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by Bethany Marsh

When people think of a pilgrimage, many would imagine a once-in-a-lifetime undertaking – travailing dangerous roads to the Holy Land, crossing the Pyrenees mountains as part of the Camino de Santiago, or persevering through the gruelling 2,000 kilometres of the Via Francigena from the UK to Rome.

The term ‘pilgrimage’ may evoke a relic of the past – a lone traveller bearing a staff and pilgrim shell, showing the pious devotion of a medieval peasant.

What many people probably wouldn’t envisage is a mass of 700 people – children, teenagers, mums, dads and grandparents – trudging through the Victorian countryside from one cathedral to another.

But that’s my reality as a pilgrim.

The Christus Rex (Latin for ‘Christ the King’) pilgrimage is an annual 97-kilometre walk from Ballarat to Bendigo. The hundreds of participants meander through beautiful Victorian landscapes, setting out from one cathedral and retiring at another, sleeping in fields and country halls, eating humble meals, singing, praising God and praying.

Worship is all in the traditional form, meaning plenty of incense, Gregorian chant, hymns, litanies, devotions, meditations, chances for communal prayer and quiet reflection – and even some bagpipes to close the day (a small nod to the Irish Catholic heritage of many taking part).

Some – including me – have been walking this since they were small children and now some of those now-adults take children of their own along. A common attribute for most attendees is that it’s not their first pilgrimage, and certainly won’t be their last.

‘It’s in our blood’, my Dad told me one year, packing (very last-minute) at the crack of dawn on a warm October morning.

He’s a pilgrim, through and through. He’s been doing this since its inception and now hires buses to ferry the dozens of pilgrims (including 10 from our own family) from Adelaide to Ballarat.

No matter what we do, we can’t seem to avoid the irresistible urge to go back, year after year.

So, what are we trying to prove by taking three days to walk by a non-descript stretch of Victorian freeway, which could be covered in just an hour by car?

I ask myself this question every year … mostly on Day Two, 35 kilometres in, when the first blisters have well and truly formed, and my calves realise they have been chronically under-worked on the other 360 days of the year.

And after 17 pilgrimages – and more than 1,600kms, dozens of blisters and a few sprained ankles later – I think I finally know why. There are four reasons:

1. ‘Life is a pilgrimage.’

This age-old adage is a perfect analogy for the human experience. Born, as it were, into sin in a foreign land, we each embark on our spiritual pilgrimage back towards our eternal home: God. Life, with its daily hardships and joys, its trials and abundant blessings, is that pilgrimage.

Dad was right: it is in our blood. Pilgrimage is simply part of the human psyche. And for centuries Christians have been clamouring for more.

To conquer something difficult, you should undertake something even more burdensome.

And putting one foot in front of the other for 130,000 steps is no walk in the park (although we do end up in our fair share of national reserves). There’s nothing like trudging through overgrown grass on the side of the road for three days straight to give you some real strength to overcome daily hardships.

2. During those three days, I get the feeling that the pilgrimage is a little closer to what life is supposed to be.

It’s a welcome break from our frenetic lifestyles that push endlessly onward, longing for the next thing, the next holiday, the next iPhone, the next job. The pilgrimage gives you permission to switch off and put aside the countless distractions vying for your attention. It gives you the ability to breathe, to live in the simplicity and honesty of God’s creation.

It’s the beauty of Christian community, the body of believers, the building up of the kingdom on earth and the opportunity to share the joy of the gospel with friends, neighbours, fellow wanderers and total strangers.

And, above all, it’s the simple joy of being surrounded by people who live as though God is alive.

3. The ‘snapshot moments’ – these are priceless moments of honesty and beauty that serve as a kind of spiritual injection for the rest of the year.

Highlights include a small army of children proudly singing church hymns by themselves, altar servers faithfully kneeling during a two-hour liturgy, an ex-army priest walking in blistering heat in full cassock, a man carrying gold candlesticks in his backpack so ‘God would have the best’, a liturgy celebrated in a forest, the smells, the bells, the crickets, the happy, grumpy and tired faces, new loves and old loves, friendships and conversations, the blisters, and the flood of gratitude when you realise there’s hot water in the showers.

All this is not to say that the pilgrimage is perfect. Each year has its distinct challenges (although I suppose that is the point).

One year it was bushfires. Another time a house fire affected a local farmer. (The pilgrims were quick to jump into action when they were woken by smoke and flames at 4am!). Then there have been mosquito plagues, fly plagues, relentless heat and subzero temperatures that only regional Victoria during spring can provide.

But these and the other trials – blisters, sunstroke, that strap on your backpack that never seems to sit comfortably – always seem to pale at the end of the three days, and you are left with the feeling of camaraderie, grace and consolation that helps you pick up your cross and continue your daily pilgrimage.

4. It’s the chance to treat time as cyclical, not linear, as you allow yourself to return to the same point, walk the same path, and recover some of the wisdom that you forgot (once again) during the year.

I am happily counting down the days until I can pack for Christus Rex 2025.

For now, though, I will continue with the pilgrimage that is life … and, hopefully, remember the blister band-aids this time round.

Bethany Marsh is the LCANZ Communications and Engagement Officer. She attends the Latin Mass at Church of the Holy Name, Stepney, South Australia.

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by Reid Matthias

In the Book of Mark, he is described this way: ‘And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptised by him in the River Jordan. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptise you with water, but he will baptise with the Holy Spirit.”’

For some reason, my brain connects so much more with the visual of this Grizzly Adams-type mountain man wearing a tunic of camel’s hair and eating grasshoppers dipped in a bowlful of honey. Imagine one of John’s after-hours parties – all the countryside and all the people of Jerusalem are out to hang out with him, the celebrity, and he says, ‘Hey, can someone pass the crickets? I’ve got the munchies’.

But he is a celebrity, it seems. He wanders in the wilderness, preparing an opportunity for one who is greater than he is, one more powerful, one who can do much more than baptise with what little water can be found in the wilderness.

He is coming. And we believe, because they (celebrities) inhabit our minds through a screen. Celebrity is as celebrity does, as Forrest Gump should have said.

John the Baptist can’t escape the celebrity status that he has gathered, but with it comes great responsibility. And, unlike present-day stardom, he is not drawing the light to himself. There is no self-aggrandisement, no braggadocio, no false sense that he thinks to himself, ‘Maybe I should think a little closer about my own sense of power’.

He recognises that there is someone greater than he is and his job, as foretold by his own father, Zechariah, in Luke 1:76–79: ‘And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the most high; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare a way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven, to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.’

What incredible poetry (this is entitled ‘Zechariah’s Song’)! He is singing about his child’s future right after he is born and with the vivid understanding that his son has a role in showing God’s mercy, whose light shines down from heaven …

And guides our feet into the path of peace.

Isn’t that what we all want this Christmas? It seems like every Christmas I profess peace with my mouth, but it is still far from my heart. I wander around in a trance-like state, thinking about ‘Christmassy’ things, and yet the gift that I truly want is one that John brings to us first and foremost.

Peace on earth, goodwill to all people.

We’re not told much about John’s early life – only what Luke recalls after Zechariah’s Song: ‘And the child grew and became strong in the Spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.’

Can you imagine the frustration of both Elizabeth and Zechariah at mealtime every night?

Elizabeth: Zechy, have you seen John? He’s supposed to be washing up for supper.
Zechariah: (shaking his head) Last time I saw him, he was by himself, heading out into the hills.
Elizabeth: What does he do out there anyway?
Zechariah: Who knows? I tried to find him once, follow his tracks, but they always lead to beehives.
Elizabeth: What?
Zechariah: I have no idea. My guess is he likes honey. Good thing his metabolism is still working. Wait until
he gets our age. He’ll have to hit the YMJA (Young Men’s Judean Association) and work off some of that desert fat.
Elizabeth: Well, I suppose it’s true. He never seems to
be hungry when he gets home. I just hope he is getting enough protein.

I would have loved to have heard what Elizabeth and Zechariah would have said when he showed up with grasshopper wings stuck in his teeth!

But the Scripture says that John lived in the wilderness. He wandered and waited for something. Perhaps he really didn’t know what that would be or what that would look like. Maybe John just assumed that he was destined for nomadism and that after his parents passed on, it was only natural to think – just like the rest of the Jews living under Roman thumb – that God had forgotten them.

In St Luke’s Gospel we read: ‘During the priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ (Luke 3:2,3).

John went from place to place and talked about that which would set the people’s feet on the path of peace: forgiveness of sins. Here is the place where, in our spiritual lives, we find crooked paths of jealousy, rough roads of hatred and soaring mountains of pride. When baptism occurs, those potholes are filled in, and sin ceases to have power over our salvation (or damnation, as it were), because the power of Christ allows us to be ‘baptised into a death like his’, which gives us life with him.

It was in this wandering that John encountered the word of God at long last. Perhaps on a quiet morning when he least expected it, and at the perfect time, God beckoned in his own way to this rugged man of the wilderness, and said, ‘Dearest John, I’ve got a plan, and I need you near the front and centre for a while’.

For this man who wandered, life would never be the same – and for one who wandered by himself, great crowds would probably have caused him great stress.

But it is in the wandering that perhaps all of us can encounter God and the call to something bigger than ourselves – to allow the light of Christ to reflect off of us to show others One who is greater than us. In this way, even in the midst of the struggle of making the path straight for God this Christmas, we might encounter the path to peace.

Reid Matthias is the school pastor at St Andrews Lutheran College in Tallebudgera, Queensland. This article was originally published as ‘Advent II – The Wandering’ on his online blog https://ireid.blogspot.com

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