Quick note: for this pilgrimage through Lent, I’m sharing the beginning of each week’s reflections with all subscribers, since it felt wrong to limit Scripture to only a few. I hope that even if you aren’t reading the full reflections, you can meditate on Jesus’ own words of I AM: the most important part. But as always, if you are longing for what the full subscription provides and can’t swing the payment right now, please reach out and we’ll make it work.
Scripture
“‘Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’ Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
(John 10:1-10)
Reflection
On my first trip to Lourdes, I came as a skeptic.
Far from a pilgrim, I brought a giant chip on my shoulder and no short supply of cynicism. Ten years earlier, my brother had come to this so-called holy place seeking healing, and then he died. This was no magical wonderland, no Disneyland of miracles. I was willing to see it as a pit stop on a trip that my mother and I were taking after my semester in Paris. But I brought no faith in what this place could offer.
Barely a single memory exists: there was canned music in the church, which I hated; the streets were packed with chintzy shops hawking plastic Mary bottles and cheap blue rosaries, which I also hated; I refused to go near the baths where my brother had been plunged but still came out of the water with a cancer-riddled body.
In short, I was relieved to see the town in the rearview as we sped on for brighter sights.
Certain turns through Lent are like that, aren’t they? If we’re honest, sometimes we come to this season with chips on our shoulders big enough to block our view. Life is too Lenty already; I don’t need this. I can’t enter in this year, it’s too much. Or maybe we crack open the door of Lent and let it shudder shut: not for me. I tried to give up something but I failed, so oh well.
But I have done this, and I have been wrong. When I went back to Lourdes years later, the place undid me and my firmly-made-up mind in the best possible way. What I found on the banks of the river, in the dark cave of the grotto, by the blazing lights of the candles was the most astonishing thing you can find on any pilgrimage: the holy where you least expect it.
But you have to be willing to open the door.