A true pilgrimage requires letting go of the very things most people try to hold onto. In seeking after what the soul desires, we become pilgrims with no home but the path the soul would have us follow.

This life is but a pilgrimage.

And thus ever by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life.

When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.

We human beings sometimes steer off in a direction in which we hope to find something a little bit better.

To feel the art of Mont Saint Michel and Chartres we have got to become pilgrims again.

Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.

The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell. In fact, that way of looking at things is what keeps us miserable.

But I have come to realize that the true meaning of pilgrimage is to live free from any attachments, habits, prejudices. Free from physical and mental clutter. Making an outer journey is a reminder of an inner journey, and I discovered that I am always on a pilgrimage. Life is a journey. I want to travel through life as a pilgrim.

This summer, our new journey begins
I sense a slight discomfort in the distance
We saw that place in our dreams
Today, let's find the road there again.

Let us go, for the length of our journey demands it.

We think we want ease and comfort, and of course we do from time to time, but there is something inside us that longs for some calling that requires dedication and sacrifice.

I want to say: have faith, my sister. The place in which we now find ourselves is unavoidable, but soon it will prove insupportable; soon it will prove emotionally unsatisfying, and with that emotional dissatisfaction comes another leap toward understanding, and with that, the automatic courage to press further and be off down that road once again.

We are surrounded by darkness and are afraid to venture out. Unless we do, however, we will not find God, because it is only by leaving what is safe and comfortable to pierce the darkness that we will find the light of God. This is a fitting metaphor for the spiritual pilgrimage that all of us have to make out of our self-contained comfort zone into the wide world of God and God’s people in the Catholic Church.