How the Pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres mirrors our journey to heaven.
This Article was originally published in the Angelicum Magazine 'La Parola' December 2020 Edition under the title 'The Pilgrimage, Mirror of our Spiritual Journey'.
There will be pain. When I first came across the Pentecost Chartres Pilgrimage, organised by the Association Notre-Dame de Chrétienté, this was the constant refrain. This will be a painful pilgrimage. The route will take you over more than one hundred kilometres of French countryside in three days, with most of the walking done on the first day. There will be little by way of food and drink unless you bring it yourself, and the ground will be uneven. It may rain and your entire body will ache. There will be pain. In my hubris, I thought that all of these video accounts were just soft American college students being melodramatic. Oh, how wrong I was! By the end of day one my feet were sore, my hip felt like it was going to fall out of its socket, I was limping far behind the rest of my group, and I was about ready to collapse less than 100 feet from the first campsite. By the middle of day two, in the sweltering heat of Pentecost Sunday, I forgot to drink enough water and came perilously close to heatstroke. I’m not sure I’d have lasted the day but for the intervention of a very kind woman on the Clergy assistance desk driving me after Mass to the next stop along the walk and allowing me an hour of rest and rehydration before re-joining my group in relatively decent shape. Pain I was promised. Pain I was given.
The reader might think I would be in no hurry to repeat the experience. You might think that by the end of day one I was questioning why I was doing this to myself. You might think that by the middle of day two I was thinking ‘never again!’ You would be right. Yet, sitting comfortably on a train speeding back towards Paris from Chartres, all I could think was ‘I can’t wait until next time!’ You might, at this point, think me some strange lover of pain, a glutton for punishment, but it isn’t about the pain. In fact, after that low-point on the second day I rallied. The walking became easier, the pilgrimage more worthwhile. As we approached the city of Chartres and saw the Cathedral spires piercing the horizon across the wheat fields, I realised that I had found, in this pilgrimage, a model of the pilgrimage each of us makes in our earthly lives. The final Solemn High Mass in the great gothic Cathedral of Chartres, with the strains of the Missa de Angelis ringing through the high stone vault, was like a foretaste of that great heavenly banquet, with all aches and pains washed away in that awesome moment. Of course, descending the hill to the station, and joining the throng waiting for the train, all the aches and pains returned and the exhaustion set in. Even so, I look forward to the next opportunity to take a long and painful walk to Chartres.
It is a not uncommon adage in the Italian Church or the Roman Universities that the Church is ‘in cammino’ - on a journey. This journey, the spiritual journey from our earthly lives, marred by suffering and death, to perfect happiness with God in the beatific vision is what we seek to replicate and call to mind when we go on pilgrimage. We figuratively go up to the New Jerusalem when we go to the holy places. For many centuries, before commercial air-travel, these lesser pilgrimages mirrored the great pilgrimage that is the core of our human existence. A person set out from their home and began a long journey to the holy place just as the initiate to the faith sets out from the place of sin and death and begins the journey to the true holy place. Along the way they were beset by difficulties, bandits, inclement weather, their own frailty, and the like, just as the trials and cares of the world and the burdens of sin weigh us down on our journey back to the Father. The Chartres pilgrimage, with its rigours and trials, is a mirror of this spiritual journey, and an echo of the pilgrimages of our forebearers in faith.
The pilgrimage begins and ends with Mass. In an ordinary year, the journey goes from Notre Dame in Paris to Notre Dame in Chartres. Last year, owing to the devastating fire that had so badly damaged Notre-Dame de Paris, our first Solemn High Mass was celebrated instead at Saint Sulpice, a worthy alternative. Immediately after Mass, the ‘Ite Missa Est’ still ringing in our ears, we set out from the Basilica, joined our groups, and began to march. The pilgrimage’s beginning with Mass is the first mirror of our lifelong pilgrimage. The Mass incites, nourishes, and drives the pilgrimage just as the Holy Sacrifice incites, nourishes, and drives our spiritual journey. The Mass’ central role is witnessed to each morning of the pilgrimage. Some time between four and six in the morning each day, a throng of priests arrives at a white tent to celebrate their daily Mass. Beside them is a second throng, young boys and men from the Boy Scout troops that make the pilgrimage with us, waiting eagerly to serve the Mass for these foreign priests. The Church teaches that the Mass is the source, summit, and centre of our lives of Faith; the Chartres pilgrimage realises this truth beautifully, and it is witnessed to by these boys who rouse themselves from sleep to serve at the Holy Sacrifice.
The second mirror we might find is in the experience of community; we walk together in Chapters whose members are of our own separate nations, and over the three day crucible of physical pain and prayer you cannot help but become friends. The pilgrimage to Chartres, fed and sustained by the Mass, is also fed and sustained by the support and encouragement of our fellow travellers. The path would be hard indeed, and near impossible, without the support of our Chapters. The mix of young and old, experienced and novice pilgrims, who walk together, pray together, and buoy up each other’s spirits along the route. I was blessed to have walked with the St Alban’s Chapter, the youth of the English Latin Mass Society, guided by a group of English diocesan priests and Franciscan friars (from my own diocese of Portsmouth). The need for the companionship of the like-minded, and the unity of a common goal, is so central in our earthly pilgrimage. We need the strength that a harmonious community provides, yet so often we can focus overmuch on the individual. We begin to talk about the Church and the faith in an individualistic and possessive manner; my prayer life, my experience, my salvation, instead of the communal. On the road to Chartres, the individual cannot hope to keep up the pace, or even keep walking, without the help and company of friends. The individualistic mindset disappears. It is not my pilgrimage but our pilgrimage.
My advice to the reader, in summary: if you are able to go on the pilgrimage to Chartres, do it! Go! There will be pain but go anyway. Go heeding the words of the Protestant hymnodist John Bunyan:
He who would valiant be, 'gainst all disaster,
let him in constancy
follow the Master.
There's no discouragement
shall make him once relent
his first avowed intent
to be a pilgrim.
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