NEW HAVEN, May 18 — As a "prelude" to the opening of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage Seton Route, the Blessed Michael McGivney Pilgrimage Center in New Haven, run by the Knights of Columbus, hosted a talk by Father Roger Landry, chaplain to the Seton Route, dedicated to the theme "The Christian Life as a Eucharistic Pilgrimage."
In his talk, Father Landry focused, first, on how the life of faith is a dynamic in which God is continuously calling us to come, to go, and to journey. He traced that dynamism in Sacred Scripture and in the magisterium and underlined that, in Greek, the word parish is meant to be like a hostel on the pilgrimage of life rather than a permanent abode.
The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, he said, featured that on earth Christians are "pilgrims in a strange land," a truth reinforced liturgically when the Church is described in Eucharistic prayers as a "pilgrim Church on earth" and the Christian life as a "pilgrimage."
Father Landry then pivoted to how that pilgrimage on earth has been established by Jesus as a Eucharistic procession since the way Jesus fulfills his valedictory promise to be with us always until the end of time is in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.
This is why, he said, "Eucharistic processions are so important because they show the nature of the Church's pilgrimage through time with the Eucharistic Lord."
He praised and thanked the U.S. bishops, especially Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, for their apostolic "audacity" in promoting the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, something, he said, has never been attempted in the history of the Church, even in countries drenched in Catholicism and with a rich history of saints.
"Through Eucharistic processions, and even more so by a huge Eucharistic pilgrimage," he stated, "we are boldly and unambiguously testifying that we believe what we are carrying in the monstrance is not a piece of bread at all, but, as Jesus said, the Living Bread come down from heaven, who has given us his Body and Blood for the life of the world."
To listen to or read the notes of Father Landry's address, please click here.
To watch the video of Father Landry's address, courtesy of the Blessed Michael McGivney Pilgrimage Center, please see below. At the 53 minute mark, the perpetual pilgrims on the Seton Route introduce themselves.
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