Originally published April 7, 2006

From the fourth century until today, Christians have created things to do together, rituals, in order to experience for themselves the great simplicity of redemption. These rituals are meant to recur, they are the stones of an archway which, once built, is there to use, to go in and out by prayer and so to find pasture. We do not want to be rebuilding a different-shaped arch, however entrancing, but to use what we have, what we are used to, in order to enter into the real business of prayer. So the ceremonies of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday, are there to be used, and this is a physical matter, a use of the body, so that all of ourselves will know. Intellectual apprehension of truth is all very well, and indeed for some it is enough; but for most of us, we live in a half-light, neither awake nor asleep, wanting to understand but not quite able to think it through; we need to be there to act it out, to participate. This is in no way an alternative or lesser kind of theologizing; by both ways we come to the central theme of redemption, the flesh-taking of Christ in which he returns to the Father and takes us unto the dynamic life of the Trinity which is the ultimate procession, and it is by physical processions that we can learn to become part of that reality.

The last days of Holy Week provide a simple way of allowing the body, the flesh, to learn theological truth by doing and being in earthly processions. Palm Sunday’s procession is about how to do the basic human thing — to walk, to take one step, just to be able to do the next step, and to remain with that doing, not seeing a much quicker way to get there by a bus, a train, a ship, a plane, which are quicker than our feet; we are always dashing through in order to be somewhere else, and when we are there then we think we will begin. But the procession is a slow, corporate event, the pace set by the weakest and slowest. Like growing, a procession is something done for its own sake, and in doing it we are becoming what we are not, going by a way we do not understand, for a purpose that is God’s, not ours, in ways that are too simple for our sight. We will never of course be ready on earth for the full “procession” which is the dynamism of the life of love which is the Trinity, since we are broken human beings, with limited sight; but given our consent, God can lead us by the flesh he created, to understand and apprehend the image of God which he placed within us. All that is needed is to give a minute assent, however impatient and grudging, and then just to do it. A procession can be seen as a sacrament, “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” In the same way that we read through the letter of the Scriptures to the inner truth, so we understand more by walking than we know; it is the work and gift of God.

Meditation upon the processions of Holy Week is rightly undertaken at its commencement. In the early church, for the first three days of Holy Week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the custom was to have only plain readings from Scripture; later, what was read each day were the separate accounts of the Passion. Then as now, these were days of stillness and silence when all were to be prepared, emptied, turned towards the Saviour’s great work. After the signs we gave ourselves during Lent of being ready to become empty by giving things up and therefore more free, now that desire will be put to the test. There is nothing now to be done or thought. It is the end of Lent, the pause before the great mystery of Redemption. In this pause, it is possible to reflect on these three processions, on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter night, as ways into the great procession which is the life of Trinity, and this is not just for ourselves here and now. First we walk with so many others from the past, joined with them by our present actions. We receive life from the hands of the dead to live it out ourselves and pass it on to others, and that is true tradition. We are walking with our friends. And second, we do not do this for ourselves only, but for the whole of creation; insofar as one small portion of humanity which is us assents to the love of God, so the whole of creation becomes part of redeeming work.

VIRGINIA RAGUIN, Professor, College of the Holy Cross: Pilgrimages are undertaken because people want to move beyond their normal, mundane life. They can be a one-day pilgrimage, from one town to another town, on a particular feast day. They can be a weekend. They can be actually years.

In the past, pilgrimage really was vital in Christian religion, certainly in Muslim and in Buddhist. Only Islam requires the pilgrimage — the Hajj — so that it is one of the five pillars of Islam. However, that is nuanced: only if you are financially and physically able.

On pilgrimage, people experience the same activities; therefore, it produces a sense of camaraderie, a sense of sharing.

Constantly we see that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So that all three religions use handy objects to help focus people’s thoughts; and prayer beads are some of the most ubiquitous. Prayer rugs that were brought by people, especially on the Hajj, where they could kneel down and then pray during the days of their journey. Qur’ans, small ones, were often carried with people.

One of the most common kinds of souvenirs is absolutely the simplest: stones. Stones or dirt from the ground. People who have been on the Hajj and who have engaged in one of the rituals — which is the ‘stoning of Satan’– invariably, they bring some of those stones home with them. You also have Muslims with clay from Karbala, or other holy places, pressed together, that they then use in prayer.

Although the doctrinal core of these religions differ, the practices that they use to help focus believers onto what is important, they are the same.

Often in these three religions, you have an experience of circumambulation, walking around a site. The Ka’ba is circumambulated during the performance of the Hajj — people walk seven times around this small building. Circumambulation, either of mountain or of a Stupa or another holy site in the Buddhist religion is one of the most common ways of making a pilgrimage. And, for Christians, certainly they’ll circulate around the icons sometimes, or the statue, that they are venerating. People look for this physical activity that helps them find an interior focus. Physical hardship can be transformative.

One of the things the Christians, the Buddhists, and the Muslims constantly come back to is humility. They make the effort, but God grants the grace.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Martin Sheen says “The Way” is ultimately about a journey—a journey of the spirit as well as the flesh.

WOMAN (in film clip): So what is it, on a pilgrimage to change your life?

TOM (in film clip): Something like that.

MARTIN SHEEN: All of our journeys are personal, deeply personal, and they’re all mysterious, you know. We’re all looking for that transcendence, but we’re looking to each other, and we identify with each other. I think the genius of God is choosing to dwell where we are least likely to look, within the depths of our own being.

DANIEL (in film clip): If I don’t have your blessing that’s fine, but don’t judge this. Don’t judge me.

DANIEL (in film clip): You don’t choose a life, Dad. You live one.

LAWTON: The story centers around Sheen’s character, Tom, a doctor who has a strained relationship with his free-spirited son, Daniel. Daniel dies in a freak storm in Europe, and when Tom goes to collect his remains, he discovers his son had been walking the famed 500-mile pilgrimage across Spain known as El Camino de Santiago—The Way of Saint James.

MAN (in film clip): We believers are told that the remains of Saint James, the apostle of Jesus, are interned there, and so we make pilgrimage. This is what your son, Daniel, was doing.

LAWTON: Grief-stricken, Tom decides to finish the pilgrimage himself, sprinkling Daniel’s ashes as he goes. Along the way he meets three other pilgrims, and together they search for healing and ultimate meaning in their lives. The story was inspired by a trip Sheen took to the Camino several years ago, although he drove instead of walking. He came home and told Estevez they needed to do a project around it. Estevez wrote the script, casting his father, who is a practicing Catholic, against type.

FATHER FRANK (in film clip): Are you a Catholic?

FATHER FRANK: No, please take it. There are a lot of lapsed Catholics on the Camino, kid. Besides…

EMILIO ESTEVEZ: There cannot be conversion if you already start out being devout. Let’s open the film where you’re not even interested in praying with your parish priest, right? He’s reached bottom now. He’s a widower, he’s now lost his son. He’s totally alone in the world, he’s without family. His idea of community is, you know, playing golf with his fellow doctors at the country club, and so I needed him to be at that place so that by the time this character arrives at the end of the film, there is a transformation. He is awake. He is converted.

LAWTON: Sheen says his Catholic faith was strengthened by seeing and experiencing the rituals of the Camino pilgrimage and the Mass that takes place at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela when the pilgrims finally arrive.

SHEEN: The botafumiero, you know, the incense ceremony at the end of the Mass, brings out a deeply moving exaltation from the congregation. They burst into applause, and many of them burst into tears. And, you know, the incense is an offering to God, you know, but it’s also an ancient tradition and ritual, and we don’t have a whole lot of ritual in our lives. You know, we’ve lost more and more of ritual just within our own family structures—evening meals, evening, you know, family prayer. So I think people are—they respond to ritual. It’s something that you can get reconnected with, in a way. You know, they’ve been doing that since the Middle Ages.

LAWTON: And you had mentioned earlier just with pilgrimage, the sense of the physical, the flesh and the spiritual coming together. How did you see that, especially there?

SHEEN: Well, you know, pilgrimage is kind of a demanding struggle. It must be to take you out of your comfort zone. So you go to a place, whether it’s Mecca or Santiago or Tibet or Rome, Jerusalem, wherever it is—you’re seeking something, and you’re going to have to do it on your own. Nobody can carry your pack. Nobody can walk in your shoes. You must do it alone, but you cannot do it without community.

LAWTON: The difficulty of the journey, he says, touches the soul.

SHEEN: You begin the journey within. Now the real pilgrimage begins, because now you have to open up the dungeons and jail cells of your heart and release all of the things that have been keeping you from being yourself, keeping you from, you know, discovering who you really are. So you let go of your resentments and your anger and your jealousies and your hatreds and all the dark parts, and eventually you’ll become free, you’ll become yourself, and you’ll become part of your extended family, which is community.

ESTEVEZ: And sometimes that family and those people you pick up along the Camino are not necessarily people you would choose. They choose you in many ways, and yet those are the people that we sometimes learn the greatest lessons from.

LAWTON: Estevez describes his own spiritual situation as still evolving.

ESTEVEZ: I’m what my mother likes to call a work in progress. My parents—I grew up in a house where my parents differed on what religion was all about. She was raised Southern Baptist, wasn’t allowed to see movies or dance. It was very, very strict. He was raised a devout Catholic.

SHEEN: We sang and danced all the time.

ESTEVEZ: So as a young boy—I was baptized Catholic, but all I heard were arguments about religion. There was no talk about spirituality. So I sort of had to take a step back from that.

LAWTON: He says this film has opened him up to new spiritual possibilities.

ESTEVEZ: I think it’s an example, a shining example of where I’m at right now in terms of my spiritual path, the path I’m on.

SHEEN: Are you saying there’s a chance you could become a Catholic?

ESTEVEZ: I’m just saying there’s a possibility of everything. I’m open to the possibility of absolutely everything.

SHEEN: Buddhist even?

ESTEVEZ: I said everything.

SHEEN: Okay, I’m just asking. We don’t get this opportunity.

JACK (in film clip): So far, there are some 15 percent say they are doing it for health. Fewer than 5 percent say they are actually looking for a miracle.

TOM (in film clip): Miracles are in short supply these days, Jack.

LAWTON: Despite the setting and themes, the film’s religious messages are subtle.  Estevez says he didn’t want to hit people over the head. But they have been marketing “The Way” at special screenings for Catholic groups—and for evangelical audiences, too.

ESTEVEZ: People will stand up and begin to witness and give testimony, and probably 60 percent of the Q and As really have no Qs. They basically just want to stand up and say thank you for making this film, and this movie touched me because…

LAWTON: What’s been the reaction of the church, the Catholic Church?

ESTEVEZ: Amazing. Yeah, amazing. Across the board. And it started in Spain. You know, we screened the film in, opened the film in Santiago. We were there for the pope’s Mass last October, and then two days later we screened the film for the archbishop of Santiago and the government of Galicia, and we were sitting in a little tiny box in a 200-year-old theater, and we were sweating because we were so nervous about how they would react.

SHEEN: They were the first audience.

ESTEVEZ: Right, and so the archbishop turned to my father after the screening and hugged him and said, “This film is a gift. Thank you.”

SHEEN: They were very relieved, basically.

ESTEVEZ: And so were we.

LAWTON: They say they hope their audiences get as much out of this project as they did.

SHEEN: Whatever the audience takes away is going to be their gift, if you will. We offer this gift. If they accept it, we’re delighted.

ESTEVEZ: We don’t impose our Camino on anyone, but we say get outside of yourself and join us on this journey.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

“Part of what’s in a pilgrim’s heart is this longing for more in life and the idea of being on a journey,” says Randy Haycock, a chaplain at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who leads monthly pilgrimages to Washington National Cathedral for Walter Reed’s Warrior Transition Brigade. Produced and edited by Patti Jette Hanley.

CHAPLAIN RANDY HAYCOCK (Walter Reed Army Medical Center): Certainly the idea of pilgrimage is common to many faith traditions, as well as just to human experience. Part of the pilgrimage experience, and a lot of what we do at Walter Reed, is to help people again reconnect with what it means to be a safe, whole, healthy human being.

Speaking in Cathedral: Just relax and try and be in the present moment.

One of the questions that a lot of warriors have when they come to Walter Reed is what’s my life for? They’re looking for a sense of purpose and meaning, and that’s sort of the idea behind the life journey exercise at the beginning is to just get them to stop and reflect a little bit about their life. It’s become for me a kind of metaphor for life itself—that really we’re all on journeys and learning how to deal with things like loss and the horror of engaging in war.

Speaking in Cathedral: Many warriors tell me that they sometimes feel guilty that their friend had died and they hadn’t.

I think that’s part of what’s in a pilgrim’s heart. There’s this kind of longing for more in life, and the idea of being on a journey with someone else is something that people get well in military life, because your life depends on the people around you. You gotta know people have your back.

Speaking in Cathedral: We’ll walk this way and go into the War Memorial Chapel.

The War Memorial Chapel where they have the opportunity to talk about how their own journey intersected with the journey of their friend and basically just to do some grief work, and telling the story is an important part of healing in cases of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Pilgrim-Soldier: It was like losing a brother, losing, you know, a family member, and that’s just always kind of haunted me.

Thousands of people have come into that little piece of geography to remember their war dead. So I think there is a kind of energy field here that, you know, I could come and just bring soldiers into that space and say “blah blah blah” and something would still happen simply because of the prayers and tears and, you know, heartfelt emotions that others have let loose in that place.

The next step is to gather around the High Altar, and then using that [Eric] Clapton song [“Tears in Heaven”] — there couldn’t be a better song written for warriors, because many of them feel like what’s the sense of going on?

Speaking in Cathedral: We’ll call off the names of those we have come to remember…

Pilgrim-Soldier: Lance Cpl. Joseph Jose Gutierrez…

Concluding the way the army ordinarily does with coming to attention, calling off their names, sounding taps helps them to make a letting go of their friend so that they can get on the with the rest of their life.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Tourism is big business in the Holy Land. Millions of Christians comes here for the chance to retrace the footsteps of Christ. Among their most sacred rituals is to be baptized in the Jordan River.

BRUCE STIBINSKI: Being baptized for the first time in the Jordan River, which is where Jesus was baptized, was just awesome. Words cannot explain how I felt.

SARA AUTUNES: I feel very freed. I feel at peace. My heart feels like it’s been opened up. I can’t put it into words.

GIFTY QUAINOO: No words to express why I feel very—I feel very happy and free, free.

DE SAM LAZARO: What few of these tourists know is that unlike their faith, the river itself is in very poor shape. The immersions take place in a two-mile stretch of the Jordan, about the only place now considered safe enough for human contact. For much of the rest of its 140-mile journey, the Jordan has been reduced to a trickle as it meanders through a region riven by war and tension. Gidon Bromberg is with the environmental group Friends of the Earth Middle East.

GIDON BROMBERG (Friends of the Earth Middle East): Due to the conflict, due to the competition between the parties, between Israel, Jordan, Syria, Israel grabs half the water and a little more than a quarter is grabbed by Syria. A a little bit under a quarter is taken by Jordan and the demise is that 98 percent of the historical flow of the Jordan today no longer flows. We’re left with something around 2 percent, and this is not fresh water. This is a mixture of sewerage water, agricultural runoff, saline water. What’s left is this very, very sad sight of a river that is holy to half of humanity.

DE SAM LAZARO:And one that no longer flows into another fabled body of water.

BROMBERG: The Dead Sea is dropping by three feet every year. That’s from my hip down.

DE SAM LAZARO: Only the ruins are left of a hotel veranda from where tourists use to stick their toes into the Dead Sea. Today the shoreline has receded more than a half s mile away. From their respective sides, Jordan and Israel further drain the Dead Sea as they mine it for potash, a valuable fertilizer.

BROMBERG: At the moment our governments are trying to do absolutely everything. We’re trying to maximize agriculture, we’re trying to maximize mineral extraction, and we’re trying to attract as many tourists as we can. Well, the two don’t—the three do not always correspond, do not neatly benefit each other.

DE SAM LAZARO: Israel is a mostly urban nation, but it also has developed a thriving farm sector, and even though it is efficient and recycles 70 percent of its water, agriculture is a huge consumer of water in one of the world’s driest places—one made even more so by several recent years of drought. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Lake Kinneret, the biblical Sea of Galilee, says environmentalist Bromberg.

BROMBERG: I should be completely under water. The Sea of Galilee behind us here should be five meters higher in depth.

DE SAM LAZARO: Even though it is much lower, the lake remains a major source of fresh water for Israel and also to preserve a pristine stretch of the lower river Jordan for the Christian pilgrims.

BROMBERG: In order to keep just a small stretch of some 3 kilometers of the Jordan healthy because of baptism that takes place here and because of needs of agriculture, the water authority has built a dam wall here, and it’s pumping water from the mouth of the river just for a few kilometers.

DE SAM LAZARO: Near the baptismal site, Bromberg’s group recently organized what it calls a “big jump” with Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian mayors and other officials, hoping to draw attention to the stresses on the historic river, a cause that they say transcends regional boundaries, even if those boundaries are at the heart of so much conflict.

NADER AL KHATEEB (Friends of the Earth Middle East): We know the Jordan River means a lot, not only for the region. It is for the whole world, for humanity. The Jordan is very important for the three religions. We know what does it mean for the Christianity, the baptism site, and it is a dream of every Christian to be baptized in healthy water, not in polluted water like its nowadays.

Officials standing in Jordan River: One, two, three—jump!

DE SAM LAZARO: Even as the big media splash brought hordes of reporters and cameras, the baptisms and the prayers of pilgrims went on undisturbed. Pastor Daniel Santos, who organizes regular trips for congregants of his church outside London, had not heard about the river’s pollution problems, and since this part is not affected he was unconcerned.

PASTOR DANIEL SANTOS: We’re not much in it and now because we came here for a spiritual purpose.

DE SAM LAZARO: So it doesn’t particularly bother you.

SANTOS: Yeah, because we also don’t take much time here.

DE SAM LAZARO: That comes as a relief to tourist operators here, worried that the publicity might drive away business. They point out that Israeli authorities regularly test the water to ensure it’s healthy. Gidon Bromberg says the publicity has led to the construction of sewage treatment plants in Israel and Jordan and greater awareness of the Jordan in parts of the river away from the tourist sites.

BROMBERG: We need to be striking a balance, a fair balance of sharing water amongst people—Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians—and a fairer balance of sharing waters between people and nature. And we’re going in that direction, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

DE SAM LAZARO: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro.

CHAPLAIN RANDY HAYCOCK (Walter Reed Army Medical Center): Certainly the idea of pilgrimage is common to many faith traditions, as well as just a human experience. Part of the pilgrimage experience, and a lot of what we do at Walter Reed, is to help people again reconnect with what it means to be a safe, whole, healthy human being.

Speaking in Cathedral: Just relax and try and be in the present moment.

One of the questions that a lot of warriors have when they come to Walter Reed is what’s my life for? They’re looking for a sense of purpose and meaning, and that’s sort of the idea behind the life journey exercise at the beginning is to just get them to stop and reflect a little bit about their life. It’s become for me a kind of metaphor for life itself—that really we’re all on journeys and learning how to deal with things like loss and the horror of engaging in war.

Speaking in Cathedral: Many warriors tell me that they sometimes feel guilty that their friend had died and they hadn’t.

I think that’s part of what’s in a pilgrim’s heart. There’s this kind of longing for more in life, and the idea of being on a journey with someone else is something that people get well in military life, because your life depends on the people around you. You gotta know people have your back.

Speaking in Cathedral: We’ll walk this way and go into the War Memorial Chapel.

The War Memorial Chapel where they have the opportunity to talk about how their own journey intersected with the journey of their friend and basically just to do some grief work, and telling the story is an important part of healing in cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Pilgrim-Soldier: It was like losing a brother, losing, you know, a family member, and that’s just always kind of haunted me.

Thousands of people have come into that little piece of geography to remember their war dead. So I think there is a kind of energy field here that, you know, I could come and just bring soldiers into that space and say “blah blah blah” and something would still happen simply because of the prayers and tears and, you know, heartfelt emotions that others have let loose in that place.

The next step is to gather around the High Altar, and then using that [Eric] Clapton song [“Tears in Heaven”] — there couldn’t be a better song written for warriors, because many of them feel like what’s the sense of going on?

Speaking in Cathedral: We’ll call off the names of those we have come to remember…

Pilgrim-Soldier: Lance Cpl. Joseph Jose Gutierrez…

Concluding the way the army ordinarily does with coming to attention, calling off their name, sounding taps helps them to make a letting go of their friend so that they can get on the with the rest of their life.

Originally broadcast June 19, 2009

FRED DE SAM LAZARO (guest anchor): Earlier this month in France an annual event took place that has been described as perhaps the largest public expression of traditional Catholicism in the world. It is a three-day, 72-mile pilgrimage from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to the cathedral at Chartres. A history professor from New York City who has made the pilgrimage several times describes the experience.

Dr. JOHN RAO (Associate Professor of History, St. John’s University, New York): My name is John Rao. I’m associate professor of history at St. John’s University. I’ve done the pilgrimage to Chartres about six or seven times. The regular preparations involve making sure you’ve got the right footwear more than anything else. Being a New Yorker and not owning a car, I walk a lot.

You’ve started from a point, Notre Dame, which has this extraordinary impact on you because of its beauty and because of the fervor of the people praying and singing in it. And what the architecture of the cathedral and the light passing through the windows does is it makes it clear that God, the Father of lights, provides us a world which was incredibly more diverse and beautiful than anyone might think.

The route to Chartres begins the first morning mostly in Paris and the surrounding areas.

When we’re talking about the people who make up the pilgrimage, the first thing to note is that probably about 70 percent of them are young people — people in their late teens and in their early 20s. There are people from all over Europe. The majority are French, of course, but from every country that I can imagine, from Africa, from Asia, from the United States.

A lot of these chapters are groups that stick together at home, and they have a lot of their own particular songs, which are not specifically religious but more focused on just subjects involving history and culture of the country as well.

It’s so clear, it’s so sunny. By the afternoon people are going to start suffering from heat. The big thing for people who haven’t done it before is to get them to drink water.

The Mass on the first day is usually in a field. The Masses that are held during the pilgrimage and at Chartres itself are the traditional Latin Mass. In other words, the liturgy before the reforms that are associated with Pope Paul VI.

You have, perhaps, certainly at least 100 priests who are hearing confessions during all of this, and they’re scattered all through these lunch scenes and in the woods and in little deserted areas.

Their Catholicism is a fervent Catholicism, traditional in the sense that it’s very much focused on a spirituality that uses the traditional liturgy of the Church, takes that very seriously, the traditional devotions, the traditional Latin liturgy. And then they have to give communion to as many as 10,000 people.

The pilgrimage began in the Middle Ages. Chartres was always an important place and had great meaning in the life of the Christian world in the kingdom of France in the Middle Ages. Joan of Arc made this pilgrimage. Louis XIV, I believe, made the pilgrimage. After Vatican II there were — there was a lot of confusion that developed in Catholic believers’ minds about what they ought to be doing, what they ought not to be doing, whether they were putting too much of an emphasis on particular practices that somehow or other had become outmoded, and as a consequence things like pilgrimages ended up suffering. It resumed precisely due to the concerns of groups that, by this point, were calling themselves traditionalists who wanted to commit themselves to maintaining practices which they felt to be, spiritually, extremely beneficial.

The second day of the pilgrimage, the Mass is in the woods — same kind of Mass, beautiful music, priests hearing confession.

MICHAEL MATT (speaking to pilgrims): My name is Michael Matt. I’m the head of the American contingent, the American chapter for the Chartres pilgrimage.

It’s definitely a youth movement. They very easily, in many instances, can really tap into this whole tradition, the foundation of the Catholic faith. It doesn’t matter that they don’t understand every word of the Latin. They’re attracted to the centrality of the liturgy. They’re attracted to the rubric and the ritual and to the idea of suffering for what you believe in.

PILGRIM: Can you smell the grass? Can you feel your feet? This is the real world, especially when you put rosaries into it, traditional Masses, allegiance to the Holy Father. This is the real world that we’re all seeking for.

Dr. RAO: The entire pilgrimage is of an impact that’s hard to describe. A pilgrimage is a microcosm of what life is. Life, from a Catholic standpoint, is a pilgrimage—from birth to death, from our birth to our ultimate, eternal experience with God—and what the pilgrimage does is it takes you, for a short space of time, to a time out of time. You’re out of your ordinary daily experiences. All of the ordinary things that bother one during the course of a day just disappear, even to the point in a physical way that, after a couple of days, you don’t care what you look like.

PILGRIM: I’m pretty tired, but other than that it’s invigorating. Spiritually lifted, that’s for sure. It’s amazing to be with tons of Catholics — thousands of them.

Dr. RAO: I find myself thinking about everything that I ought to do in life — everything that I have done wrong. I go back through all of the experiences of my life and where I thought that I should have done something better.

The third day, the last day of the pilgrimage, everyone is exuberant, because if you’d made it to that last day you know you’re going to make it. You know you’re really going to make it. You’re in forests, you’re in fields — endless, endless fields. You at least get to see, after a certain point, the spires of Chartres in front of you. It can become particularly grueling because it takes a long time for that spire in the distance to really get truly bigger.

There was more of a, maybe a penitential spirit yesterday, but today it’s joy. It’s just joy. When you get onto the roads, in the real suburbs of Chartres, then you can see it looming more and more, and then you begin this walk, which is a last torturous walk up this long shaded path that takes you up into the town itself. That’s when you see it there, you know, in all of its glory.

What most stirs me up is the fact that you’ve managed to do it. You’ve managed to do it. You’ve finished it. When we’re at Chartres we have a solemn High Mass, and all of this is surrounded with a great deal of ritual and ceremony.

You could see 10,000, or 15,000 fervent Catholics, most of them young people, deeply committed to this traditional rite of Mass. These people who are part of the pilgrimage, and then who finish the pilgrimage with us as well, their spiritual fervor is accompanied with, again, a great love for music. By the time it’s over, the feeling of exaltation is hard to describe, just hard to describe.

The newer generation found what that old rite had to offer — spiritually satisfying, spiritually uplifting, and in a way that you could see almost in no other event that took place in the annual life of the church. The entire three days is emotional.

What to do in the future? This spirit of pilgrimage should be continued on the day-to-day basis for the rest of your life.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO (guest anchor): Earlier this month in France an annual event took place that has been described as perhaps the largest public expression of traditional Catholicism in the world. It is a three-day, 72-mile pilgrimage from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to the cathedral at Chartres. A history professor from New York City who has made the pilgrimage several times describes the experience.

Dr. JOHN RAO (Associate Professor of History, St. John’s University, New York): My name is John Rao. I’m associate professor of history at St. John’s University. I’ve done the pilgrimage to Chartres about six or seven times. The regular preparations involve making sure you’ve got the right footwear more than anything else. Being a New Yorker and not owning a car, I walk a lot.

You’ve started from a point, Notre Dame, which has this extraordinary impact on you because of its beauty and because of the fervor of the people praying and singing in it. And what the architecture of the cathedral and the light passing through the windows does is it makes it clear that God, the Father of lights, provides us a world which was incredibly more diverse and beautiful than anyone might think.

The route to Chartres begins the first morning mostly in Paris and the surrounding areas.

When we’re talking about the people who make up the pilgrimage, the first thing to note is that probably about 70 percent of them are young people — people in their late teens and in their early 20s. There are people from all over Europe. The majority are French, of course, but from every country that I can imagine, from Africa, from Asia, from the United States.

A lot of these chapters are groups that stick together at home, and they have a lot of their own particular songs, which are not specifically religious but more focused on just subjects involving history and culture of the country as well.

It’s so clear, it’s so sunny. By the afternoon people are going to start suffering from heat. The big thing for people who haven’t done it before is to get them to drink water.

The Mass on the first day is usually in a field. The Masses that are held during the pilgrimage and at Chartres itself are the traditional Latin Mass. In other words, the liturgy before the reforms that are associated with Pope Paul VI.

You have, perhaps, certainly at least 100 priests who are hearing confessions during all of this, and they’re scattered all through these lunch scenes and in the woods and in little deserted areas.

Their Catholicism is a fervent Catholicism, traditional in the sense that it’s very much focused on a spirituality that uses the traditional liturgy of the Church, takes that very seriously, the traditional devotions, the traditional Latin liturgy. And then they have to give communion to as many as 10,000 people.

The pilgrimage began in the Middle Ages. Chartres was always an important place and had great meaning in the life of the Christian world in the kingdom of France in the Middle Ages. Joan of Arc made this pilgrimage. Louis XIV, I believe, made the pilgrimage. After Vatican II there were — there was a lot of confusion that developed in Catholic believers’ minds about what they ought to be doing, what they ought not to be doing, whether they were putting too much of an emphasis on particular practices that somehow or other had become outmoded, and as a consequence things like pilgrimages ended up suffering. It resumed precisely due to the concerns of groups that, by this point, were calling themselves traditionalists who wanted to commit themselves to maintaining practices which they felt to be, spiritually, extremely beneficial.

The second day of the pilgrimage, the Mass is in the woods — same kind of Mass, beautiful music, priests hearing confession.

MICHAEL MATT (speaking to pilgrims): My name is Michael Matt. I’m the head of the American contingent, the American chapter for the Chartres pilgrimage.

It’s definitely a youth movement. They very easily, in many instances, can really tap into this whole tradition, the foundation of the Catholic faith. It doesn’t matter that they don’t understand every word of the Latin. They’re attracted to the centrality of the liturgy. They’re attracted to the rubric and the ritual and to the idea of suffering for what you believe in.

PILGRIM: Can you smell the grass? Can you feel your feet? This is the real world, especially when you put rosaries into it, traditional Masses, allegiance to the Holy Father. This is the real world that we’re all seeking for.

Dr. RAO: The entire pilgrimage is of an impact that’s hard to describe. A pilgrimage is a microcosm of what life is. Life, from a Catholic standpoint, is a pilgrimage—from birth to death, from our birth to our ultimate, eternal experience with God—and what the pilgrimage does is it takes you, for a short space of time, to a time out of time. You’re out of your ordinary daily experiences. All of the ordinary things that bother one during the course of a day just disappear, even to the point in a physical way that, after a couple of days, you don’t care what you look like.

PILGRIM: I’m pretty tired, but other than that it’s invigorating. Spiritually lifted, that’s for sure. It’s amazing to be with tons of Catholics — thousands of them.

Dr. RAO: I find myself thinking about everything that I ought to do in life — everything that I have done wrong. I go back through all of the experiences of my life and where I thought that I should have done something better.

The third day, the last day of the pilgrimage, everyone is exuberant, because if you’d made it to that last day you know you’re going to make it. You know you’re really going to make it. You’re in forests, you’re in fields — endless, endless fields. You at least get to see, after a certain point, the spires of Chartres in front of you. It can become particularly grueling because it takes a long time for that spire in the distance to really get truly bigger.

There was more of a, maybe a penitential spirit yesterday, but today it’s joy. It’s just joy. When you get onto the roads, in the real suburbs of Chartres, then you can see it looming more and more, and then you begin this walk, which is a last torturous walk up this long shaded path that takes you up into the town itself. That’s when you see it there, you know, in all of its glory.

What most stirs me up is the fact that you’ve managed to do it. You’ve managed to do it. You’ve finished it. When we’re at Chartres we have a solemn High Mass, and all of this is surrounded with a great deal of ritual and ceremony.

You could see 10,000, or 15,000 fervent Catholics, most of them young people, deeply committed to this traditional rite of Mass. These people who are part of the pilgrimage, and then who finish the pilgrimage with us as well, their spiritual fervor is accompanied with, again, a great love for music. By the time it’s over, the feeling of exaltation is hard to describe, just hard to describe.

The newer generation found what that old rite had to offer — spiritually satisfying, spiritually uplifting, and in a way that you could see almost in no other event that took place in the annual life of the church. The entire three days is emotional.

What to do in the future? This spirit of pilgrimage should be continued on the day-to-day basis for the rest of your life.

Rabbi RON KRONISH (Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel): Every step that the pope takes in every place he goes, including the Temple Mount or the Western Wall, is a gesture of reconciliation to both sides, and he’s tried during the week he’s here to play a balancing act, and it never quite works out perfect for everybody.

LAWTON: Pilgrims came from around the world to be part of the pope’s visit here, but his main focus was on the local Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The visit certainly encouraged the region’s shrinking Christian population. In 1948, Christians made up about 20 percent of the population here. Today, because of emigration and declining birth rates, they represent less than two percent.

Reverend IBRAHIM FALTAS (Latin Parish of Jerusalem): We are worried about the Christians here in Jerusalem and all the Holy Land. To be here is our mission, to be here, to continue to be here in this land.

LAWTON: Benedict urged the Christian population, predominantly Palestinian, to persevere. His support meant a lot to local Christians.

HANAN NASRALLAH: He is the big man, the holy — well, you consider the holy man and representing the Catholic Church over the world, so for him to come in an area where there is a conflict — a very small country, but it’s a big issue here, I think it’s very important for his visit.

KHALIL ANSARA: The talk is always about the relationship with the Muslims and the Jews, but it’s very important for the pope to come here too with the relations with the Christians.

LAWTON: Meanwhile, many Jewish leaders had high expectations that this visit would be a visual demonstration that their community still has strong relations with the Vatican, despite recent tensions after Benedict lifted the excommunication of a traditionalist bishop who denies the Holocaust.

Rabbi DAVID ROSEN (American Jewish Committee in Israel): Most people don’t know about statements and declarations. Most people don’t read properly, but nevertheless people do view the visual images.

LAWTON: Benedict met with Israel’s chief rabbis and visited the Western Wall, where he left a prayer for peace in the Middle East. He also visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial. But his speech there generated controversy. Some Israelis were upset that he did not acknowledge the role Christian anti-Semitism played in the Holocaust, and he did not refer to his own background as a German growing up in the Nazi era.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the pope had addressed those points before and didn’t feel the need to repeat them.

Reverend FEDERICO LOMBARDI (Vatican Spokesman): He had already spoken many times about these problems.

LAWTON: Rabbi Ron Kronish of the Interreligious Coordinating Council of Israel said he believes, overall, the visit was a positive thing for the Jewish community.

Rabbi KRONISH: It strengthens Israel’s place in the family of nations and in the world community. So I think that people are going to be happy about it when they look back. He went to Yad Vashem; he went to the Western Wall; he went to all the right places. He’s made all the right gestures that count for both peoples, and I think we ought to not focus on all the things he could have said or not said.

LAWTON: Benedict also did some fence-mending with the Muslim community, where tensions linger after his controversial speech in 2006 where he quoted a Byzantine emperor who linked the Prophet Muhammad and violence. Benedict was the first pope to visit the compound of Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest sites in Islam and a place of deep contention between Muslims and Jews.

Muslim leader Issa Jaber is an Israeli Arab who helps coordinate interfaith dialogue.

ISSA JABER (Association for Jewish-Arab Coexistence in the Judean Hills): We believe that His Holiness’ visit to the Mosque of Al Aqsa and the Dome Rock was very important and may open new dimensions of dialogue — a new dialogue between the different religions, especially Islam and Christianity.

LAWTON: But the complexities of interreligious dialogue here were also evident. At an interfaith gathering, Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, an Islamic court judge in the Palestinian Authority, made an impromptu 10-minute-long diatribe against Israeli occupation, prompting some of the Jewish representatives to walk out of the meeting.

Mr. JABER: Maybe it was not exactly on the agenda of the program, but for Sheik Tamimi it was very important to show the pope and to let him understand the painful — the pains of the Palestinian people in Jerusalem and outside of Jerusalem.

ELANA ROZENMAN (Trust-Emun Group): It demonstrated our reality here, and if things were simple and the religions could easily get together and meet together without any problems we would already have peace.

LAWTON: Elana Rozenman is part of an interfaith movement called the Abrahamic Renunion, which seeks to build personal relationships and trust among people of the three major religions.

Ms. ROZENMAN: Yes, the reality of conflict and war and killing exists daily. Right now people are being victims of violent acts here. We know that, but also there is another level of reality that exists of peaceful, harmonious, loving relationships between Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

LAWTON: She works closely with her friends, Eliyahu McLean, a fellow Jew, and Ibrahim Ahmad Abu El-Hawa, a Muslim.

IBRAHIM AMAD ABU EL-WAWA: We are stubborn people. We are the children of Abraham. We are from the same seed. Okay?

ELIYAHU MCLEAN (Jerusalem Peacemakers): This is a point that Ibrahaim always makes, that God chose two of the most stubborn people in the world, the Arabs and the Jews, to live in this land, and it is actually God’s decision, and this is why it’s also so difficult to make peace, because we’re both very stubborn. But at the same time we need to be stubborn to be peacemakers.

LAWTON: The three say the pope’s visit encouraged them in their work.

Mr. MCLEAN: I really felt personally empowered when the pope gave a specific blessing to the peacemakers, to the Jews and Arabs, Israelis and the Palestinians who are working to make a better future for the children of Abraham in the land of the prophets, in the Holy Land.

LAWTON: The pope may have urged the religious community to be a force for peace, but many leaders in the movement for interfaith dialogue acknowledge that politics can’t be separated out.

Rabbi KRONISH: The road ahead is bumpy. It’s not a smooth road, because we are linked to the political processes. We try to keep a flicker of hope alive in a sometimes desperate situation, and we believe that when the peace process moves forward, we will be able to move, in cooperation with governments, in bigger and more systematic ways in the future.

LAWTON: Benedict prayed for peace at every stop in this week-long Holy Land pilgrimage, and in spite of everything else, Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike said they hope that message of peace is the ultimate legacy of this trip.

I’m Kim Lawton in Jerusalem.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a special report today on Lourdes. For Catholics, it’s the most popular pilgrimage site in the world, after the Holy Land. Sick people go to Lourdes hoping for miraculous cures. But the attraction goes beyond physical healing. All those we talked with — the sick and the well — said they had a profound spiritual experience. Our correspondent is Don Kladstrup.

DON KLADSTRUP: It is, in many ways, a spectacle: a spectacle of faith, of devotion, a place of suffering — and of hope. Father Jim Martin:

Father JAMES MARTIN (Author, “Lourdes Diary”): People are drawn here for many reasons — for physical healings, but also just to get closer to God, in a place with a great community of believers.

Sister NOREEN FALCONE (President, Order of Malta, Washington, D.C.): This is a pilgrimage. We are on a pilgrimage here for a week. But our whole life is a pilgrimage, to someone of faith.

Noreen Falcone

KLADSTRUP: On a winter day in 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant girl, was gathering firewood near a grotto when she saw an apparition. Afterwards, Bernadette would describe what she saw as simply “a lady in white.”

People today associate Lourdes with miracles, where healings occur and illnesses are overcome. But over the last 150 years, during which time more than 200 million people have come to Lourdes, only 67 miracles have been confirmed by the Catholic Church.

Fr. MARTIN: Well, you could say only 67 or as many as 67. I think that, you know, people have been drawn to Lourdes not only for the miracles but also because it’s a place of great faith.

KLADSTRUP: Thousands of people have claimed to be cured here. But the Catholic Church does not certify a miracle unless the affliction was incurable and the cure was both unexplainable and permanent.

Every day, 30,000 gallons of water flow from the spring. The water goes into a system of nearby spigots where visitors drink from it, wash with it and carry it home. It’s described as a symbol of devotion. Although chemical analysis ascribes no special properties to it, some people aren’t so sure.

NICOLE DIGKMAN: I had a car accident a few months ago. And I have a whiplash. And yeah, I’m hoping it will be — it will get better.

Water from Lourdes

KLADSTRUP: The seriously ill who come here are known as the “malades” — French for “the sick.” A Catholic humanitarian group, the Order of Malta, brings malades here for a week every year, along with companions and helpers. Noreen Falcone is president of its Washington, D.C. association.

Sr. FALCONE: They are hoping that they’re going to have a miracle — that they’re going to be miraculously cured by going to the waters and to the grotto and asking the Blessed Mother for a miracle to make them well again. Our mission is more to give them support and to hope that they come to terms with their illness.

KLADSTRUP: The domain of Lourdes, as it’s called, covers a large area adjacent to the town. There are 22 places of worship, the centerpiece being the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. Another basilica — this one underground — seats 25,000. Volunteers escort the malades through the sprawling grounds in carts in order to conserve their strength. Matt Coles is 24. Though never a smoker, he has stage four lung cancer.

MATT COLES: It’s such a blessing to be here, especially with my wife and son.

Coles family

LUCY COLES: It’s just such a peaceful place, and to be able to come here with Matt, and be part of this and have a healing experience whether it’s spiritual or physical.

KLADSTRUP: Ray Troup came with his 12-year-old son Joe. Troup lives in constant pain due to nerve damage in his lower back. He can’t stand, or sit, for any length of time without severe muscle spasms.

RAY TROUP: I came here to ask God for healing so that I can better support my family. And if it not be his will, then I’m just asking for the grace to get through each day.

KLADSTRUP: Stacy Persichetti is a Georgia woman with two small children. A year and a half ago, she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

STACY PERSICHETTI: One day you think that you’re just fine and everything’s going along and then the next day, you know, I was told that I had, you know, a level — a grade three cancer and that I’d have 12 months to live.

KLADSTRUP: After lengthy treatment, the cancer was gone. For Stacy, this is a pilgrimage of thanksgiving — and of hope that the cancer won’t return.

Stacy Persichetti

Lourdes is a town of 17,000 people, nestled in the foothills of the Pyrenees, near the Spanish border. Six million people come here every year. Hundreds of hotels, restaurants and shops line the narrow streets. The souvenir stores specialize in statuettes, rosaries and containers for the spring water. They are not allowed inside the domain, which is only a few steps away. Here, the atmosphere is one of reverence. People line up to pass through the grotto where the apparition took place. Noreen Falcone:

Sr. FALCONE: When you go over to the grotto and you look at the faces of the people who have come here, you see faith so strong in the eyes of these people.

KLADSTRUP: The stone, touched by hopeful hands for 150 years, worn to a shine. Father Jim Martin …

Fr. MARTIN: There’s a sense of holiness, of not only being in a place where something important happened, but also being in a place where 150 years of pilgrims have come and run their hands over that same place.

Ms. PERSICHETI: It was such a powerful moment — the fact that a year and a half later I have no cancer when one doctor had told me that I was going to be dead by this point. Such a miracle to me. And there’s been so many miracles, not only physical but also spiritual miracles that have occurred here.

KLADSTRUP: After passing through the grotto, Ray Troup knelt in prayer with his son.

Ray Troup and his son Joe

Mr. TROUP: It’s tangible. All my concerns, all my worries — everything just left. You could just pray so intensely and so easily. It was such a wonderful experience.

UNIDENTIFIED PRIEST (saying prayer): So, as we begin this pilgrimage let us pray, asking the Lord, “Lord bless this candle, which is the sign of faith, of light in our hearts. When we are discouraged, give us light. Help us to see the light of the eternal life that you promised us.”

KLADSTRUP: The words of the apparition to Bernadette, “Go to the spring and bathe there,” are followed by many thousands of those who come here.

Sr. FALCONE: People that come here believe if they bathe in the waters, they’re going to, that’s where the miracle would begin. It has happened. It doesn’t happen every time. It is a cleansing, but it’s a cleansing of your mind as well.

KLADSTRUP: There are 11 pools for women, six for men. Photography inside is strictly forbidden.

(to visitor Patricia Walker): How did it feel to be there?

PATRICIA WALKER: It felt — well it was exciting.

KLADSTRUP: Was it what you expected?

Waiting to bathe in the pools

Ms. WALKER: I didn’t know what to expect. But it was pleasant and it was cold.

D. J. CAREY: It was moving, very moving, very spiritual, enlightening and just kind of euphoric.

KLADSTRUP: Bernadette said the apparition told her, “Have the people come here in procession.”

Fr. MARTIN: In Catholic theology, after the celebration of the mass, they reserve what’s called the Eucharistic host, which we consider the real presence of Jesus. And so that’s processed through the street as a way of people coming into contact with Jesus in that way. And it’s a very ancient tradition that goes back to medieval times. And it’s really very popular in Lourdes.

KLADSTRUP: At a special mass during their pilgrimage, the malades and others are anointed. The anointing of the sick is a sacrament in the Catholic Church.

Fr. MARTIN: Through symbols like oil and the laying on of hands, we communicate what the Apostles asked us to do, which is to pass on Christ’s healing power.

KLADSTRUP: Ray Troup:

Mr. TROUP: During the sacrament of the sick, right after the anointing, all of a sudden I was just filled with joy. Since I’ve been here I’ve grown in prayer, patience, peace. I’ve already received a miracle as far as I’m concerned.

A procession of torches at night

Mr. COLES: It’s quite possible that I’ll have cancer for the rest of my life …

Ms. COLES: I think the miracle …

Mr. COLES: … and that’s OK.

Ms. COLES: … has already happened, and just allowing us to come here. And I think our faith will only be strengthened by the presence of all these people — by the presence of Mary having come here. And I don’t think that we could — we could ask for anything more.

KLADSTRUP: As night falls on the domain at Lourdes, the torchlight procession begins. Father Jim Martin describes it as an expression of popular devotion.

Fr. MARTIN: People say the rosary all together, in a procession with the malades and their companions and visitors. And they sing Marian songs and hold candles, not only as a way of illuminating the darkness, but also as a symbol of their faith. In most of the world, the people who are poor and sick are ignored. In Lourdes, they are number one.

KLADSTRUP: Noreen Falcone has been to Lourdes 12 times.

Sr. FALCONE: It never gets old. It never gets old. Wellness of body is not really what our life here on this earth is about. It’s really about wellness of mind, wellness of heart, wellness of soul.

KLADSTRUP: Stacy Persichetti:

Ms. PERSICHETTI: When you experience Lourdes, even if you never came for a physical healing, I don’t think that you can come away from it without being a changed person.

KLADSTRUP: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Don Kladstrup, at Lourdes.