“Our demands of God can cloud our understanding of God’s purpose for us. We need to be open”, writes Andrew O’Connell
Newspaper columnists write best when they are enthusiastic about a topic and having just returned from my second pilgrimage to Lough Derg, no subject can compete this week in the enthusiasm stakes.
Regular readers will be forgiven for thinking Lough Derg mania has broken out among this paper’s writers. In recent weeks, both Michael Kelly and Cathal Barry have described their first-time experiences of the centuries-old pilgrimage. Those who have made the traditional three-day exercises will smile knowingly though, ready to indulge the familiar enthusiasm of a returned pilgrim.
The key to drawing the deeper meaning of a pilgrimage is one’s own disposition. Many pilgrims arrive on Lough Derg armed with a list of intentions. If we are too overloaded with these well-intentioned prayers of petition we risk missing God’s message for us. Our demands of God can cloud our understanding of God’s purpose for us. We need to be open.
It was during the short period of adoration at night prayer when the whole lot made sense to me this year. It was 9.30pm on the second day and almost 40 hours had passed since I last saw a bed. Gazing at the Blessed Sacrament there was a deep sense of “I am”… And one goes to bed knowing, “He is”. He is. Not cold, aloof and distant, a spectator of our hardships, but warm, close and present, incarnate in the reality of the experience.
Perhaps we need to be worn down physically and emotionally before we can fully know this to be real. Maybe the filter of the intellect must diminish with fatigue in order for the still alert intuition to sense this truth.
This is not a spiritual Stockholm syndrome with a skewed affection for the tormentor. These experiences are born from a deep immersion in the Paschal Mystery:
The physical hardships, though in no way comparable, are something of Good Friday; the second day, with its silence and lengthy waiting, mirrors Holy Saturday; and then, with the morning Mass of the third day, comes the euphoria of Easter Sunday. The continuation of the fasting until midnight on that third day is a reminder that in the spiritual life it is always Good Friday and Easter Sunday at the very same time.
The Christian life is about much more than experiences of reassuring feelings and emotions. Many I’m sure have been here and never encountered the comfort of spiritual consolation. But spiritual desolation is a normal part of the journey towards God too and positive feelings are no litmus test for the presence of the divine.
The ghost of James Joyce in Séamus Heaney’s poem Station Island describes Lough Derg dismissively as “infantile” and a “peasant pilgrimage”.
But there is nothing infantile about this place. It is an antidote to the spiritual sloth of our age – a demanding but elegant path to a deeper understanding of the great mystery of God.
Reconciliation and peace are as much a part of the Lough Derg experience as penance and purgatory so this place will be a natural destination during the Jubilee of Mercy due to run for most of next year.
Pope Francis, writing in Misericordiae Vultus, calls on everyone to make a pilgrimage as “an impetus to conversion”.
Parish Pastoral Councils should consider adding Lough Derg to their 2016 programme. It’s not a pilgrimage for everyone – it’s physically taxing and without a degree of spiritual maturity it can become a mere endurance test. But it wouldn’t have survived all these centuries if there wasn’t something magnificent at its heart.
… and you can bring a friend
I went to Lough Derg for the first time last year having been invited by a friend. This year we gathered a group of 19 people for the first-ever Presentation Brothers pilgrimage to the island. Most were first timers and the majority were in their twenties.
Our group was joined by Catriona, Roisín, Shannon, Claudia, Shauneen and Peadar – Upper 6th students from St Louis Grammar School in Ballymena led by vice-principal, Jacqueline O’Neill and teacher Shauna Bigmore. That group grew out of a positive first-time experience last year.
Lough Derg needs supporters who will invite and encourage a new generation of pilgrims to this sacred place.