Sacred Pilgrimage Part 7
April 20, 2026
Sacred Pilgrimage Part 7
The true pilgrimage does not end when we return home. In many ways, that is when it finally begins.
After we return from a pilgrimage, a deeper kind of work awaits us. We have stepped outside our familiar world, encountered people and experiences we had never known before, and wrestled with what they meant. Now comes the most important part of the journey: deciding how the pilgrimage will live within us. The goal is not simply to remember the pilgrimage, but to embody it.
How does a pilgrimage become part of who we are? Rarely do we speak about it every day. We do not walk around announcing it or constantly referring to it. Yet it quietly takes up residence in our soul. From those depths, it begins to shape our outlook, our faith, and the way we move through the world.
A few years ago, Lark and I made a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Bernadette in Lourdes, France. At the age of fourteen, Bernadette Soubirous experienced eighteen apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the grotto of Massabielle. These visions began on February 11, 1858, and continued until July 16 of the same year.
At first, Bernadette was ridiculed and persecuted for telling stories many considered implausible. Yet over time, the people of the town began to believe her, especially after numerous unexplained healings were associated with the waters of the grotto. Bernadette was later canonized in 1933. I rarely speak about my pilgrimage to Lourdes. Yet, like all true spiritual experiences, it remains alive within me every day.
Just yesterday, while putting something away in my closet, I noticed one of the cobalt-blue bottles of water that I filled at the grotto and carried home. The water from Lourdes is believed by many to have healing properties. Occasionally, if I have a small ailment, I take a sip. From time to time, I send a small bottle to someone who may need encouragement or healing.
There is a comfort simply knowing those bottles are nearby. They remind me of something deeper: that God still touches the world in ways we cannot always explain. Healing may not come when we expect it or in the form we desire, but the boundary between heaven and earth is thinner than we often imagine. My time in Lourdes made that belief more real to me.
When we think about it, we all carry many pilgrimages within us. Some we remember clearly; others have settled so deeply into our being that we are scarcely aware of them anymore. Yet they are there, shaping our attitudes, our beliefs, and our daily actions. Like our pilgrimage to Lourdes, often the most powerful effect of a pilgrimage unfolds after we return home. The journey continues within us, working its way into the fabric of our souls.
Spiritual practice: Recall a spiritual experience that deeply affected your life. How does that experience still show up in your daily attitudes, decisions, or hopes?
Self-inquiry: Who would you be today if those spiritual experiences had never happened?
Prayer:
Dear God, For every sacred experience you place within my soul, I give you thanks. May the pilgrimages of my life continue to shape me into the person you call me to be. Amen.
