The day, which had started off so bright and hot in the walled city of Carcassonne, was growing a bit softer and cooler as dusk approached. Our group of pilgrims processed two by two down the narrow medieval streets of Fanjeaux. In our hands were the candles that, earlier in the week, we had placed with our intercessory prayers upon an altar stone old enough that St. Dominic probably used it when he patiently and persistently preached God’s goodness here over eight hundred years ago. 

It is not every day that you walk by a sign that says, “Sign of God, Straight Ahead,” but we passed by such a one on our way to Seignadou. We arrived at a breathtaking overlook of miles upon miles of rolling hills, a quilt of wheatfields and vineyards. At this place, St. Dominic came to God with his own prayers for help and guidance, and God gave him a sign, a vision, a dream—a ball of fire resting over the place where he would establish the first Dominican community. As the wind whipped around us, each pilgrim turned to their neighbor, and we shared the dreams we hoped to realize. 

Each of us then placed our candle on the steps in front of a mosaic of St. Dominic, and as I turned from doing so, I was struck by the sight of my fellow pilgrims still speaking, listening, smiling, tearing up – how beautiful, I thought, somehow even more beautiful than the view.  

We sang together, we prayed together, and we wound our way back through those centuries-old streets as a closer community. Another pilgrim told me later that, in all the wind, she kept thinking of Pentecost: “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting … All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak” (Acts 2:2,4). 

The wind returned on our last day together in the south of France. It swept through the open window in our meeting room at the abbey as we sent one another off with the words that St. Dominic shared with his first friars as he sent them out, two by two, across Europe: “Go in confidence, God will give you the gift of preaching. You will lack for nothing.”  

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A pilgrimage is a kind of prayer we experience with our whole being, embodied and accompanied. The outward journey is intertwined with an inner journey. Pilgrims are asked to be where their feet are, present in body, mind, and spirit to the place (where others walking with God have trod before), to the moment (in no hurry to get to the destination), and to their fellow pilgrims (who offer encouragement and challenge to them as they seek to live what they learn). Open and attentive to the movements of the Holy Spirit in these circumstances, the pilgrim encounters grace-filled opportunities to grow through prayer, study, community, and preaching.  

At the beginning of the 2024 Deepening the Dominican Spirit pilgrimage, Father Rick told us that different parts of our journey would resonate with different pilgrims. We traveled to many places and saw many things, but Fanjeaux will always be close to my heart, because during a season of great loss and great change, it was there I was reminded that there is nothing wrong with petitionary prayer, that I can entrust my dreams and my journey to God, and that I am sent out but never alone.  

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After using those candles that we placed on the ancient altar stone and carried with us to Seignadou one more time, turning on their lights to symbolize committing to truth and compassion in our communal reconciliation service, we were invited to take a candle home with us. That night, I set it on the sill of my open window at the abbey, and it glowed and flickered as the sun settled beyond the horizon. It brings to mind a quote I hold on to, from Pope Francis’s encyclical Lumen fidei: “Faith is not a light which scatters all our darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey. To those who suffer, God does not provide arguments which explain everything; rather, his response is that of an accompanying presence, a history of goodness which touches every story of suffering and opens up a ray of light.” 

From one pilgrim to another on the journey of life, may you always know that God never leaves you, that your story is being woven into God’s long and trustworthy history of goodness, and that God’s light will guide you, even if right now it’s just to the next step.