I recently watched the movie "The Way" (available on Netflix) starring Martin Sheen and his son Emilio Estevez. The film tells the story of Thomas Avery (Sheen), who hikes the Camino de Santiago after his son, Daniel (Esteves), dies in the Pyrenees his first day out on pilgrimage. The Camino is a pilgrim route consisting of many roads across Western Europe that all lead to to a single point: The grave of Saint James, the Son of Thunder, in Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. Along the way Tom meets several other pilgrims all heading to Santiago, each with a different story to tell, but all needing the Camino to work through their issues, their demons, as it were.
This is the point I would like to expound on this week: The need for a journey in life. Christians, myself included, believe that we never find a permanent home in this Earth and must continue on the journey of this life to find one. For the faithful, this permanent home is not of this world, but of Christ’s kingdom in the next. We are not made for eternal life on Earth but in Heaven.
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In today’s society there is a culture of finding your true purpose. Finding how you were meant to be. It presupposes that there is a destiny, an end goal, for each person, and that they can meet this goal, if they use everything in their power to reach that goal. This way of thinking seems natural to most of us: The idea that we are intended for something that we have not yet achieved is concluded by many societies, cultures and times. In fact, the reason Jesus’ message was so controversial was that He claimed to be a king, and starting a new kingdom. What no one understood, though, was that His kingdom was not of this world; the Romans were so scared of a new king that they crucified Him.
This is the central point that separates Christians from the rest of the world: The faithful profess not being made for this world. This creates in us a pilgrimage to the end, not just a journey. A journey is something we take to get from point A to point B, in which the starting and end points are on equal footing. A pilgrimage, however, does not care where you start (you will understand this more if you see "The Way") and only cares about the roads you take to get to your destination. There are many ways to see Christ and act like Him; many vocations lead to the same God.
I embrace this point in daily life. I am not sure what I want to do with my life. I have no idea where I am going to end up next year, in five years, or where I will be when I die. The only thing I am certain of is that with the time allotted to me, I will meet God at the end, just like pilgrims on the Camino.
