Posted on 02/01/2016 4:05:40 PM PST by NYer
6) Plan a mini pilgrimage to a local shrine; make an effort along the way to live the corporal work of mercy of "welcoming the stranger" as Christ.
Growing up Catholic in San Diego, in the shadow of the first of 21 missions founded by St. Junipero Serra, clearly influenced my life as a nomadic Catholic, seeking out sacred sites that raise my mind and heart to God. As I moved around the country and the world, I learned that no matter where I am, a Catholic church is always home.
While I have been blessed to make a few of the "big" pilgrimages -- to the Holy Land, Rome, Fatima -- I still find a great deal of comfort knowing that there are no fewer than five small shrines all less than a 30-minute drive away from my little neighborhood in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I remember when we first moved here, I was amazed at how few of the Catholics I met knew that we were so blessed. It made me wonder, how many more Catholic shrines and places of pilgrimage do we have in the United States? How many people know about them?
My desire to find out and share that knowledge led my husband and I to produce The Faithful Traveler, a television series that explores those very sites. We devoted our entire first series to local shrines, visiting some of the most astonishing shrines and cathedrals in Maryland, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Shrines and places of pilgrimage take on many forms. There's the little shrine, made up of a statue in a corner of a church, or the big shrine, like the National Shrines of Our Lady of Guadalupe or of St. John Nepomucene Neumann. I am also a fan of visiting cathedrals, because they are often stunning and historic and provide a plethora of little shrines or chapels to pray to many saints.
To live out this suggestion for the Year of Mercy, the first thing you have to do is find out if there is a shrine near you. Here are some ways to do that:
Once you've found your spot, plan to bring a book of spiritual reading. Or don't. I'll bet they have some good ones at the gift shop.
Bring your rosary and your list of prayer intentions.
If you have kids, bring them along! Visiting shrines is a great way to teach them about our faith.
Spend the day at the shrine, learning about the saint to whom or the devotion to which the shrine is dedicated.
And while you're there, it's a great time to move on to the second part of this challenge.
Welcome the stranger as Christ
The world can be a mean and unwelcoming place. But while I can't control how others behave toward me, I can control how I behave toward them. A simple smile and saying hello does wonders. Mother Teresa was a great proponent of the smile:
"Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love."
"Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing."
"Peace begins with a smile …"
Visiting shrines brings us face to face with strangers, and strangers provide us with the opportunity to grow in virtue, be it the virtue of patience, charity, or humility.
And of course, once we're nestled into our own pew, we can perform some of the spiritual works of mercy by forgiving offenses and praying for the dead.
There are so many blessings to be had from making a local pilgrimage, I could go on forever. Instead, I'll leave you with these words, spoken by the Virgin Mary to a young St. Catherine Labouré:
"Come to the foot of the altar, for there you will receive great graces."
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Diana von Glahn is the co-creator of The Faithful Traveler, a travel series for television that broadcasts on EWTN. The Faithful Traveler website provides access to her blog and photos from her travels. DVDs of her first two series can be purchased there, as well. Her upcoming special on Pope Francis' pilgrimage to the Holy Land, A Papal Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, will be broadcast soon.
“You would be hardpressed to find wher I CLAIMED there was only one.”
No, I wouldn’t be hard pressed at all. You wrote:
“The comment was:
“According to Francis, Catholics and Muslims worship the same God.”
You posted ONE out of THREE sentences and called it THE comment.
“The other two statements were metaphorical taken from the sentence quoted.”
Metaphorical: Definition of metaphor. 1 : a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money); broadly : figurative language — compare simile.
The following is NOT therefore a metaphor:
“So next time just walk into a mosque instead of a church. Francis says it’s all the same, so Catholics should obey their pope.”
Time is money. - that’s a metaphor. See the difference?
"This is my body...
Humpty placemarker
Metaphor fits just fine, glad you see what I was getting at.
LOL at you still going with your falsely accusing me of stating that there was just one comment.
Even with the proof I c/p'ed for you you still just HAVE to be right. But, alas I did not state that there was just one comment. Quite the contrary.
Using poetic, or should I say artistic license, I used one comment to set up the metaphor and the other two were givens which were easy to see in the post they were originally posted in.
Sometimes it's best to let your fans use their own minds to put things together.
The semantical gymnastics you had to go through to expose how wrong you are is dazzling to see.
At least we have firmly established that Catholics worship the same "God" as Islam. Need the proof again? Just scroll up.
“LOL at you still going with your falsely accusing me of stating that there was just one comment.”
You wrote your own error. No one did it for you.
“Using poetic, or should I say artistic license,”
What ever you want to call your error doesn’t change the fact that you made an error.
“I used one comment to set up the metaphor”
Except there was no metaphor.
“... and the other two were givens which were easy to see in the post they were originally posted in.”
Except you said THE comment. You made your errors. No one else did.
“The semantical gymnastics you had to go through to expose how wrong you are is dazzling to see.”
Except I used no “semantical gymnastics”. I simply used your own words. You said what you said.
” you had to go through to expose how wrong you are is dazzling to see.”
Except that I was not wrong. You were, however, and in your own words.
That’s just beautiful!
True to form, you are the Archetype of a conundrum wrapped in an enigma.
My metaphor was classic, look what it produced!
LOL!
Take a remedial course in English, middle school level.
Study mostly the many uses of the word “the”
“My metaphor was classic, look what it produced!”
There was no metaphor here: “So next time just walk into a mosque instead of a church. Francis says it’s all the same, so Catholics should obey their pope.”
“Take a remedial course in English, middle school level.”
There was no metaphor here: “So next time just walk into a mosque instead of a church. Francis says it’s all the same, so Catholics should obey their pope.”
“Study mostly the many uses of the word “the—
“The comment was: According to Francis, Catholics and Muslims worship the same God.”
Definition of metaphor. 1 : a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money); broadly : figurative language  compare simile.
“Unless ye drink my blood...
I left one of those crazy little HTML thingies in as you seem to like them.According to Francis, Catholics and Muslims worship the same God.
So next time just walk into a mosque instead of a church.
Francis says it’s all the same, so Catholics should obey their pope.
If I took it out the word would be "it's"
“Here’s a parable for you to ponder”
It’s no more of a parable than it was a metaphor. Why not just call it a kitchen sink? Or a McGuffin? Maybe call it a widget? Yeah, sure why not since you’re just callings things that which they could never actually be, right?
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