Taking inspiration from our pilgrim predecessors

By Father Simon Gore from Animate Youth Ministries

By the time you read this, the Lourdes pilgrimage will be over. As I write, however, we are still a couple of weeks away.

In these last few weeks before the pilgrimage, we have been thinking about how best to explore the theme of Lourdes this year. As you may know, the theme for 2023 is a continuation of the one from last year. Then, we were asked to reflect on the idea of ‘Go and tell the priests’. This year’s theme is ‘Go and build a chapel’.

The Youth Pilgrimage has interpreted that final word a little bit differently, moving away from the idea of a chapel as a building to think more about the building of the Church. That is, we are thinking about the whole nature of what our faith calls us to: called to build the Church here on Earth.

For us, this makes some sense as we are also thinking this year about the centenary of the Liverpool Archdiocesan pilgrimage. And so we are fortunate enough to be able to look back on 100 years of history and pilgrimage, and to think about how the Church in our diocese has been built on the foundation stones of past pilgrimages and the various individuals that have taken part in them.

Although this may have always been there at the back of my mind, I had not stopped to think too much about how the Lourdes pilgrimage might have shaped the Church that is our own Archdiocese of Liverpool. Yet in finally giving some thought to this, I have been able to see all those different individuals and events that have helped shape where we are as a Church today.

From my own point of view, it is good to look back and see how the Youth Pilgrimage has grown and developed over the years. For that I can give thanks to all those directors of the Youth Pilgrimage who came before me and made it what it is today.

I am also grateful to all the coach leaders and staff who assume the responsibility of caring for and ministering to the young people who wish to travel to Lourdes on pilgrimage. Without them, the pilgrimage could not exist. It has been their energy and enthusiasm and witness that have allowed the pilgrimage to grow. Perhaps most of all, it is right to look back on all those young people who, over the years, have taken a step into the unknown, have ‘put out into the deep’ and taken up the invitation of the Blessed Virgin to go to Lourdes on pilgrimage. In many cases it is those young people who have grown and matured into the staff, leaders and chaplains who, in their turn, act as witnesses to a new generation of young people.

And so, as much as I have looked forward to the pilgrimage this year, I am very much aware of the need to look back as well. If the theme of Lourdes is based around building then, surely, it is right to think of us as builders constructing the Church around us. As we are told, we can be ‘living stones’ building the Kingdom of God in our communities.

This time of reflection before Lourdes, therefore, has allowed me to think a little bit more about my place in that building of the pilgrimage and of the Church in our diocese. I would like to think that beyond a pilgrimage – and beyond the narrow confines of speaking about Lourdes in particular – there is something of merit for us all in taking time to reflect on those who have been before us in our Church here in Liverpool, and who have allowed us to be where we are now. Perhaps we can give thanks for their lives and for all they have done for us. And, maybe just as importantly, pray that we can take on the mission left us by them and continue to be those ‘living stones’ building the Church around us.

Please be assured of my prayers from Lourdes for all of you building the Church in your own ways in the diocese.