|
|
 | |
And Our Trips
By Fr. Rafael Alonso
One day Mamie said to me: “All of our trips
are to go shrines of Our lord and Our Mother or of the saints”.
And it was true.
All of the trips that Mamie and I made were of a sacred nature,
that is to say of a transcendental and essential nature. We did not go to
shrines only in Spain but also in other countries.
One morning while I was thinking about what I would write the next article
on Mamie, wanting it to be interesting for the readers, I got up from
the chair and said to myself: I will speak to them about the places that
Mamie and I have visited. Holy places are always places of grace, of
conversion, and of recognition of the transcendental. Other people have
spent their free time in going for a snack, playing sports, watching
the television, visiting friends, going from bar to bar eating and drinking
what is in fashion, going to clubs or simply the “sweetness of
doing nothing”. Nevertheless, we like other faithful Christians
who have gone before us, have wanted to make pilgrimages to cathedrals
or shrines.
The following list is not a complete list. The frequency of the visits
varied. In some shrines, such as that of Our Lady in Lourdes, we have
prayed in the grotto more than forty times. We visited other shrines,
such as that of Valvanuz, Cantabria, in a sporadic and circumstantial
way. Other times there were pilgrimages that were more affective/sentimental,
such as the one that we did with to the Parish of the Purification
(La Tizná) in Jérez de Marquesado, Granada, where I received
the cleansing waters of baptism. There was also the pilgrimage to
the well of St. Reinalda (S aintes, Belglium), where Mamie when she was 21
years old and still did not have Faith, was miraculously cured of blindness.
We went to the shrine of Our Lady of Covadonga, to the Pillar
of Zaragoza, to St. Mary Major in Rome, to Our Lady of Guadalupe (Caceres,
Spain), to the shrine where St. Peter of Alcantara
lived. We visited the shrine
of the Bienaparecida in Cantabria, Spain, Alba de Tormes to venerate
the heart and arm of St. Teresa of Avila, Lissieux to venerate the remains
of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, The Vatican, the cathedral
of Toledo, the cathedral of Sevilla, the cathedral of Burgos, the crucifix
in Limpias,
Cantabria, the Xavier Castle (Navarre), Loyola where St. Ignatius was
born, Our Lady of Monserrat (Barcelona), the Fuencisla (Segovia) and
the tomb of St. John of the Cross in the same city, S. Joseph and the
Incarnation in Avila, Our Lady of the Prairie in Talavera de la Reina,
Fatima (Portugal), etc. I could go on and on listing the shrines, monasteries,
cathedrals and shrines where we have gone always to seek the presence
of God and of the saints.
This mixture of experiences forms a magnificent and extraordinary
legacy that I will conserve until the end of my days.
I encourage all of the readers to make pilgrimages to these places, if
possible, to gain a plenary indulgence, places such as, St. Toribio of
Liebana, Spain, where there is conserved a piece of the true cross and
this year, being the jubilie year, those who visit gain a plenary indulgence,
or simply to be filled with God and in silence hear the voice of God
close to us.
Many times we could think: well what does it really matter? God is everywhere.
It’s so that we can get moving! Many times we are very similar
to that Syrian leper who before Elisha despised the Jordan River, saying
that the Farfar river was much greater. We want God to adapt Himself
to our ideas and not ours to God’s.
Only the humble person who bows down before God and seeks him with sincerity
can experiment what God has prepared for those who love Him.
©HM Magazine No.133 - November/December 2006
