The first lap of my European adventures has come to a close, and I am moving on to lap two – somewhat reluctantly, as the first was beyond wonderful.
My brothers and I flew to Paris on May 31st and met our father there. We spent about a day and a half alone in Paris before meeting up with the group with which we would walk the Chartres Pilgrimage. We didn’t do much during that time other than walk around, get over jetlag, and, mainly, just enjoy Paris and the fact that we were there.
When the group arrived, we started to tour in a more organized fashion. The group went to all the places one really ought to go to when visiting Paris for the first time, as a Catholic: the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris; Rue de Bac, where Catherine Labouré's incorrupt body is kept; the Basilica of Sacre Coeur, St. Etienne du Mont, where the remains of St. Genevieve, patroness of Paris, are kept; and many others.
And then there was the pilgrimage. I explained in my previous post that the pilgrimage I went to Paris to attend is a Catholic pilgrimage that takes place every Pentecost in honor of Our Lady. It is walked between the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris and the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres, where one of the most important relics in Christendom is kept: the veil of Our Lady. The Pilgrimage is about 70 miles long – depending on the route taken – and it is walked over the course of three (extremely grueling) days. Notre Dame de Chrétienté (Our Lady of Christendom), the organization responsible for making the Pilgrimage happen every year, estimated that 17,000 pilgrims walked this year, and that the average age of those pilgrims was 20 years old.
The night before the pilgrimage is generally an interesting one. The “seasoned veteran pilgrims” who have walked before and who know what to expect always enjoy explaining to the newcomers exactly how much pain they will be in by the end of the first half of the first day of walking, how bad the food is, and how uncomfortable the tents are. They then end their stories with an unconvincing “But you’ll be fine when you finish, and when you finally get there, it will be so wonderful you’ll want to come again! I’ve gone 26 times so far.” and send us all to bed at 9:00, thoroughly convinced that our short little lives will come to an untimely end at some point during the ensuing weekend. Naturally, having done the pilgrimage once before and smugly considering myself as true a veteran as the 26-timers, I joined in the hazing with the utmost enjoyment – my extremely confident little brother was walking for the first time, and of course I had to terrify him. It was the charitable thing to do.
The following morning, we all received a wake-up call at 4:30 am. My roommate and I immediately sprung from our beds, refreshed, bright-eyed, and bushy tailed…oh wait. No, now I remember. We crawled out with our eyes half closed, stumbled around the room for five minutes bumping into things and into each other, and anxiously wondered out loud whether we would have enough time for coffee before leaving. Once everyone had successfully pulled themselves out of bed, stumbled into their walking clothes, and made their way into the hotel lobby, we were packed into a bus and shipped off to the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. Once there, we put our bags (filled with campsite necessities such as sleeping bags, changes of clothes, and bowls and spoons) into trucks which would take them ahead to the campsite for us.
Mass started at about 7:00. As you probably remember, I said that there were an estimated 17,000 pilgrims present. The cathedral (if I have my facts straight) only holds about 8-10 thousand, if we sit on the floor, so almost half of the pilgrimage had to sit outside, listen to the mass over a loudspeaker, and watch it on a screen Our group was lucky enough to get into the cathedral. We started walking at 9:00 am, with absolutely perfect weather! Perfect weather for the pilgrimage is about 70º, at least to me. Anything hotter than that is unpleasant – my first pilgrimage, it was between 95 and 100 the whole time! Colder is more manageable than hotter, but still not fun. Other than about 2 hours of rain, that weather held out almost the entire pilgrimage, to our relief.
It became quite clear from the beginning that our group this year was not as interested in singing as previous years’ groups had been. They readily joined in to sing the rosary, which, thankfully, is both pious and has a good marching beat. But other than that, they were quite quiet. People underestimate the importance of singing on a walk like this – after a while, putting one foot in front of the other not only gets exhausting but frankly just boring. Singing keeps you walking and almost more importantly keeps you entertained and engaged. But our group this year was not as interested. Our fearless leader, Michael Matt, who organizes the American group of the pilgrimage every year, tried as best he could. After the religious songs and other old pilgrimage favorites such as “Green Grow the Rushes (Oh!)” and a Catholic-lyric rewriting of “The Bonny Blue Flag,”, he (and a few people who loved singing, such as myself) began to sing some completely arbitrary secular songs. But he was met with silence as he belted out “Climb Every Mountain” from the Sound of Music. Only a few joined in when he crooned “Tammy….Tammy….Tammy’s in love…” Even the crowd-pleaser “Ringoooooooo…” did not receive its usual thunderous approval. But the pilgrimage is not about the singing – the singing only helps – and the group this year proved to be a very good and congenial one.
By the time lunch comes around on the first day, the newcomers begin to see the truth in what the 26-timers have told them the night before. To be tired after only 4 hours of walking and to know you have 8 more, and “miles to go before you sleep,” can be somewhat discouraging. By about 6:00 PM, I was ready to quit. It was during the 2 hours of rain, and I had pulled something in my hip and could not move it to save my life. I decided to take the bus (fondly referred to as “the wimp wagon) to the campsite. I watched my group (incidentally, groups are called “chapters” on this pilgrimage) walk off, and I sat waiting for the bus. A half hour passed by before I was informed that I would have to wait until my chapter had entered the campsite before the bus was allowed to take me there. To have so many individuals in the campsite sitting and waiting for their chapters or searching for their chapters in the crowd would have caused havoc; I understood that. But I was impatient and did not want to wait in the cold rain for another hour, so I decide I would walk. I walked the next hour and a half with a chapter of 7 year old French boy-scouts. They were more more willing to sing than my group, and they helped me during that last lap (which included an extremely steep hill known as “cardiac hill) far more than they knew. It is very encouraging, when you feel like you are dying from fatigue, to walk alongside 7 year-old boy-scouts who also look like they are dying and yet set their little 7 year old French jaws and are determined to see it to the end. If they can do it, so can you!
Something must be said for the process of walking into the campsite at the end of the day. I would wager that nothing you have ever done in life is more relieving, more exciting, and more triumphant than this. The camp-crew and some of the pilgrims who have already arrived stand at the entrance and as they see your group come to the top of the hill, they erupt into cheers! They pat you on the back, they congratulate you, they tell you to go rest and eat, because you’ve deserved it. My little boy-scouts immediately shouted “Nous avons gagné!!” (We have won!)
The second day – Sunday – is much harder than the first. It is easier in that the terrain is flatter, but it is harder in that you start out the day already tired. After a while, the flatness also gets tedious, and you almost wish (somewhat irrationally) that you would have a hill or two just for a change of pace.
We have our Pentecost Mass that day in a huge field. It is a Traditional Latin Solemn High Mass, and each of the 17,000 pilgrims, young and old, receives Holy Communion on the tongue, kneeling on the ground. To see that many Catholics in one place, kneeling and standing at the appropriate times during the mass, despite how tired they are after having walked over 40 miles, and to be a part of them is an experience one does not often have; it’s beyond beautiful.
I took the wimp-wagon on the second day. My hip was hurting me far too much to move, and I had been advised not to strain it too much. Thankfully for me, one of the chaperones of our chapter had a car this year and was able to drive me to the campsite, so I didn’t have to wait for the bus. I had my own personal wimp-wagon, which is so much better! I was interested to have a behind-the scenes look at the way the campsite is set up, too. Setting up tents, food, drink, and facilities for 17,000 people is no small task. My best-friend had joined the camp-crew this year instead of walking, so when I arrived, he met me there to show me where our tents were, to prop me up with a backpack-pillow, and to provide me with a very nutritious snack of sour-cream-and-onion Pringles. I felt very spoiled to be sitting there eating and dozing while my chapter walked.
The third day is the best of the days. You walk only until 3:00, instead of 8:00 or 9:00, and then there is another Traditional Latin Solemn High Mass, this time at the cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres – our pilgrimage destination. Most of the pilgrimage is in the worst shape physically on the last day – I literally had to be held up during the last two hours! – but most are in the best psychological shape. You know you’re almost there, you can SEE the cathedral. (and you think about showering more fondly than you ever have before in your life.)
This year, sadly, our chapter did not get into the cathedral. Again, there is not enough space for all 17,000 pilgrims, and some have to sit outside. Last time I went, however, our chapter did get in; and it was perhaps the single most amazing experience of my entire life. You arrive in the cathedral, you attend mass, you sing hymns to Our Lady – the patroness of the pilgrimage – and suddenly you forget how hard it was to walk the whole way, and you finally FINALLY realize that the 26-timers were correct when they told you that you would want to come back year after year. And so you decide that you will, and you look forward to the time when you will be a 26-timer terrifying newcomers with your stories of pilgrimages past.
And then there’s the tour our chapter goes on, organized by our Fearless Leader. It’s a wonderful thing to travel after the pilgrimage, because you’ve bonded with your group in an amazing way. They’ve seen you at your worst, they’ve probably seen you cry, they’ve certainly see you at your dirtiest; they’ve helped you up onto your feet, and they’ve encouraged you and kept you going when you didn’t think you could. And now you get to relax, to travel and to see beautiful things, and to enjoy each other’s company. The tour is for another post, though. I’ve talked too much already. Ciao for now!
– Olivia
