The Beginning of our Pilgrimage

This afternoon we had the opportunity to celebrate Mass near the site of the Baptism of our Lord beside the Jordon River. Our celebrant Abbot Thomas, our in-house spiritual father, did a wonderful job of connecting the meaning of the site to our lives. He connected it both to our lives here on pilgrimage in the Holy Land and also to our lives back home.

We started by renewing our Baptismal promises, just as we do each Easter. As the group was finishing the renewal the sun came out from behind the clouds and shone on us for the rest of the Mass. Fr. Thomas used his homily to demonstrate how that renewal of the Baptismal promises is for us and for every Christian a renewal of our role as pilgrim. We here are physically living out the life of a pilgrim, but that physical manifestation will stop when our plane lands back in Chicago under a month from now. Yet our spiritual pilgrimage, and that of all those who have journeyed with us through this blog and in prayer continues past our return. Through Baptism we entered into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and became members of his mystical body, the Church. Our life here is therefore not our own. Nor is our life here on Earth meant to be fulfilled and complete.  We are meant for something greater.  In Baptism we were made pilgrims here on Earth who journey towards the rewards of Heaven. As Vatican Council II taught in Lumen Gentium: we are “[o]n Earth, still as pilgrims in a strange land.”