Join us for the Father Bill Atkinson Pilgrimage
By Will Peterson, Modern Catholic Pilgrimage
Walk with hundreds of fellow Catholics on in support of Father Bill Atkinson’s sainthood and the Father Bill Atkinson Service Corps. Learn more.
St. Augustine knew the tremendous power of pilgrimage. He writes in his Confessions, “By thy gift (donum, the Holy Spirit) we are set on fire, and are borne aloft; we burn, and we are on the way” (Confessions, XIII, 9, 10). We must set out on the way with our hurts burning within us. Indeed, St. Augustine is harkening back to the beautiful line from Luke’s Gospel shared by the disciples who encounter the Risen Christ on the road to Emmaus: “Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32).
Pilgrimage brings us into a personal encounter with Christ and sets us ablaze so that we might be changed through the Holy Spirit and by turn create change within our communities, then ultimately across the world. The impact pilgrimage has on Catholics makes clear that a seemingly audacious claim such as this one is rooted in the deepest truth.
Yet for all this, walked pilgrimage in the Catholic tradition remains an afterthought generally in the U.S. Catholic Church. It is saved for those who can take four weeks to walk across France and northern Spain to Santiago or for those who can afford travel to Rome and the Holy Land. Those are the holy places; those are the sites a select few can visit as pilgrims.
Not so, we cry out at Modern Catholic Pilgrim. Our non-profit aims to deepen faith and build community across the United States through walked pilgrimage in the Catholic tradition, a tradition that dates back to within 100 years of the Resurrection of Christ, I might add. Those pilgrims surely walked every step of the way.
It is our goal to develop a culture of walked pilgrimage right here in the U.S. so that all Catholics might have access to the tremendous physical and spiritual gifts pilgrimage has to offer each and every one of us.
To achieve the goal, we work with others in the Catholic community, like the Father Bill Atkinson Service Corps, to offer experiences of pilgrimage for any and all.
Do you want to walk in pilgrimage with hundreds of fellow Catholics of all abilities in support of Father Bill’s candidate for sainthood?
On September 29, 2022, join us for the Father Bill Atkinson Pilgrimage in Villanova, PA. The 4-mile pilgrimage will begin at Villanova University’s Chapel (on campus) and conclude at Our Lady of the Assumption in Wayne. There, we will have a prayer service and refreshments to celebrate our cause and our community of pilgrims.
Visit here to learn more and register for the event.
We walk with Christ just as those disciples did on the road to Emmaus, and like those disciples, we are forever changed, ready to run back to our everyday life with our hearts set on fire.
