Last September, Sr. Alina and I, with 19 female university students, set out for five days of walking from Viterbo to Rome, along the Via Francigena. The evening before leaving, at dinner, each of the girls had shared the reason why they had decided to join the pilgrimage: gratitude for the year past, together with a desire to entrust the new year and their own vocation; a need for a strong act to ask God to no longer be master over their own life and to learn to abandon themselves to Him; the entrustment of a person who is dear and is suffering greatly. Finally, the desire to know Jesus better. That first dinner, together with the final assembly with which we closed our gesture, left me with the impression of having been in a sacred and privileged place: in the heart of each one of them, full of desire and expectation.
We set out then: backpacks on, a map, a cross made of sticks gathered along the road, booklets for singing. We also proposed to the girls to pray the Liturgy of the Hours and the rosary together, attending the Holy Mass and listening, during the walk, to selections from the Gospel that coiled help us to enter into daily life with the Lord.
We lived days that were simple but intense, walking through valleys and woods, through towns and even sometimes through busy roads. There was enough time to get to know one another: in the moments of tiredness, like during an ascent under the noonday sun, it was easier to be true and authentic. We all lived a profound gratitude for the fact of being together, because shared sacrifice is easier to bear and “when you think only of your feet in pain, seeing a friend who instead looks ahead, towards the cross, helps you to lift your gaze,” said one of them.
One of the girls told us that the revolution lived was the discovery that it is beautiful to wake up knowing that she had a task
Each one of us had a task: some lead the singing, some did the shopping, some set the table, others looked over the expenses…One of the girls, during the final assembly, told us that the revolution lived was the discovery that it is beautiful to wake up knowing that she had a task and that each of us, with our gifts and our limits, is a good, because everything can be offered and transformed.
One of the most beautiful images that we all keep in our memory is that of the cross that always led our procession: every day it was beautified with fresh flowers of various colors. “We struggled,” one of them said, “But the promise is the glorious cross, like ours that, from bare, every day became more beautiful.”
Another significant experience that we lived together was following Jesus, at close quarters, through the reading of the Gospel. At the conclusion of our days together, one girl told us that she had never really experienced for herself something that we are used to repeating to one another: “God loves you.” And instead, following Jesus step by step, immersing ourselves in His tireless passion for man, gave flesh to this love, so much so that “when I was in the chapel to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, I perceived that I was before God in person.”
We finally arrived to St. Peters tired, happy and grateful. Passing through the Holy Doors, we together sang a hymn that finishes like this: Iesu, sive vivo sive morior tuus sum. “O Jesus, whether I live, or whether I die, I am yours.” May this path be the beginning of a new relationship with the Lord.
