12 September 1987
Knock, Ireland

My dear Friends of Jesus Christ,

How many pilgrimages did Mary, the Mother of God, make, I wonder, during her lifetime? One can easily count twelve for certain, for does not St. Luke in his Gospel refer to that annual pilgrimage which she used to make with her husband, Joseph, and her Child, Jesus, to Jerusalem? "Now His parents," writes St. Luke, "went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when Jesus was twelve years old, they went up according to custom." (Lk 2:41-42). Mary herself would seem to have kept up that custom of going every year on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for twenty or twenty-one years later we know that she was in Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. Presumably she had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem from her home town of Nazareth. That was the pilgrimage which ended in tragedy, for it was when she was in Jerusalem that year that she learned of the arrest of her Son, and some hours afterwards watched Him put to death on a cross outside the walls of the city. As had happened twenty years previously, she lost her son for three days, but was to find Him again in the glory of the Resurrection.

Mary's pilgrimage to Jerusalem that year would seem to have been prolonged, for we know that seven weeks later she was still in Jerusalem. With her Son's Apostles she was waiting to be endued once more with power from on high through the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Day. That was the day when a new sort of pilgrimage was inaugurated. The starting point of the pilgrimage was Jerusalem and its destination was the ends of the earth. From Jerusalem the Apostles set out, making their way through Judea and Samaria, as they had been asked to do by Jesus, and beyond that to the most distant nations of the world.

That particular pilgrimage is not over yet. It has not yet reached its destination. More importantly, you and I are making that pilgrimage and, as the Pope some months ago reminded the Church in his Encyclical on Our Lady (Redemptoris Mater), Mary, the Mother of God, is accompanying us on that pilgrimage. From her place in heaven she is, in the words of the Preface for her feast of the Assumption "a sign of hope and comfort for the Christian people on their pilgrim way."

Within this great pilgrimage which the Church is making to the nations of the world, with Mary as a sign of hope and comfort, we make our little pilgrimages, as we are doing here today in Knock. In her lifetime Mary made pilgrimages other than those she made to Jerusalem. What about that pilgrimage she made to her cousin Elizabeth? It was not a pilgrimage which was made in the comfort of a plane or an air-conditioned bus. On foot or in caravan she had to make her way across what St. Luke calls "the hill country of Judea," (Lk 1:39) some ninety miles of rough, stony terrain. When we make pilgrimages, we pray along the way. All of us pilgrims here today have already prayed the rosary. Of the prayers Mary prayed on that pilgrimage, at least one of them is known to us and it can serve as a hint to all pilgrims. Mary's Magnificat is the prayer of a pilgrim at the end of a pilgrimage, and it is a prayer of thanksgiving. In these days when we hear and read so much about protest and experience so many forms of anger, could we not make a little more room in our conversations with God to express our gratitude for so much that He has given to the world, to the Church, and to ourselves? That is what Mary did at the end of her pilgrimage to the home of Elizabeth. Mary, the pilgrim of Nazareth, through her prayer of thanksgiving, suggests to us that we be prophets of thanksgiving, and St. Vincent de Paul reminds us that the crime of all crimes is ingratitude. (cf. Coste III, Eng. ed., ltr. 850, p. 42).

The pilgrimage of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth was one also of service. Can you imagine Mary in the home of Elizabeth doing nothing to help Elizabeth as she approached the term of her pregnancy? A pilgrimage for Mary did not mean just a journey with prayers recited all along the way and a hymn of thanksgiving at the destination. It meant also lending a helping hand to a person in need. A pilgrimage for Mary was an experience of not only intensifying her union with God, but also of drawing closer to those in need.

Our Vincentian pilgrimage to this sanctuary of Mary here in Knock will bring us closer to God and to His Mother. It will also bring us all closer to those people who are Jesus Christ's special friends, the needy, the poor, the suffering. A pilgrimage like ours is not a one-day-in-the-year event. For St. Vincent de Paul there was a pilgrimage to be made, not once a year but every day in the year. For St. Vincent de Paul the features of any poor, sick or suffering person were a sanctuary in which Jesus Christ was to be found. No day would pass but he would meet the needy and the poor. To these sanctuaries, where Christ in the poor was to be found, pilgrimages had to be organized. One did not go on these pilgrimages emptyhanded. One brought along that sort of offering of practical assistance which the Good Samaritan provided for the wounded and distressed man whom he found lying on the road, as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. St. Vincent de Paul's pilgrimages to the poor are still being organized. The activities of the Ladies of Charity, of the Daughters of Charity, of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, of the Vincentian priests and Brothers, are group pilgrimages to the 10,000 places in our country where Christ is to be found in the poor.

Here in Knock today in Mary's house, we who admire the practical love and the genius of St. Vincent de Paul, have met and paused so that we may renew our strength for those daily pilgrimages to the needy which we will make in the year that lies ahead. By sharing together today the Bread of Life, which is the Body of Mary's Son, we will find new vitality and new heart for bringing Christ's strength and Christ's light to the problems and the suffering that the social conditions of our country have created.