Pilgrimage 2024 Reflection

Deacon Martin Donnelly reflects...

Yet another Pilgrimage!

People often say the more familiar you are with a task or a journey the easier it becomes. This is a reasonable assumption to make however having just completed my Lough Derg pilgrimage 2024 I found it just as challenging - perhaps a little more challenging than my first encounter over 40 years ago.

True pilgrimage involves more than clearing one's mind from routine. As a pilgrim on St Patrick's Purgatory, one has to silence one's thoughts and concentrate on the physical senses. The well-trodden ancient stones create an energy due to the countless prayers made on each step which is quite unique.

When I stand in the humble beauty of the Basilica, I feel privileged to be where many people's lives have been transformed through a mantra of prayer,  life giving sharing of the Word of God, the healing of reconciliation and the nourishment of the Eucharist.  I feel that in a mystical way I am participating in an exhilarating experience and a challenge of physical endurance.

When I look across the lake and hills and valleys from the spot where St Davog was deployed by St Patrick to set up a place of prayer I am folded into that time — a time in which the faith was moving through communities influencing life in Ireland, often in subtle ways.
 A striking aspect of Lough Derg pilgrimage is a person’s emotional and intuitive response to it. Something in me responds to the Penitential Beds where people paradoxically make the painful journey to find healing.   The endurance of cold uneven stones is a reminder of the suffering of Christ whose passion and death brought forgiveness and healing to humanity.

Pilgrimage reveals not only knowledge and wisdom about the remote island itself, but also knowledge and wisdom about the pilgrim who completes each station. God has designed history, geography, prayer, tradition, to share faith in places where there is a sacred space to allow Him to find each person where they are at on their life's journey and renew a living relationship. This is how this marvellous world was designed — to present all sorts of connections and resonances to anyone who will pay attention.

We make pilgrimages all the time — to see family or visit an ancestral hometown; to tour the house of a favourite author or artist or spiritual teacher; to revisit a place that touched us profoundly, either with joy or pain. 
Pilgrimage is an event which is grace filled restores faith and fill our hearts with hope.
I wonder what journey will you make in the next month or year? Where can you linger with your mind, memory, emotions, gifts, and sense and connect with the graces God has hidden there just for you?

The best answer I can give is to come away to an out of the way corner of God's creation to where even the most troubles soul can find true peace.
Many have the pilgrimage pencilled in on their calendar year and look forward to the experience- thankfully, I don't have to wait that long to return and receive such grace even if for most of the season I have my shoes on.

Deacon Martin Donnelly
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