Foreign Lands
A pilgrimage with one’s relations is much different than a pilgrimage alone. Alone, a man hears chiefly the echo of his own footsteps. With his own, he hears loud laughter, but also loud complaint. He is drawn out of himself again and again. It is another reminder that love becomes practical.
The city we journeyed to breathed differently than our homeland. Windows and doors remained open throughout the day. Time seemed less anxious. Meals lingered. People stood close when they spoke. There was a nearness to life, a refusal to retreat from it.
And still, as is so often the case when one travels abroad, the most beautiful thing we encountered were the ancient Catholic churches.
Stone darkened by centuries. Doors worn smooth by generations of hands. Altars rising in gold and quiet flame. The saints watched with solemn patience, their painted eyes steady beneath cracked varnish. Candle smoke lifted like a soft memory toward ceilings carved with impossible care.
I felt something settle in me there.
In the foreign churches, the same liturgy unfolded that unfolds in my parish at home. The same words. The same bowed heads. The same trembling miracle. Oceans shrink before the Eucharist. Languages soften. A man holding his child kneels, and the world grows small enough to fit inside a Host.
I left with images more than ideas. A gilded altar. A shaft of sun across a busy city. A crowd of strangers filled with joy. My humble family gathered in a pew far from Maine, yet somehow closer to home.
The Church travels well. She plants herself in foreign soil and flowers in stone. And wherever she stands, I find that I am less a visitor and more a son.
I see that it is by no means useless to travel, if a man wants to see something new. (Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days)
