American Pilgrimage

For anyone interested in making this pilgrimage see  Pilgrimage for Restoration and check out the FAQ page.

 From Spero News:

In late September, one group of such spiritual wayfarers walks the seventy miles from Lake George, New York, to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville. Their journey is called the “Pilgrimage for Restoration.”

Make no mistake, the spartan nature of the pilgrimage is deliberate. Mr. Gregory Lloyd, the pilgrimage organizer, openly declares it “an exercise of penance and prayer.” Lloyd, a philosopher, linguist, and happy father of seven, is the Executive Director of the National Coalition of Clergy and Laity (NCCL), an organization whose members and affiliates “embrace the traditional doctrine and practice of Holy Church, with all its demands.”

Perhaps it is to train these tough-minded Catholics for “all its demands” that they exercise their faith in such a foot-blistering manner.

The pilgrimage, now in its twelfth year, is no mere athleticism, though. It is a spiritual exercise “for the restoration of a new Christendom, and in reparation for sins against the Immaculate Heart of Mary,” Lloyd says. Pilgrims walk through the woods of verdant upstate New York singing hymns, praying the Rosary, and meditating together in their small brigades, each of which is named after a saint or an important Christian mystery. At night, they camp in tents or under the open sky.

With the recent publication of Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum, the papal motu proprio making the traditional Latin Mass more widely available, it is likely that this year’s pilgrims will be offering heartfelt prayers of thanksgiving. Since its inception some twelve years ago, the Pilgrimage for Restoration has always had priests who celebrate that rite of Mass as part of the routine of prayer. In fact, one intention of the pilgrimage has long been “the restoration of the Catholic family and the Latin liturgical tradition.”

The Masses on the pilgrimage trail are offered in a makeshift chapel-tent, while the closing Liturgy is a Solemn Mass, complete with Gregorian Chant and all the austere pageantry of Latin Christendom.

The pilgrimage’s combination of arduous physical effort and interior delight accompanying the spiritual exercises (especially the predawn daily Latin Mass) has been described as “the agony and the ecstasy.” All is not painful, though, and certainly nothing is dour in this journey. In fact, there is plenty of Christian mirth along the way, especially when the young people stage a talent show on Thursday night.