Christian Pilgrimage

I recently read a short little book entitled Images of Pilgrimage: Paradise and Wilderness in Christian Spirituality. Allow me to share a few brief thoughts from my reading.

Saint Augustine explains the nature of things this way: "By its own weight, a body inclines toward its own place. Weight does not always tend toward the lowest place, but to its own place. A stone falls, but fire rises…Oil poured into water rises to the surface; water poured on oil sinks below the oil. They act according to their own weights, they seek their own places. Things out of place are restless; they find their places, and they rest.”

Augustine then turns this logic toward the human heart: "My love is my weight; whithersoever I am moved, I am moved there by love.”

All created things seek their God-given place and rest. But within us there is the possibility of wayward love — love misdirected, love that has lost its true object. And misdirected love doesn't simply fail to satisfy; it leads, Augustine warns, toward slavery and restlessness.

We feel this, don't we? When we walk in the grain of creation—seeking God, receiving His gifts with gratitude—there is a quiet rest beneath our feet. But foolishness and sin can tip us off that path. We know where we want to go, and yet we keep stumbling the other direction.

The remedy, Robert Crouse writes, lies in "the steady cultivation of the Christian virtues of faith and hope and charity; holding on to the centuries of Christian wisdom, holding fast to our road of pilgrimage." In short: the prayerful life. Not spiritual heroics—just the daily return to love; love of God and neighbor.

This is, after all, what we do when we gather on Sunday. We find our weight again—drawn back toward our proper place by the God who made us for himself. Our loves are reordered. We rest. And we leave strengthened and ready to continue walking the pilgrim's way.