Pilgrim Ways

Church, too, must strike: “To love the sick is something that the Church has learnt from Christ.” John Paul said he was in Knock to give witness to Christ‟s love for the sick, and to tell them that the Church and the Pope loved them too.” They reverence and esteem you.

They are convinced that there is something very special about your mission in the Church.”

Suffering And Strength Christians believe that by His suffering Jesus took on Himself all human suffering and gave it a new value. By linking pain and suffering with His own suffering and death, and to His sacrifice on the Cross, Christ makes some sense of what for most people is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in coming to faith: what C.S.Lewis called “the problem of pain.” John Paul did not try to sentimentalise pain or explain it away in cosy language. He told his audience that: “Your call to suffering requires strong faith and patience. Yes, it means that you are called to love with a special intensity. But remember that Our Blessed Mother Mary is close to you, just as she was close to Jesus at the foot of the cross. And she will never leave you alone.” While they are in Knock, the modern pilgrim, perhaps carrying the burden of a disability or pain, may find it useful to make the traditional Stations of the Cross, a journey of faith that St.Francis of Assisi first mapped out for us nearly 800 years ago. The Stations are an underused resource in the Church‟s spiritual armoury and are a beautiful discipline for drawing together, by your self or in a group, to study the most intense passages of Scripture and to offer prayer. Many texts have been published to accompany the pilgrim through the story of the Passion of Christ. One of the loveliest is On The Way Of The Cross - With The Disabled by Elizabeth Greeley (St.Paul‟s Publications, Slough, 1989). Another is A More Perfect Way by Richard Hobbs, with illustrations by the Benedictine nuns of Turvey Abbey, and which sees the events mapped out by the Stations through the eyes of Christ (Hilltop Publishing, 1998). The illustrations in Elizabeth Greeley‟s pamphlet are taken from the Stations designed and executed by the sculptress Imogen Stuart for Ballintuber Abbey - the traditional starting point for the pilgrimage along Tochar Padraig to Croagh Patrick (see Chapter Ten). In my preface to Elizabeth Greeley‟s pamphlet I wrote that “to meditate and pray on Our Saviour‟s death on the cross is one way of coming to terms with a difficult situation, imagining how desolate the early Christians must have felt on that first Good Friday, worried about Roman persecution now that their guide seemed to be gone and how great their joy must have been with the news of the resurrection.”

Making The Pilgrim Stations The Stations recall the humiliation, the trial and the death of Jesus but they simultaneously give comfort and hope. Even as Jesus carried his Cross he was comforted by the women along the way, and on the cross He gave the good thief the promise of heaven. This comfort is there for all who carry the pain of disability, and for those with the responsibility for caring for them. Elizabeth Greeley is a disabled person herself. She says that “Jesus‟s suffering and death touches me very deeply. If I am struggling with an aspect of my disability - I have a swallowing problem that makes it very hard for me to have a drink - it is helpful for me to look at the cross and ask Jesus to help me to swallow a few mouthfuls, thanking him when I can and asking him to help me persevere when I can‟t.” Other people‟s disabilities will, she says, be different from hers “but my thoughts may help them to think about their own problem in the sight of Christ‟s sufferings and death.” I have attempted to summarise some of her thoughts below. They can be used to make the Stations at the basilica in Knock - or, for that matter at any location.