Angelus News | July 29, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 15

Heather King is an award-winning
author, speaker, and workshop leader.
and Zooey” — at last of its own accord
began to voice itself deep inside, the
pilgrim found, even while sleeping.
The Russian émigré and contemplative
Catherine de Hueck Doherty
(1896-1985) founded Madonna House,
a lay apostolate now based in Combermere,
Ontario.
Doherty came from a long line of
Russian hermit-mystics who wandered
the countryside with the “Jesus Prayer”
in their hearts. She married American
journalist Eddie Doherty, and herself
became a popular spiritual writer. In
“Strannik” (1978), a Russian word
meaning “pilgrim,” she observed that
while all are called to pilgrimage, few
can or will go.
Pilgrimage doesn’t necessarily involve
traveling, or traveling into the country.
The journey is to our own hearts, and
can thus take place in the “poustinia”
(a sparse hut or room) of our apartments,
or by walking through the
streets of a city. Wherever we go, we go
with bare feet — in spiritual poverty —
and because we end up walking into
the fragmented stones and sharp rocks
of other people’s hearts, our feet get
bloody.
We’re chaste, we’re obedient, we fast
and, like Christ, we’re constantly called
to move on to another place.
“A pilgrim preaches the gospel,”
Doherty wrote, “but in order to preach
it he has to live it day by day, hour by
hour, minute by minute. For what is
he really about, that pilgrim of mine?
He is preaching the gospel with his life
and so his pilgrimage has to reflect his
life.”
Jennifer Lash (1938-1993) was a
novelist, wife, and mother. In the early
1990s, suffering from cancer, and
following a difficult operation, she took
off alone for the Camino de Santiago:
a solitary pilgrimage through France to
Spain. “On Pilgrimage” is her account
of that journey. In too much pain to
walk, she took trains, buses, taxis. She
went to Vezelay, Lisieux, and Lourdes;
to Le Chaise-Dieu and Saint-Gilles.
A seeker rather than firmly devout,
she was open, observant, wry, deeply
sensitive to nuance, beauty, and the
spiritual temperature of any given
place.
In one sublime passage, she described
standing in the basilica of St. Michel
D’Aiguilhe in Le Puy, France, hearing
a tremendous gust of wings, and high
above the narthex, spotting “the unmistakable,
compelling face of a barn owl.
Again and again it flew and paused,
frantically crashing its white body with
terrible hopelessness against the dusty
windows. Every so often it would fly
the whole length of the church only
to soar up again into another barrier of
light… There were holes and spaces,
if only it would see them. Each time it
failed, the pause and stillness became
longer, and the fearful despair of the
bird felt greater.
“Later, the whole experience haunted
me… I suddenly thought, what if God
witnesses in every man a divine spark,
which flies within us blindly, like that
bird, crashing in terror, punched and
pounded from wall to wall, blinded
by obstacles and dust, and yet, God
knows, that there is a way for natural
freedom and ascending flight. What an
extraordinary pain that witness would
be.”
May God witness that divine spark in
us as we embark upon, or continue,
our own pilgrimage. May our hearts
be consoled by the knowledge that he
trudges the path alongside us.
July 29, 2022 • ANGELUS • 31