Pilgrimage: An avalanche of gratitude

October 24, 2024

by Peter Finney Jr.

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

One of the many blessings of my work as editor of a Catholic newspaper is to travel occasionally with members of the Archdiocese of New Orleans on pilgrimages to seminal Catholic sites across the world.

It’s a blessing I don’t take for granted, and it’s a feeling shared by the 27 other people who joined the Clarion Herald’s pilgrimage to soak in the Catholic treasures of Italy Oct. 4-15.

In my former life as a sportswriter in New York – when in the days before O.J. Simpson it was still considered kosher to hurdle luggage while running through airports – a crusty, gray-haired New York Jets beat writer once cautioned me: “Never complain in print about the quality of the free press box food or the mattress in your hotel room. The people reading your story would give their first-born son to trade places with you.”

That backhanded expression of gratitude has always resonated with me.

As I sat at an outside cafe on the fringe of the Piazza Navona in Rome, trying to peer through the construction netting that covered yet another statue being polished before the great Jubilee of 2025 begins on the first Sunday of Advent, I reflected on what I was seeing and feeling.

A viewing hole through the screen to the Fountain of the Four Rivers allowed you to see Bernini’s sculpture of his river, with his hand up covering his face, seemingly scared that St. Agnes Church just a few feet away – designed by his bitter rival Borromini – was so poorly constructed it might come tumbling down on his head.

It’s a story that has delighted Romans for years, except Bernini’s fountain was completed a few years before work on the church began.

A brief travelog: We landed in Milan in northern Italy and went immediately to Breschia to view the region where St. Angela Merici lived and founded the Ursuline Sisters. We then traveled farther east to view her childhood home in Desenzano.

Father Gerald Seiler echoed the theme of gratitude that St. Angela herself had expressed after her own pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

“How many people would love to see and hear what we will see and hear over the next 12 days?” Father Seiler asked.

A one-day trip to Venice in northeast Italy was instructive in how a city imperiled by water actually works. There were puddles in the town square in front of St. Mark’s Cathedral, where elevated sidewalks are available to keep your feet dry.

In Assisi, more than a dozen frescoes by Giotto illustrating the life of St. Francis adorn the walls of the upper church at the Basilica of St. Francis. Several other Giotto frescoes in the lower church portray biblical events, such as the Slaughter of the Innocents and the crucifixion of Jesus with the two criminals on each side. Giotto’s painting shows Jesus leaning his head toward the good thief, and the hint of a gold halo beginning to rise behind the repentant man’s head.

In his homily at one of the basilica’s chapels, Father Seiler said St. Francis’ rejection of his father’s wealth is a lesson to anyone whose love of possessions or desire for power or authority rules their lives.

“His radical poverty was amazing,” Father Seiler said, referring to the saint’s decision to free himself from worldly possessions. “He stole some silk of his father’s to give money to the poor. What’s the essence of poverty? It doesn’t just mean it’s geared toward wealth. It’s geared toward internal freedom. It’s evangelical poverty. It’s poverty for a purpose, freeing myself from anything that holds me back.

“We do need to regularly examine our conscience and ask ourselves, ‘What are the material things and sometimes other things – wanting to have things our own way or our pride – what is it that is inhibiting me from being more able to respond to God’s invitation?’”

Our first day in Rome began with a whirlwind trip on the bullet train from Florence. We were still 30 minutes late for the pope’s general audience, but we were there, connected to Pope Francis in a deeper way as he personally greeted hundreds of people seated near him.

The most moving part of the pilgrimage for me was not inside a church but at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which maintains a staggering collection of sacred paintings from the Middle Ages.

Perhaps I was thinking about my own grandchildren when I spotted Bronzino’s Holy Family with the “Young St. John the Baptist” reaching out to hug Jesus (see the picture on page 5).

Two cousins, six months apart, loving each other. You don’t take that for granted.

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