Pilgrimage to Italy

For the past month I’ve been traveling on pilgrimage to Italy – from Naples to Rome and Umbria, following in the footsteps of Paul and St. Francis.

Of all the pilgrimages I’ve ever taken, Assisi is one of my favorites. I find myself returning there, magnetized to it somehow. Assisi is situated in Umbria, a land of rolling hills laced with castles and orchids. The sunsets would make van Gogh drool. They call it the “green heart” of Italy for a reason. It’s grassy arteries take pilgrims through towns like Gubio, where Francis tamed a wolf, and Spoleto where he preached to birds. For a middle-class, suburban-oriented guy like me, these small medieval villages provokes a sense of conviction within me.

From Assisi you can take a taxi up a windy road into Mount Subasio to see a place called the Carceri (Italian for “prison”) where Francis retreated to pray. It’s a rugged environment, a cloudy place that feels the brunt of winter’s brutality. Even before Francis came here, the site was used as a jail to isolate criminals. Having committed no crime, Francis placed himself in solitary confinement because he felt that he was still enslaved to his flesh. The habits of his former life ruled him and for him, spiritual freedom was found in the woods.

For Protestants, the practice of pilgrimage is making a huge comeback. I tip my hat to the fellas at Christianity Today who are recovering it as a discipline everyone can practice. Pilgrimage has a unique way of combining the inward, upward and outward components of the Christian faith. It can foster intimacy with God, inward reflection, and an appreciation for community. It’s is not tourism, where the object of the journey is entertainment and information. Rather, pilgrimage is a celebration of transformation. It takes us out of our comfort zones and moves us from a place of certainty in ourselves to dependency on God.

When we arrived at the summit of Mount Subasio, a view reserved only for hang gliders and small planes greeted us. There’s a path that meanders through the woods that you can take, leading you around the side of the mountain from cave to cave. Francis and his monks lived in these quaint little holes, and you can still see the chisel marks inside them. For days and weeks these monks wrestled with God in these cavities, probably contributing to Francis’ early death. But while he was alive, Francis fell in love with Lady Poverty.

The following prayer of St. Francis describes his spiritual puppy-dog love:

The woods of Mount Subasio have no telephone poles, streetlights or coffee shacks. There are no jazz clubs, sushi bars or internet café’s. Just pure nature, the way God created it. For a tech junkie like me it was surprisingly refreshing. How can a sixty-two inch plasma flat screen television compare to this? Two-dimensional 1080p doesn’t come close. I stood there feeling greener than I’ve ever felt in all my life. There was something altogether attractive about the simple life, the rustic life, a life uncomplicated.

Some pilgrimages take a lifetime to unpack. I am beginning to think that this is one of them. Even though he lived a thousand years ago, Francis still challenges us to adopt the mindset of Christ – that a lost life is a found life.

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