My Story: Ever a Pilgrim

A really old photo of the author at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the Pyrenees.

by Larissa Juliet Taylor, President

My life as a pilgrim began when I was an older-than-average undergraduate at Wellesley and Harvard. I had been baptized in a Presbyterian church in the fifties, but came from a non-practicing family. We went to church somewhat regularly until I was about eight, when an unpleasant incident occurred that made my parents decide they would never go to church again. Subsequently, the only times I was in any form of church were when friends got married or someone died.

Then, in that most unusual of environments to spark spiritual inquiry, a college, something happened. I started on a scholarship to Wellesley when I was 24 after having become interested in medieval history through reading a novel, but had no plans to pursue religious history. But then something happened – probably as part of falling in love with the Middle Ages – and suddenly I started writing papers on canon law, Eucharistic theology, Franciscans and so forth. While at Wellesley, I took a religion course in which we were asked to do a participant observation in a religious service other than our own. I went to mass with one of my Catholic classmates. Horror of horrors, no one told me I was not supposed to go up for communion, so I did. However, the priest probably figured out pretty quickly that I was not Catholic because instead of Amen I said thank you when I received the host.

I continued searching for I-didn’t-know-what when I transferred to Harvard after my divorce, all the while checking out the different churches in Cambridge. I could be found among Lutherans, Swedenborgians, Quakers, and Episcopalians at any given point. The latter intrigued me because the service was so much ‘prettier’ than the churches I had remembered from childhood, and one aunt and uncle in my family had been Episcopalian. But I didn’t go to any church more than once. I did, however, write my undergrad thesis on Thomas Cranmer’s Eucharistic theology.

When I started grad school, I knew I wanted to study religious history, mostly because I wanted to know why people would be willing to kill or die for their beliefs – in other words, the psychology of belief. My dissertation advisor pointed out that no one had done much with late medieval/early modern French sermons (that was in the 80s). So I planned to write about Protestant sermons during the Reformation, only to find there weren’t any – at least for the period before the Religious Wars. So instead I went to Paris and read 1700 French Catholic sermons from 1460-1560, in the process learning about the Bible (I had known nothing except that it existed) by using the Vulgate to correlate passages from the sermons. I learned about Catholic theology and beliefs (at least for that period, but much has remained the same). Then I started to go to mass in the great Gothic cathedrals of France, although I did not go up for communion since I now knew it wasn’t allowed. But I think in a very real sense, God used 500-year-old dead white men, most of them Franciscans and Dominicans, to begin the conversion of my heart. Still I didn’t do anything about it.

I did continue to study and then teach religious history, with a much stronger emphasis on Catholicism. Then, a few years after I was tenured at Colby, genetics struck. I could not move my neck, I had horrific headaches all the time, and I was eventually diagnosed during an eight-month medical leave with a congenital fusion, cervical spine stenosis and arthritic bone spurs. With ice packs all around my head, I could read nothing heavier than a newspaper and had to face real questions about my future. When you can’t do anything at all, it gives you a lot of time to think about your life and its meaning. Why? What would I do? How would I live? Medicine finally made me functional again, but during those months I decided to contact Colby’s chaplain, Fr. Philip Tracy, once I could move. It turned out he was also the parish priest, but I didn’t know that at the time. So once I was up and about I met with him and we talked about my journey to that point.

Fr. Phil not only welcomed me in a completely non-threatening manner (I had fully expected to feel threatened), but also after some long talks ‘fast-tracked’ me since I had a thorough knowledge of Catholic history and theology to 1600. He made me read Fr. Richard McBrien’s Catholicism (all of it!) to get up to speed, and by then I had decided to become a Catholic. My catechism continued, and I was confirmed and received ‘first’ communion at Easter 2000. After a year of Scripture study with Fr. Phil and our local group, I felt like I had a good understanding of the Bible.

When I went back to teaching, I found a part of the journey that had perhaps started in Paris but now took a new direction. Writers on pilgrimage have asserted, correctly in my view, that for the pilgrim past, present and future coexist. Moreover, we are always in the middle of the journey. And so I became an actual pilgrim, following most of the Compostella route from Vézelay to Saint-Jean-Pied-du-Port. I didn’t limit myself to medieval sites, but over the next few years visited Lourdes, Domremy, Lisieux and other modern sites. Being physically out of one’s comfort zone, but in daily contact with the earth, the sky, and other pilgrims, is a challenging but amazing experience.

I’d like to share just a few of the pilgrimage experiences that made me know my conversion to Catholicism was meant to be. Vézelay is one of my favorite places on earth, and a week spent there between Christmas and New Year’s in 2001 featured almost every form of weather imaginable until I woke up on New Year’s morn to a glorious scallop-shelled blue sky and made my way to the basilica. A particular highlight of that pilgrimage was walking part of the Compostela route on ice-covered paths at about one foot every ten minutes. One of the most frightful parts was when I saw a sign that read: “Attention! Vipères!” When I made my way back to the pilgrim hotel, the couple who ran it were horrified that I had walked the path, but said I had no reason to fear vipers, since they too were frozen. Then they gave me a snifter of brandy. True pilgrim hospitality!

At Lourdes, I was at first disenchanted by the touristic element when you first enter the city. But two events changed that. First, near the grotto and the River Gave I crossed to the hospital, where volunteers brought men and women in wheelchairs across the bridge to mass. As I neared the entrance, a man trying to walk fell. Everyone, including me, rushed to help him up. People there give so much of themselves to help others. I was not staying in Lourdes itself, but realized on the next Sunday that I had forgotten to buy rosaries for some of our parishioners as I’d promised. Most masses at the grotto were always held later than I could get to Lourdes, but as I walked down the street in the drenching rain, I saw the candles lit and a huge crowd at the beginning of a mass, most in wheelchairs. It turned out to be a group of disabled Irish pilgrims with the mass concelebrated by several Irish bishops as the group prepared to continue on their pilgrimage. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life, as I saw young and old (if they could) drop to their knees in prayer and thanksgiving. Somehow the rain made it better, a purification.

I did not forget the rosaries. As I walked back up the street, I entered a shop to find a world-weary woman. I started talking to her and she became more animated. She asked if I was there for myself or for others, to which I responded ‘a little bit of both.’ Finally after a half hour, I left and heard her say to her husband “Madame est un véritable pèlerine” [The lady is a real pilgrim.] In that moment of clarity I rejected notions one often finds in books about what you must do to be a real pilgrim (e.g. only walk; only stay in hostels; etc.) and understood that pilgrimage is a matter of heart and intention and starting to understand more about yourself and your relationship with God.

My final story is my favorite. It happened in the town of Figeac, which I reached by the only bus of the morning from Cahors. I walked up to Notre-Dame du Puy and spent a good deal of time there in reflection and prayer, then visited the other churches of the town. I finally decided if I was to make the only bus back to Cahors (where it stopped was unclear), I should get there early. As it turned out, I got there an hour early. I waited in the shelter until an elderly woman crossed from the one on the other side and sat next to me. As we spoke in French of our lives, I learned that her husband had died several years ago of cancer, her son had moved to Paris and she rarely saw him, and she had a small apartment eight kilometers from Figeac. She had to come on the bus regularly to see doctors and pick up her medications, then wait several hours to return. But she didn’t mind, she said, because she got to meet people. Her almost beatific smile made it obvious she really didn’t mind. The hour flew by and her bus came before mine. Before she left, she held her palm against my cheek and told me I was a good woman. I felt blessed.

As some have said, pilgrimages can be done in your own backyard. But at the same time, it is important to be away from what is usual in your life, to learn to expect the unexpected, to have moments of clarity and vision, and to experience the joys of meeting people like the elderly woman in Figeac. So the journey continues…