This Curious Pilgrimage

Years ago, driving home to Atlanta from a Theta Xi retreat, a brother and I saw a simple sign on the side of the road: "Shrine." Feeling a spirit of adventure, we turned onto the winding road. I cannot remember where we were coming from, or how we came to be there, but I will never forget what we found at the end of that mountain road.

The Shrine of the Virgin of the Poor in New Hope, Tennessee, is a copy of a Marian Shrine in Banneaux, Belgium, where Our Lady appeared to a young girl named Mariette Beco in 1933. Built by Father Basil Mattingly and his Benedictine brothers, it sits in a lovely clearing atop a small mountain not far from Chattanooga. The Sun was low when we arrived, but the mosaic of Our Lady and little Mariette seemed to glow with some inner light of its own. And when we stepped into the chapel, we were awestruck by what we saw. Portrayed simply, honestly, our Lord in his Passion, St. John in heartbreak, our Lady somehow serene in sorrow as the sword pierces her heart at the foot of the Cross.

So perhaps it was appropriate that, as we discovered the Rosary walk around the shrine, the Sorrowful Mysteries were the only ones my brother could remember. Just a year before this, maybe less, the thought of praying a Hail Mary would have put me off entirely, but on this day, in this sacred place, my heart was open, and the prayers rose from my heart, easy as breathing.. Walking through the shadows around the hilltop, I felt we were following our Savior along the way to Calvary, standing with John and Mary as he offered himself up for us. I left the Shrine that night with much to think about, and maybe something in my heart had changed forever.

Later that week, my friend brought me a mission Rosary from the Georgia Tech Catholic Center, and I began to learn the prayers and the mysteries, to see the events of the Gospel stretch out before me in a new and living way, a way that moved me deeply, a way that gripped my heart and did not let go. I don't suppose one must be a Catholic to pray the Rosary, but I know now that when I took up the beads in earnest, my Presbyterian days were numbered.

Now, if I first became interested in Knox and Calvin because I was dating a Presbyterian girl, so be it—but I was no less sincere for a' that. Oddly enough, however, it was a Presbyterian minister who really set my thinking towards Rome in the first place, when he told me that the Church being run by Bishops "makes the most sense...if it weren't for human weakness." I thought long and often on that little throwaway line, eventually coming to wonder just why Jesus would found a Church a certain way, and then leave it to crumble under its own weakness, as if he were off dealing with more pressing matters. In the end, if Christ hasn't the grace to keep his Church together, then there is no hope for poor, broken Andy Coan, I assure you.

Now that I look back on it all, though, this curious pilgrimage of mine pretty much began by accident, or rather serendipity. I think I was eight when, standing at an Invitation in a little "church in the wild wood", I was admonished by my mother for cutting up with a friend—only that's not the way it seemed to me. With a stern look, she pointed her finger towards the front, intending to return my attention to the preacher, while I thought sure she telling me the time for Baptism had come. She pointed, and in fear I shook my head. Shocked, she pointed again, and again I refused! A third time she insisted, and finally, sheepishly, I said "I'll go, if you go with me." If she was more shocked then, she didn't show it, but led me down the aisle to profess my childlike faith and come to the waters of Baptism. Just so at that holy shrine, some 15 years later, my Mother was waiting for me, so patiently leading me to her son, Jesus.

And if I've stumbled on the way since then, and I have made an Art of it, my heart is glad that the Way awaits our returning, that our Mother is faithful still to lead us on, Ad Iesum per Mariam.

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For Erin and James, whose journey, too, has only just begun.

Discover Erin's Blog, The Contemplative Calendar.

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