Our first six days on the Pilgrimage of Hope have been filled with beautiful views, showers, sunshine, laughter and fellowship.

We have covered 90 miles to date. Day 7, our first rest day felt like quite a long time coming! Whilst the other Perpetual pilgrims went home with their hosts I returned home for two days with my family. After 6 days walking our bodies have found a rhythm and are actually feeling better. Even though it is sometimes hard to get moving in the morning we know that the encouragement of others, the promise of what we will see that day, and the pattern of prayer will help us to keep going. It is this experience I have come away reflecting on. Yesterday I walked with a sister of the Poor Clares. She voiced some of what we have been experiencing: “Our bodies are made for movement!” This statement took me back to the homily which sent us out from Cardiff Cathedral on the feast of St Augustine. “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you…” the Priest quoted, going on to say that we, as pilgrims, were expressing something of this restless search.

As we had hoped, every day has brought new pilgrims to join us and each one of them has added gifts and insights to our community on the move. One common motivator towards taking part in the pilgrimage, which many have shared, is a feeling of being at a junction in life. In fact, the frequency of people expressing this state has been really remarkable. Sometimes it is between two ways, with someone asking God: “should I do A, or B?” At other times it is an almost infinite variety of possible directions leading to the question: “What next, God?” What draws the experiences together is a sense of openness to God, a willingness to explore what God wills. 

Reflecting on my own experience I realise that to have joined the pilgrimage will have required courage. To face uncertainty with an openness to God’s guidance is a movement of grace, towards more grace. It may not express a full blooded ‘trust’ in God, it may be a wavering flame of hope but we know that our God will not quench the wavering flame. Sometimes a difficult decision has us running from God, anxious that our discernment is sure to lead us to the very thing we least want to do. We find excuses not to listen, we get busy with other things, we move from one course of action to the next. All of this, counterproductive though it may be, is movement and in spite of ourselves, God often calls to us through the experiences it produces.

When we are confused and bewildered our instinct is not always towards God, or away from God. We can become muscular and defensive. Figuratively you might think of curling up in a ball; all the vulnerable underbelly hidden away. Traumatic life events often leave us this way; we’ve been hurt and want to avoid further pain. It takes courage to begin to move. Our first movement may not be towards God but it does exhibit a godly virtue – courage. Courage, unlike hope, is a cardinal virtue – in other words a virtue which we can develop through the practice of our faith. We begin to do the things we can. We attend Mass, Confession, we spend time before the Blessed Sacrament, we do works of charity, we step out on a pilgrimage. These things can help us to show courage in the face of adversity. Courage can grow. Courage can help to lead us to a state of openness to God. God can do the rest. He can pour the theological virtue of hope into our hearts.

A memory from the first days of the pilgrimage which continues to make me smile is one of my fellow pilgrims looking down at his feet and saying, with a grim determination: “Time to put the boots back on!” There are certainly moments when it is a challenge, just as, in our spiritual lives, it is sometimes a struggle to move forwards. However once our feet are in our boots and we have put one foot in front of another for an hour or so, new horizons open up and we are changed. We perpetual pilgrims on St Matthew’s way, are all conscious that we are meeting people taking brave steps in their lives and we are privileged to do so. Each of us, in our parish communities, is also walking in faith alongside people who are standing at their own crossroads looking for God’s guidance. It is part of our call to pray for them and to be part of a church which moves. 

Joe Northam was a perpetual pilgrim on the Pilgrimage of Hope and is a parishioner of Our Lady of Good Counsel and St Gregory the Great, Bearwood, Birmingham

This post was first published on the website of the Archdiocese of Birmingham.