Every major ancient religion featured the practice of a deliberate journey to a specific holy place in quest of special blessings. In acting out this sacred ritual, pilgrims recreated the essentials of a hero’s journey which stands for all the partings we must do in life, all the separation we must undergo in order to find our way again to new life, new challenges and higher danger.
In this spirit, nine tertians under the Japan Province Tertianship Program – Juan Ngiraibuuch (MIC), Pham Minh-Uoc (ASL), Hitoshi Kawanaka (JPN), Koo Chung Mo (KOR), Masashi Masuda (JPN), Ichiro Mitsunobu (JPN), Osamu Takeuchi (JPN), Wee Siew Seng (MAS), Pedro Walpole (PHI) — together with their director Fr. Juan Catret (JPN), followed St. Ignatius’ footsteps and set out on a pilgrimage starting from Barcelona on August 6 and ending in Jerusalem on August 30.
The first place the group visited was Manresa. The first part of Ignatius’ stay at Manresa was a period of calm, so the group also had a quiet three-day recollection. At Manresa, Ignatius let his hair and his nails grow long because previously he had taken care of them, as if holiness and cleanliness could not get along together. He refused to eat meat or to drink wine; he went a whole week without eating anything. However, while staying at Manresa, none of the tertians made any attempt to grow his hair or nails, and all enjoyed the good food provided by the Jesuit Community there. Visiting Montserrat in Catalonia, the group was welcomed very cordially by the Benedictine monks in the monastery built far up on the side of the “Sawtooth Mountain.”
From Manresa the group travelled by bus to Loyola. They prayed and celebrated Mass in the very room where Iñigo experienced his conversion.
In Javier, they meditated in front of the Statue of Smiling Christ where Francis Xavier probably prayed daily during his childhood. In Gandia, they stayed and wondered in a very simple room where St Francis Borgia stayed after he had decided to become a Jesuit, abandoning the royal-like chambers that he had lived in before as the Duke of Gandia.
In Rome, the pilgrims went to pray at La Storta, then the small chapel at the Basilica of Santa Maria Majore where Ignatius had his first Mass, St. Paul outside the Wall where the first fathers of the Society took their final vows, the room in which St. Ignatius went to be with his Beloved Master.
The Psalmist had said, “If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand be forgotten!” (Psalm 137:5). Ignatius did not forget Jerusalem. Fr. General did not forget Jerusalem either; he suggested that to completely follow Ignatius’ footsteps, the group should go to Holy Land. So the pilgrims journeyed on…