Why the Pilgrimage? What I Learned at St. Paul's Church

(All images taken by the author at St. Paul's Church in Harvard Square)

Imagine being outside in the elements for three days, barefoot. Then imagine only eating dry bread and watery soup on your first day, followed by a night in which you fast from sleep. This is the experience you will have if you choose to go on retreat at the pilgrimage site of the island of Lough Derg in Ireland. A pilgrimage site focuses on purgative suffering and prayer.

With pilgrimages to first-world places like Rome, the Holy Land and International Marian Shrines, pilgrimages may not always be considered a deep suffering; yet they can be moments of discomfort. A pilgrimage usually involves lots of patience, miles of walking in blazing heat or shivering cold, and probably a growling stomach along the way.

So why does one choose to go on pilgrimage? What purpose does it hold for a lay Catholic?

Pilgrimages enhance the spiritual life of you, the pilgrim, and promote a culture that shows the richness of the Catholic faith. A pilgrimage experience equips you to give witness to the beauty of our faith. It is a journey of love.

A pilgrimage to...Boston?

While accompanying my husband on a work trip of his in Boston, we made a list of several area churches that we wanted to visit in a sort of mini-pilgri

mage. On a rainy Saturday of fifty degrees, my husband and I made one of these pilgrimages to St. Paul’s Church in Harvard Square.

Walking in the drizzly cold was not enjoyable, but I knew from pictures online that once we walked in to the Romanesque church we would be rewarded with beautiful columns, a barrel-vaulted ceiling and intricate stained glass windows showing several doctors of the Church including Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas and St. Ignatius of Loyola. Patrons who are fitting for a parish located on the campus of the oldest establishment of higher education in our country.

Upon entering this place of refuge, we saw the pastor of the church in the narthex and he spent a few minutes talking with us, sharing about how the parish has one of the few traditional boy choirs in the U.S. and is supported by a St. Paul’s Choir School, a private school in Cambridge. This is the only school in our country in which you will find a Roman Catholic boys choir, for students in grades four through eight. The pastor himself was a member of this school, formerly known as the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School and he now serves as the school’s head.

The gift of an umbrella

The pastor could see we were a little soggy from our walk in the rain, and he offered us an umbrella. While we tried to refuse, letting him know we’d be okay, he insisted on letting us have one of the parish extras. We promised that we would find someone in need to re-gift it to. I am glad we accepted his gift because in my dampened clothes, the cover of the umbrella improved my dampened mood.

This gift was a blessing to us in a way more than just providing portable shelter. We were blessed because we were able to pay the gift forward; when we made it to one of our other mini-pilgrimage sites, St. Francis Chapel in the Prudential Center of Boston, we left it at their gift shop. We shared our story with them and asked them to offer another visitor the umbrella, if they are in the same position we found ourselves in at Saint Paul’s.

From shrine to shrine, this simple umbrella was a sign to us of God’s love. This is what makes pilgrimages so worthwhile; you never know how God is going to surprise you, how he is going to make known to you his presence.

It’s worth taking a pilgrimage to find out.