Saints from Sinners: Our Spiritual Journey

        My motto for the pilgrimage was (and still is) surrendering my will to God. I chose this motto because before leaving for the pilgrimage, we focused as a class on the importance of surrendering our wills to God. After reading and learning about the importance of surrendering to God, I decided that I wanted to not only know about it but put this idea into practice. It is easy to learn and read about something, but practicing what you learn is more difficult.       While we were at St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, I decided to first walk around the Church to get a glimpse of all the artwork and sculptures to be found. Then I entered the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament—my favorite chapel of the trip— to pray and do some reflection. As I started reflecting, I realized that I knew how important surrendering is to achieving God’s will on earth and ultimately being with him in heaven, but I didn’t know how to surrender. Surrendering requires h...

“Lord, may I love like you do” God works through all things. When I submitted this motto to google classroom I thought it would be easier to forget. I didn't really have anything in mind that I wanted to reflect on or any specific area of my faith life that I wanted to grow in. And when I had to reflect on “what I wanted my pilgrimage to be about” I wrote down the first thing that popped into my head. It was daunting -- what do you want this pilgrimage to be about. How am I supposed to know what God is calling me to change? It’s impossible to know His designs, so why am I wasting my time trying to guess what He’ll reveal to me? My solution to this was to quickly turn something in and forget about it. It wasn't until we were in Rome for a day or two that I realized just how important Mr. Cole thought these mottos were to the pilgrimage. In the early evening of our second day on pilgrimage, we went to the Church of the Gesu. This was the church I had done my presentation on in ...

 Silence  Leading up to and during my pilgrimage, the one thing I wanted focusing my energy in was silencing my heart. About three weeks before the pilgrimage my life felt overwhelming with homework, family issues, track, scholarship deadlines mounting and new ones opening my attention was all over the place. With my attention everywhere my composure was spread so thin a droplet of water falling on it could break it like a pin poking an overly inflated balloon. That’s exactly what happened and when it did silence served as my comfort, in silence I found God’s voice a little easier to hear. So it made since to me to make that my motto for my pilgrimage, silence.  Each Basilica we visited was grandiose, was of glory fitting for a king but with the respect deserved to God. But in each one we visited we had time to experience the Basilica and to reflect. The first thing I would always do was play the tourist walking around the Basilica experience and being mesmerized b...

In the weeks before the pilgrimage, we were asked to reflect on a phrase or motto to keep with us on pilgrimage. This Lent I decided to start a consecration to Divine Mercy following a book written by Fr. Michael Gaitley: 33 Days to Merciful Love. It’s given me a lot to reflect on, so my motto finds its origin in a message that I got from the book. Jesus said to St. Faustina: “The greater the sinner, the greater the right he has to my divine mercy.” Many times, our self-reflection can lead us to become lost in our own lowliness. We become terribly aware of how unfair our betrayals are to God. Sometimes this darkness overwhelms our hearts and we become discouraged to even try to give effort toward our seemingly hopeless cause. What we don’t realize is that this hurts God most of all, when we underestimate his divine mercy and overlook our “right” to bask in it. We fail to see that the deeper our lowliness, the more God desires to fill us with his mercy. In fact, this is the end...

“Those who carry God in their hearts, bear heaven with them wherever they go.” - St. Ignatius of Loyola. For a very long time, I’ve been very intrigued and curious as to what heaven will be like, if I were to hopefully make it there one day. Seen as something to be constantly striving for, for me, heaven has always represented this distant place which I know absolutely nothing about. But every time I look into the nature of heaven and discover more about it, I become invigorated with a sense of longing for this distant place, and start to wonder — how can I live today, to get there someday? Finally one day, I stumbled upon this quote from St. Ignatius. Initially, it seemed very rudimentary, and it actually didn’t make any sense the first time I read it. However, I kept reflecting on it for the following days and started to realize the true significance behind the quote, and reflect more on heaven as well. The essence of heaven is finally being united with God in eternal glory, which ...

For my motto, I chose the phrase “to trust in God’s will.” Over these past few weeks, I have had ample reflection time. From the pilgrimage to Rome, along with my own quiet reflections, I have had a chance to gather my thoughts and pray over this motto. As my senior year comes to a close, I have been given a unique opportunity to look back on my past 4 years. I can remember myself as a freshman, wondering if I made the right choice to choose Strake Jesuit over St. Thomas. I recall my sophomore and junior years, and the many choices I made that have shaped my person. And I can see my senior year, with the blessings and consequences of those past choices. Throughout it all, I can see God’s plan at work. From small coincidences to significant occurrences, I feel that God has somehow guided me throughout life. But it hasn’t been easy the whole way. There are times where God makes his will well known, but there are also times where the way is not clear. It is the latter that requires us t...

Renounce My Will and accept the Will of God This is my motto, not just for our amazing Pilgrimage but for all future retreats, pilgrimages and just life itself. Throughout the pilgrimage I reminded myself of this phrase, this motto constantly. To me this means that I may have a will of my own that may not coincide with God’s, but I need and want to renounce it so that I may accept the Will of God, His will as my own, the calling he has for me. In essence this motto means surrender, surrender to God with my everything. Surrender my mind, my body, my soul, just my everything. Give it all up to God, live this life for the calling God has for me. Over this school year I have been working on surrendering more to God by going on countless retreats, growing in close relationships with friends, having deep meaningful conversations with people and just growing in every area of my life. This is why I have been on 8 retreats this school year outside of going on this pilgrimage, each one has dee...

The motto I chose for this pilgrimage was “To carry the fire and to go out and spread it.” I found this quote in a book that we read earlier this called “The Road” and I changed it up a little to where it would work for this pilgrimage. The characters goal in this book was to carry this fire with him until the end of the story. The fire represents the spirit within us. We carry our spirit with us at all times and during this pilgrimage not only was I able to carry it with me but I was able to expand the growth of my spirit and was able to grow closer to God in many different forms. Not only was this applied to the pilgrimage but this is a motto I go off of everyday. My goal is to find God in all things and with knowing that my spirit is with me to guide me through this helps out a lot. Post Pilgrimage, I am able to see the beauty in everything with a greater mindset. The way I spread this fire can be through lots of ways. My goal is for someone to see the beauty and perfection of how m...

Authenticity Toward Virtue As reflected on previously, I spoke on my beliefs towards authenticity and how recognizing who I am fundamentally as a child of God will propel me towards sanctity and my love for others. Over the trip I was passionately moved towards virtue by recognizing the authentic lives of the saints all around me in Rome. Specifically, in the Church of St. Ignatius, Fr. Reedy pointed out to me the main altar painting of Ignatius kneeling to God. He explained to me that Ignatius’s humbling of himself before God actually filled him with greater confidence. Even more imagery of passion shown throughout the trip. By being true to who I am, a loved child of God, and recognizing God’s grace in my life, I become more confident in the way I serve God. Recently I picked up a book for the first time in a while called Dogma and Preaching by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). Normally I would never read a book, but when I returned home I felt so inspired to read theological t...

Our lives are usually a river going at the pace of the Colorado at springtime through the mountains.  White water rapids and dangerous speeds.  This pilgrimage was no different.  Often we are making every effort we can to steer our kayak, stay afloat, and not tip.  We are busy steering this way and that, trying to avoid crashing into the shore or succumb to some whirlpool of rapids or a surge here and there. Can you imagine the scene?  Hear the noise of the water?  Feel it splash on your face and all around you? Can you feel your muscles straining?  Imagine the scene for a minute. This is our journey. This is our life.  The scary and amazing thing is that God asks us to give him control of the kayak.  He asks us to stop paddling, to stop straining, to relax and trust he will keep it from tipping or crashing.  Our reaction in life is 'NO WAY!'.  We will crash! We will tip!  You ever get close to letting something go and being ...

We were up and out the door early today (6:30am) for Mass at St. Peter's basilica.  As we were walking to St. Peter's I thought how nice it would be to have Mass celebrated at the altar of St. Thomas, my patron.  With so many side altars to choose from, I figured there was little possibility of it happening.  Much to my surprise, Fr. Johnson chose the same, albeit for different reasons.  We were joined by a couple from Toronto, Canada and two students from Perdue. After Mass we took advantage of already having passed through security to climb to the top of St. Peters.  I've made the climb before but this was the first time I had done it so early in the morning when the crowd hasn't had the time to build up as much as it does later in the day.  We finished out view from the top and headed down to re-join with Fr. Johnson and Fr. Reedy for a special treat: a tour of the Swiss Guard's barracks and armory.  The guard who led us on the tour is named Mi...

Woof. Here we are. We made it. Pilgrimage complete! Seven days (plus one travel day) have come to an end and, as evidenced by this blog, we have done a LOT. I am intimidated with the thought of adequately wrapping this up. Let’s just give it a go by starting with today! We had our earliest wake-up call thus far (a record that will be beaten in a matter of hours after I post this) as we met at St. Peter’s Basilica for Mass at seven AM! Fr. Johnson went straight to the sacristy, grabbed all the “supplies” needed to conduct Mass, and we found an open altar. Not only was it special to have Mass in St. Peter’s again, but to have Mass said while dozens of other Masses were being said all across the Basilica was a pretty unique experience. We then climbed up to the top of the dome to get some swanky views inside and outside of the Basilica. Using some connections, we also snagged a tour of the Swiss Guard Barracks, which was WILDLY fascinating. After a brief lunch, we split up into separ...

We have spoken in our class often about the difference between doing things for the Lord, and becoming holy.  Being versus doing.  Many times we get caught up in ‘what do I need to do for You God?”. Great question, but let’s instead focus on, “God, I want to be with you. I want to be totally given to you.  I want to be in You, in Love.”  Being is an act of the will.  For our purposes, it is surrendering our will to God’s.  It is enjoying his gifts. Today’s challenge is to simply be present to God’s love and grace in each moment.  Fr. Johnson has been talking in his homilies about graces for each place and each moment.  He has also re-emphasized the enemy’s plans to always prevent us from receiving that grace.  Being aware of this and our weaknesses, try to just be with Christ and respond with love to the situation he has placed you in.

I apologize if tonight's entry is a bit more succinct than usual.  Not only is the cumulative effect of walking 50+ miles in the last four days catching up with me, we have to wake extra early tomorrow morning for a special appointment (see how I left a little teaser there). We were officially out of breakfast stuff this morning, so we walked around the corner to a bakery in our neighborhood (ah the benefits of renting an apartment).  We were treated to some hand made strudel pastries, fresh of the oven (I went for the cream cheese, most of the boys chose the apple) and some coffee (a must).  We met the other pilgrim houses and set out for the church of St. Ignatius where we joined up with Fr. Johnson.  The church is the resting place of many Jesuit saints, including Aloysius Gonzaga and Robert Berchmans.  We spent a good bit of time there (about an hour) before heading to the main event of the day - Sant' Andrea al Quirinale. One of the most significant stops o...

The Ides of March: After a late start today, we visited St. Ignatius Church. While there, I was able to reflect on issues that have been popping into my mind all trip. The silence in a church the size of a normal US cathedral is amazing when contemplating these issues. While contemplating, I noticed that the ceilings seemed to open into Heaven. The way they were painted was to show an open sky and Heaven coming down to earth. Although I may seem to be rambling at this point, this represents the organized chaos that goes through my mind every day in the pilgrimage. For me, reflecting on a topic will lead me to start reflecting on another seemingly random, but at least in my mind, connected topic. After reflecting on the pilgrimage as a whole first, I then reflected on how physical churches play a role in reinforcing the faith. In the US, most churches are barren compared to the churches in Rome. In Rome, the sheer scale of the artwork shows God’s glory. Even the small church where St...

Often times we are the center of our lives. That sounds normal right?  Well, maybe I should put it this way: often times we are the center of the universe, or we see ourselves as such.  A few of our students have started to see this mentality in their own hearts as they pull away from it.  Our path to holiness is a journey from pride to humility.  It is a journey from the world revolving around us (my wants, my ability to prayer, I want silence, I want to see, etc.) to us revolving around God (and thanking him for the gifts of everything that comes before us).   Like Jordi noted from the old man, the man’s response wasn’t self-centered, it was directed outward.  It wasn’t about him, it was a reaction of love, even in a situation where he was ‘wronged ’.  Christ was wronged. So many times.  Yet he loved.  Many times over.  We are weak. So weak, such sinners. We wrong Christ all the time.  Thankfully he doesn’t act in a way that tosse...

Day 5:  Hook : When was the last time you felt true anger? When was the last time you felt your anger against another was justified and even respectable? Today, I feel victim to such feelings. If not for our time crunch, I can honestly say that I might have exploded.  Long and boring summary of our day : Today was probably my favorite day of the pilgrimage. My apartment started the day early with a great breakfast of eggs (shoutout to Basil) followed by, of course, a quick stop at an Italian coffeehouse. We saw the Pope up close today, attending a papal audience where Pope Francis spoke beautifully and blessed all 1,846,240 of John’s rosaries along with whatever the rest of us brought. Next we took a long and leisurely lunch and gelato break, slowly working our way though the Coliseum and St. John Lateran’s baptistry all the way to Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Here, where many relics of Jesus; passion are displayed, we spent a quick hour before crossing the city again in...

What. A. Day. This day can be summed up in one word: Gratitude. Our day started at the ungodly hour of 6:45 AM with a soft, yet distinctively stern wake up call by our house mentor Supreme Overlord Thomas Gerald Romano the Great. We headed over to St. Peter’s Square, making our way to the papal audience. As we took our seats in the sea of spectators, patiently waiting for Pope Francis to arrive, I began to soak in the grandeur of my surroundings. The energy and buzz of the thousands upon thousands of faithful Catholics was unparalleled to anything I had ever experienced before. When the man of the hour finally arrived, I saw quite possibly the holiest man alive, the true Vicar of Christ, and the leader of over one billion Catholics around the world from less than four feet away. At the time, I really wasn’t focused on anything else except trying to get Francis’s attention by shouting and waving vigorously and trying to take as many pictures and videos as possible for my family ba...

By now, you surely have an awareness of what we’ve done these last few days, so I just wanted to add a few sporadic theological insights from our journey thus far. Chair of St. Peter, the Papal Tiara, and the Keys: On day 3, we had Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the main altar, with the glorious artwork depicting the Holy Spirit and the chair of St. Peter. Look at the picture of our view for a moment. See how the gold adornments seem to overflow out of the the glory of the Holy Spirit. Caught in this flow is the chair of St. Peter, with angels holding the keys and the Papal tiara, ready to bestow it upon the appointed pontiff. In nearly every Basilica we have visited, we have seen gratuitous depictions of the keys and the Papal tiara. Through this art alone, we get such a pure sense of the role of the papacy within the Church and our faith. The chair of St. Peter is distinctly a gift —a result of the overflowing love of God, gifting his authority to his human creation, succes...

There's so much to cover today, I don't know where to begin.  The beginning is a good place as any so I'll start there.  We were doing our ups at 7am; wake-up, wash-up, eat-up, pack-up, and head out (okay, mostly "ups" with one "out"). The first event on today's agenda was a papal audience.  Thanks to the sister of one of our seniors (not on the trip), we were given tickets to attend.  We arrived in sunny Piazza San Pietro at 8:30am for the 10am greeting.  After passing through security, we found seats no far away from one of the lanes where the pope rides through the crowds before the audience officially begins.  The Holy Father appeared around 9:40am making his way through the crowd.  Our boys rushed to the front of the section and began waving one of their Jesuit hoodies for Pope Francis to see.  Apparently he did see it because he did somewhat of a double-take, smiled, and then gave them a blessing.  The whole thing was pretty i...

Today we were able to see Pope Francis for the Wednesday general audience, visit Santa Croce in Jerusaleme where the relics of the Cross, nail, St. Thomas' finger, thorns, INRI sign all reside.  We were able to see the rooms of Ignatius and also celebrate mass there with Fr. Johnson who joined us. Finally we had a nice long meal together. I wanted to share some of the graces that were voiced at our night prayer tonight.  One person shared the peace he has from the trip, and the gratitude to be in Rome with friends, knowing this won't ever happen again with such a group in his life. Another shared the deep and powerful time he spent in front of the relics of the passion, and how they brought sorrow and joy at the same time.  Another shared an amazing story about seeing the pope.  He was noting the self-centered approach he had to running up to the rail, I want to see the Pope, I this I that but he was a few rows back in the crowd. Then an older man who was sitting i...

“I Choose to” Sometimes, We keep a quote or phrase in mind as motivation for ourselves.  I remember seeing the movie Invictus about South Africa rugby and Nelson Mandela.  He had memorized the peom titled Invictus and it helped him have hope while in prison.  Well, we did something similar.  When discussing and preparing for pilgrimage, we prayed about a word or phrase that would be our focus for the pilgrimage. Our motto. That thing to refer back to often throughout the pilgrimage. When things get tough, to keep it in mind and say it again to help us stay centered on Christ and our pilgrimage and what it is truly all about. Today’s challenge is for each of us to keep our focus word or phrase at the front of our minds as often as we can, and to do all things “ through ” that phrase. Say it, pray it, and repeat it before everything we do.  As we walk out the door in the morning, repeat the word or phrase a few times, then pray to God and ask for his grac...

We woke to a sunny day in the Eternal City this morning, a much welcomed change after the last two days of on-and-off rain showers.  It was also an ambitious day.  So many wonderful opportunities dropped into our laps (which we will get to later in the week) that the other Mentor/Guides had to do some re-arranging and pack a few more visits into this day than previously scheduled. We were up by 7am, showered, breakfasted, and prayed morning prayers before heading out the door at 8:30am.  (Side note: I have to stop and say that the guys in my house have done an exceptional job of eating whatever we happen to have left rather than complaining about what we don't have.)  We met up with the pilgrims being led by Mr. Siemann, grabbed a coffee and made our way to the first site of the day, San Clemente where the group led by Mr. Cole were waiting for us (for once, they didn't have the further walk).   San Clemente (St. Clement) has a long, rich history...