The Psalmist presents himself: “I am a pilgrim on the earth” (Ps 119:19). And St. Peter: “We are strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (1 Pet 2:11).
We are pilgrims, not vagabonds who have no concrete goal. As monk Cassian said it well: “There is no arrival unless there is a definite plan to go” (Conferences). A pilgrim is not a tourist, not just a traveler, but a traveler looking for happiness. Not a bystander, but a journeyman longing for his or her promised land, for Jerusalem or the new Jerusalem, searching - consciously or unconsciously - for a supreme being: the universal quest for happiness is a mysterious search for God. St. Francis of Sales goes further and tells us that all human beings have the inclination to love God, their creator.
From cradle to tomb, every human being is a pilgrim, going somewhere. An American tourist visited the famous Polish Rabbi, Hafetz Chaim. The tourist was amazed at the austerity of the room of the Rabbi, and asked him: “Rabbi, where is your furniture?” The Rabbi answered him with a question: “Where is yours?” The American responded: “Mine? But I am only a visitor here, I am passing through?” “So am I, so am I, passing through,” the Rabbi responded (from W. Barclay). We are all visitors on earth, wayfarers passing through.
The pilgrim has a goal to reach, a goal that will improve his or her life. This goal or end is the first in intention and the last in execution. Every human act, attitude, or profession has a goal to achieve. For believers, the goal is the afterlife or heaven, and the intermediate ends are the practice of what is good, of virtues, and of love. Hence, the pilgrim is a hopeful person.
Every pilgrim hopes for a better tomorrow by reaching many destinations – proximate or remote. A Christian, a member of the pilgrim Church (cf. GS 57), hopes to achieve many temporal destinations, plus one: “a new heaven and a new earth” (cf. Rev 21:1-4). For the believer, life is a journey of hope to God, who is “the ultimate goal of man” (GS 41).
On February 28, 2013, the last day of his pontificate, Benedict XVI gave a brief and emotional farewell in the evening. He said then: I will simply be "a pilgrim who is beginning the last part of his pilgrimage on earth." Pope Francis, like St. John Paul II before him, calls himself a pilgrim in the world, and his trip to Canada (July 2022), was “a penitential pilgrimage.” In reality, all true pilgrimages are pilgrimages of faith, penance, and conversion, of prayerful and joyful hope, through which pilgrims, consciously or unconsciously, long and look for God.
In this life, there are two roads to follow: the road of “the world” or the road of God, the road of evil, or the road of goodness and virtue. The path of selfishness, hatred, unforgiving spirit, and insensitivity to the poor and needy leads eventually to unhappiness: “Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of evildoers” (Prv 4:14). On the other hand, the road of kindness, prayer, compassion, and service to others give and increase happiness.
The end of the good road looks very attractive because it is full of happiness, but it is not easy to reach it. The hopeful road to beatitude, to heaven, is not an easy road. It is often a bumpy and stony road, and at times the road’s visibility is almost zero, a truly dark night when grave sufferings, serious doubts, and loneliness depress the pilgrim. Still, the virtue of the pilgrim, hope rooted in faith and practiced in love, makes the seemingly impassable patches of the road more bearable, even joyful. One remembers often St. Paul: “The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18).
Jesus says: “Enter through the narrow gate” and walk by “the hard, road that leads to life,” for the gate is wide and the road easy that leads to destruction” (Mt 7:13-14). Therefore, cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light (Rom 13:12). In our journey of life, sins are works of darkness, while good deeds are the armor of light: “Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness” (1 Jn 2:10”:11).
A good road is the road of virtues, which inclines us to do good actions. In particular, the virtue of hope is permeated by human love or by charity. Although for Christians the most fundamental virtue is faith and the most perfect and need is love, hope is the constitutive virtue of the pilgrim. Peguy called hope the little sister of faith and charity; but in a sense, he added, it is the most important for she carries the other two. Hence, the virtue of the pilgrim is hope, which by itself gives certain happiness: “Hope is itself a species of happiness and perhaps the chief expression of happiness which this world can afford” (Samuel Johnson).
How to be really hopeful people? To be truly hopeful, we have to be faithful to the moment by doing what we ought to do with love: “God speaks only in the present” (Kierkegaard). Like the other virtues, hope needs the life of love to journey forward: “Only with steps of love, we march forward” (St. Augustine). As pilgrims journeying towards full happiness, we practice the love of God, of all neighbors, of ourselves, and of creation. Only by loving others as brothers and sisters, we may sow love and thus be happier and make people happy: “Put love where there is none, and you will reap love” (St. John of the Cross).
True relative and real happiness are possible “already” in this temporal life, but full happiness, “not yet,” for “our homeland is in heaven” (Phil 3:20). To be faithful to the goal of life, to walk by the good road, we need God’s help, we need to pray. Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls (Jer 6:16).
I love hope and therefore to be a pilgrim with a thousand human hopes plus One – divine, and theological. Once - years ago -. I even dared to write a few cheap verses when an evening I was waiting in beautiful Vigan (Philippines) for the bus to take me to Manila. The little poem is entitled “PEREGRINO” – PILGRIM”:
You pilgrim that walks, / that walks with hope, / never lose sight / of the goal of your steps.
You pilgrim and journeyman / that walks joyfully, / you will take a step forward / if you are faithful to the present.
Journeyman, yes there is a way / when you walk by loving, / when you walk, pilgrim, / with your sight on the Beloved.
(FGB)
