, the longing in my heart was there, possibly more than ever. But why?!

When Our Lady appeared there to St. Bernadette in 1858, she asked the peasant girl to drink from the spring and wash in it. While it is claimed the water has healing properties, and there have been many documented miraculous healings, St. Bernadette herself said that “one must have faith and pray; the water will have no virtue without faith.” And how these prayerful, faithful pilgrims have flocked to Lourdes. Millions each year; many sick, disabled, frail and elderly. The able bodied pilgrims, therefore, as I would be, are needed to assist these pilgrims on their journeys. It consists of long days pushing wheelchairs; caring, nursing, giving. Giving all the energy you have to make sure your pilgrim is able to make it to the Grotto, to lay their prayer requests at the feet of Our Lady, to get them to the baths to bathe in the water, to get them to whichever chapel or basilica mass is being said at, and to provide companionship.

I needed to return to Lourdes summer after summer because as humans, we are made to love God and to serve God. In Lourdes you're there wholly to lay yourself at the feet of the most vulnerable, and the reward is indescribable. It will come from the joy in the other pilgrims faces when you've spent 3 hours chatting to them- the longest face to face conversation they've had in months, it will come from the sense of community and unity processing with your diocese/group to the shrine, it will come from the closeness you feel to Christ knowing you're truly doing His will.

If you're ever given the opportunity to spend time in Lourdes serving the sick, I can't encourage you any more to take it up. Just do it!!

By Emily Milne

I went to Medugorje recently, and it changed the way I pray completely.

Tucked away in part of the world that most people have never heard of, it’s an oasis of peace. If you feel like your prayer life needs a bit of a revamp, get thee to Medj!

There are two hills to climb: apparition hill, and cross mountain (it's pretty much a hill). Apparition hill has the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious mysteries in beautiful plaques as you ascend and descend the hill. The views are beautiful, and it's so peaceful that you can't help but be swept into the life of Jesus with Mary as you walk. Cross mountain has the stations of the cross as you go up. This hill is steeper, but again peaceful - even in the rain! When you get to the top there is a quiet place of prayer around a cross, and you can bask in the glory of the view. Mountains and high places are places where God makes promises to us - in both the old and new testaments you'll find examples of this - and I realised why when I was up those hills: you feel halfway to heaven, especially in that place of prayer. God is always reaching out to us, and making the effort to go up a mountain and meet him is a physical and spiritual effort on our part to reach up to Him.

Since coming back from Medugorje, my prayer life has blossomed, and I've been given a beautiful sense of peace. If you need a retreat from the hectic busyness of your life, Medugorje is a great place to go.

By Megan James

I went to Rome during the Summer of my first year of uni. I was 19, I had just finished my first 9 months away from home living independently, and I decided to push that independence even further by interrailing around Europe for a month with my flatmate. 

As first time travellers, of course we had many a hiccups, but the day we went to the Vatican, we were both left speechless at the amazing beauty within the walls of the city, and to pray in St Peter’s Basilica was an experience neither of us will ever forget. However, when we reminisced about our whole month travelling, when we looked back on Rome, we both agreed that the most unforgettable and life-changing experience was in fact not the Vatican, or the Colosseum, or any of the things we had read about in travel guides before planning our trip, but instead both recalled the amazing church and crypts we stumbled upon by accident. It was on our last day that we found Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini (Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins), a church with the most breath-taking art devoted to the Virgin Mary, and below were the most fascinating crypts, adorned completely with the bones of the Capuchin monks who had died there. It is said that the friars used to go down to the crypts every night to pray before bed, and on the wall there was a plaque in three languages, stating, "What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be."  

My flatmate and I were so intrigued by the whole experience, and I remember thinking, if someone had told me about this place it would have sounded sinister and a little creepy (okay, a lot creepy), but being there, it was amazing. It had such a prayerful environment, and I walked away so full of gratitude for my health, my life, and my faith. Rome was the perfect starting point for our month around Europe, fuelling me with vitality for life, and complete peace and faith in all the Lord had planned. And I think the Nutella gelato counts as a spiritual experience too.

By Paddie Denton

So budgets are a thing, and so is lack of time, but that’s no worry as the U.K. is full of amazing places to go on both mini and longer pilgrimages. We've got cathedrals, abbeys and monasteries all over our own country! They are beautiful, fantastic places to pray and appreciate God through beauty and art. You can even do it in you home town. I love taking the time to walk around Newcastle having a spare half hour and chilling in a church. 

Pilgrims walk and you don’t need to do the Camino to do that, you can go any where in this country, taking the time to appreciate nature, and say a rosary, offering up your walk. In fact, there are even ancient pilgrim routes all over the country including St Cuthbert’s way in Scotland and Northumberland following the route his body took to escape the Viking horde! I'd think of Holy Island and Lindisfarne off the coast of Northumberland too, places steeped in history of prayer and faith. So even if you can not make it to Lourdes, Rome or other amazing places of pilgrimage, just pop outside and be a pilgrim in a not so foreign land.

Why do we trust Scripture?

By Fr Nicholas Crowe, OP

Theology, in contrast to other more philosophical attempts to deal with the mystery of God, is only possible because God has spoken. The fact that God made us and made the world we live in means that it is in theory possible to deduce, simply by thinking long enough and hard enough, that God exists and that he must be one, simple, good, omnipotent and so on. 

However, whilst we can know that God exists from his actions and effects using our natural powers of reasoning alone, we cannot reach beyond the knowledge gained from our senses to know who God is without God’s help. There is no way for us to independently reach up to God and discover what he is like. If we are to come to know God, then, God must come to us. God must make himself accessible to us. God must communicate with us. We call God’s self-communication to us revelation, that is, the ‘revealing’ of something to us that is otherwise hidden or covered up. And what God has freely chosen to reveal to us is the extent of His love for us.

So how exactly does God communicate his love to us? Let’s start by thinking through how human beings reveal their love for one another. The most direct way to tell someone that we love them is simply to tell them. But we all know that communication is about much more than words alone. The way we use words, our tone and our body language and so on adds nuance and meaning to what we say, as does the way we live our lives more broadly. Our words become meaningless if they are not matched by deeds. But if our words do in fact correspond with our actions then they can help the other person to see the true significance of our behaviour. Our words can help other people to make sense of what we are doing. So we can say that human beings communicate love to one another by what we say, how we say it, and what we do.

Now God’s love is even more mysterious than human love, but again we can say that God communicates His love through words and deeds, and that the words of God help us to understand the meaning of God’s loving actions. Now of course, God does not speak and act in the same manner as a human being. Instead, in the Old Testament we find God speaking through the prophets, and we see God speaking in the events of Israel’s history itself. So just as human beings communicate their love through words and actions, God also speaks through the inspired words of the prophets which are recorded for us in the Old Testament, and through His providential ordering of the revelatory events of Israel’s history.

The Prophets and the Old Testament

I think it is this interconnection of words and deeds that first led Israel to trust their Sacred Scriptures. The prophets were not speaking into a vacuum. The Sacred Scriptures did not appear suddenly and out of nowhere. Instead, they emerged in the context of a community that was trying to make sense of its relationship with God. In time, the Scriptures would gain a privileged and authoritative place in the life of the people of Israel precisely because these writings, inspired by the Holy Spirit, led men and women into a more profound relationship with the living God. Israel learned to trust the Sacred Scriptures because they found, through experience and prayer, that these texts led them to God.  Nevertheless, neither the words of the great prophets, nor the revelatory events of Israel’s history are fully able to communicate the love of God. Full communication demands full communion: and so it was fitting that the Word of God, which had been spoken through the prophets, and was inscribed in the history of Israel, became flesh and dwelt among us. 

Jesus and the New Testament

In Jesus, God spoke of His love for humanity using the full range of human communication. Jesus revealed God’s love to us in who He was, what He said, and what He did - especially through his free choice to sacrifice Himself for our sake on the cross. Once again, then, we have the love of God communicated to us in words and deeds. This time, however, the love of God was revealed to mankind by a man: Jesus loves us as one of us. He loves us in a human way and so opens up the possibility of us loving Him in a human way. The coming of Jesus, the Word made flesh, opened up the possibility of a new kind of relationship with God whereby God makes His love known to us through the Sacred Humanity of Jesus.

Now it was the Apostles who were most fully immersed in this revelatory relationship with God through the Sacred Humanity of Jesus. It was the apostles who lived closest to Him and shared His life most intimately during his public ministry, and on the day of Pentecost it was the apostles who were filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit. Jesus commissioned these apostles to hand on to the four corners of the world what they had seen and heard so that the revelation of the Word made flesh might be received by every tribe and people and nation. Once the apostolic preaching mission was well under way the apostles and their associates, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, began to commit their preaching and teaching about Jesus to writing. These writings make up what we now call the ‘New Testament’.

Why did the early Church accept these New Testament writings as Sacred Scripture? Why does the Church continue to this day to trust that these writings are inspired by God? It seems to me that once again this interconnection of words and deeds is key. The New Testament emerged from an encounter with the Word made flesh, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Through prayer and meditation Christians have found that these texts lead back to an encounter with the same Risen Lord. Our trust in the Sacred Scriptures, then, is inseparably bound up with our faith in the Word made flesh who inspired these writings, and our confidence in His mystical Body the Church which draws its life from Christ’s bodily presence among us under Sacramental signs. We trust in the Sacred Scriptures because we recognise within their pages the voice of the Lord who is alive and dwelling amongst us: the Bible speaks to us of God and our relationship with God, and in its Truth Christians in every generation have found freedom.   

4 Reasons to be pro-life

By Emily Milne 

With the March for Life coming up on Saturday the 20th of May, we thought it'd be a good idea to write something that could help you in the counter-cultural position of being pro-life. As a student and after uni, I was proud to be a part of APS (the Alliance of pro-life students, who you can check out here: allianceofprolifestudents.org.uk) and here are just a few ways of addressing this topic.

1) The Sixth Commandment

The first reason is pretty simple and the most obvious: it’s a commandment in the bible: “Thou shalt not kill”. The unborn are human beings, they are alive and growing from the moment of conception, and abortion kills them. As Catholics we are called to respect all life, from conception until natural death. This is hard sometimes, because life is messy and we are living in imperfect times, but it is increasingly important in today’s society. Euthanasia is the deliberate killing of a person. Embryonic stem cell research uses embryos and then discards them.  Pope Francis says that we are living in a ‘throwaway culture’, where even human life is seen as disposable. If life is not seen as sacred, then what is?

2) Before I formed you in the womb I knew you

‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you’ Jeremiah 1:5. More than just respecting a right to life, Catholics are called to be pro-life because God is our creator, and He created us in His image! He desires that we have life “and live it to the full” – who are we to take that away through abortion, euthanasia or any other way? Additionally, Jesus Christ came into the world through Mary’s womb – he dwelt on earth as an unborn child, through all of those developmental stages!

3) Science and Faith

As Catholics, we’re also pretty up on the link between science and faith: as in, they’re not oppositional forces. Science supports the fact that human life begins at conception (just look in any embryology textbook!), that unborn babies have a heartbeat often before the mother even knows that she is pregnant, and that babies start learning things, like language, in the womb. People might argue that the unborn are human, but not persons, and that it’s therefore ok to kill them. This is profoundly anti-science: how can you have a human who is not also a person? How does one even measure personhood? Any criteria that get used will invariably be fairly arbitrary.

4) Love your neighour

We are called to love our neighbours as ourselves. When a woman finds herself in a crisis pregnancy, abortion is often her only ‘solution’ because she does not have people who would support her if she kept her child – either economically or socially. A growing amount of euthanasia cases are because people do not want to be a ‘burden’ for those that they love in their final days. Supporting women by helping eliminate the crisis that leads them to seek abortion (family pressure, financial strain etc.), rather than eliminating their child, is truly Christian. Remember – Mary had what would have been termed a ‘crisis pregnancy’! Through Joseph’s love and support she was able to fulfil the plan God had for the world. How beautiful is that? 

You can check out the March For Life at: marchforlife.co.uk, and maybe we'll see you in Birmingham on Saturday the 20th! 

Work Hard, Pray Hard: Exams, Stress and Grace

By Megan James

I feel like those reading this need to appreciate the irony of me writing this piece about stress. It is verging on comical. I, though a relatively happy and chill person, am the worst when it comes to dealing with stress. I am very comfortable in the zone of denial. “Stressed? Who? Me? I’m great. The lack of sleep? Oh, must have been one too many coffees yesterday. Stress? Don’t be silly.” I hold myself to superhuman standards, and asking for help, well that’s just not happening. The only word in my vocabulary is ‘yes’. So, you see, I am pretty horrendous when it comes to this whole ‘healthy coping’ thing. But, maybe that’s what makes me kind of qualified to write this. I know the stress struggles all too well.

              

I was recently reading the Bible, trying to calm my anxious thoughts when, through complete providence, I came upon this passage:

^‘Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him as a guest. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he said. But Martha was distracted with all the preparations she had to make, so she came up to him and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work alone? Tell her to help me.”  But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed. Mary has chosen the best part; it will not be taken away from her.”’

Luke 10:38-42

I read this and realised, I am Martha (and let’s face it, no one wants to be Martha in this scenario). Instead of sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to what He has to say to me, I am constantly rushing around, distracted by, and worrying about, the endless list of things I have told myself that I need to do. And then, like Martha, not only do I refuse to sit and rest and listen, I complain. Jesus is right there in front of her, and instead of appreciating His presence, learning from Him and building a relationship with Him as Mary does, she instead just goes and moans that she has too much on her plate. Yup, I’d say I’m pretty guilty of this. I often refuse to rest in Him, yet will then shoot up a quick prayer listing the millions of things I have to do…#ThatsSoMartha.

I’m a Third Year, so my stress levels recently have been through the roof. For the past few months, I have been juggling a dissertation, assignments, exams, being a secretary of a society, job hunting for post-grad life, and on top of all that, I have been enduring the personal struggle of grief and all the baggage that comes with it. It’s been a lot to say the least. And some point along the way, I realised my relationship with Christ, well, it took a bit of a back seat. Instead of, like Mary, sitting at his feet, resting, and listening to Him, I have been a complete Martha and tried to do it all alone.

Now, I can’t speak for Martha, but for me, this stress and this constant busyness comes down to two things: control and perfection. I am someone who needs to feel in control, so my endless To-Do Lists, my plans for the future, everything, it always comes down to my need to feel as though I am in control. But it’s also more than that. As I said, I have this constant need for perfection. I want things to go a certain way, the right way. I want to please everyone around me. I want things to be the best that they can be, so I will stress and stress, constantly seeking that approval and affirmation that everything is good.

However, as this passage shows us, this is not the kind of thinking and way of living that Jesus calls us to. Jesus calls us out of this busyness and reminds us of the importance of resting in Him. As He says, Mary has the right idea, she has chosen rest and she has chosen Him and his approval alone, and these things cannot be taken from her. It is so easy to get caught up in our stress and to not see Jesus sat there. Jesus calls Martha to realise what is important, to remember the one thing we need is Him. 

We are human, and sometimes we need to remember that. We are not capable of doing everything, but luckily for us, we have a God who is. Jesus tells us in Matthew 19:26 that ‘"With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." All the things we let consume and worry us, they are minute in comparison to Him. So why do we so often forget to turn to Him? How am I to know and do His will if I am too busy and too stressed to sit down at his feet and listen. Jesus here reminds me that this stress I am consumed with, it’s a choice. I chose stress over Him. I placed my own strength, my own plans, my own will above His. And by reading this passage I realised, more than anything, I wanted to be Mary. I wanted to rest. I wanted to listen. I wanted her contentment. But to do this I needed to stop. My to-do list needed to take the back seat I had pushed Jesus into.

My confirmation saint, and all round babe, St Catherine of Siena says something that spoke to me and helped me let go of all that was piling up around me. She said:

”And of what should we be afraid? 

Our captain on this battlefield is Christ Jesus. 

We have discovered what we have to do. 

Christ has bound our enemies for us 

and weakened them that they cannot overcome us 

unless we so choose to let them.” 

St. Catherine of Sienna

Stress is often a choice, and it is a choice that robs us of precious time resting and listening to Christ. Next time our to-do list feels unending, and our mind is full of worry, do not be Martha. Do not rush, and worry, and rely on yourself. Instead, be Mary. Rest. Turn to Christ, sit at his feet and listen. As St. Paul says;