Sometimes to go from being simply a tourist to being a pilgrim, you have to go back in time.
Let me explain, with the story of two visits I made to Reims, France.
I’m a cradle Catholic who fell away from the Faith in college. A few years prior to my reversion, I had the chance to spend a summer in France with other K-12 teachers. I was lucky enough (I would not have said “blessed” at the time) to spend six weeks learning about Gothic Cathedrals as reflections of Medieval culture.
Braving the summer heat out of a little un-air-conditioned apartment in Paris’s 5th Arrondissement, we took day trips to the cathedrals at St. Denis, Bayeux, Coutances, Chartres, Laon, Amiens, Reims, and Beauvais. We gazed at aged stained glass, crab-walked across ancient triforiums, crawled through windows, braced ourselves against flying buttresses, and finally climbed up into moss-covered towers where we would look down over the Medieval cities.
I was merely a tourist.
On the first day of the program, we looked at photos of each of the cathedrals we would soon be expected to know in-depth. We cataloged their elaborate decorations: the sculptures and stained-glass stories of Jesus and the saints passed on to the Medieval peasants who had no benefit of reading glasses. Soon I became familiar with the distinguishing features of each cathedral and could even name many of the saints in their windows (though I did not really know them). When we arrived in situ, as our professor liked to say, we would stand before the portals and study the façade of each one before entering.
Façade. What an apt term! In French, façade means the front of a building. But just like in English, the French also use it to refer to a deceptive outward appearance.
I was seeing just that: a façade. The cathedrals were interesting—indeed fascinating!—structures with beautiful art. But that was all they were to me. I would enter, appreciate the beauty and magnificence of the space, and feel moved in a way I could not really describe.
Now, I was not as bad off as the tourists walking past holy treasures to line up at fast-food chains. I knew what I was exploring was special, but I had not yet made the jump to sacred.
Not only was I unaware of anything beyond the veil, I did not even know there was a veil.
And worst of all, never once did I recognize Christ Himself in each one, waiting for me to visit Him, as the Curé of Ars said, in the tabernacle.
A decade later, I realized the pathetically incomplete experience I’d had and felt a terrible ache. What a waste! Oh, if only I could go back!
Maybe I could. Not physically, maybe. But a priest friend once explained to me that in confession, God rewrites our story. With our consent and cooperation, He gives us not only the great gift of a happy ending to the story of our lives, but He rewrites our past, turning every moment into part of the story of salvation.
And so, with this vision in mind, I asked God to forgive my vincible ignorance of Him during my visits, and for Him to rewrite that experience into His salvific story.
Once again, I visited Reims, as a pilgrim, in my heart.
I began with Scripture: “The great testings your own eyes have seen, and those great signs and wonders. But the Lord has not given you a heart to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear until this day” (Dt. 29:2-3).
I walked down Rue Libergier towards Notre Dame de Reims. The roar of cars and city buses faded away, leaving only the sound of a fountain off Rue du Trésor.
I came to the doors, this time greeting the saints in the archivolts as family. There was St. Remi, the bishop of Reims who baptized Clovis, King of the Franks, in 496, marking the conversion of France to Christianity. I caught the eye of the famous “smiling angel” whose face had strangely captivated me during my first visit, grateful for his message. I passed below the Tympanum of the Coronation of the Virgin above the central portal, and I felt the warmth of my own mother welcoming me home.
Inside, sunlight filtered through the stained-glass windows, scattering rubies, sapphires, and gold onto the floor and the bone-white colonettes, stretching up to impossibly high ribbed vaults. This was where St. Joan of Arc, the indomitable daughter of France and of the Church, stood beside Charles VII as he was crowned.
On this, my spiritual pilgrimage, I knelt in front of the tabernacle, and prayed that God would give me eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to understand. To hear God’s voice above the noise of the world, as St. Joan did—and then listen to it.
Because faith is not blindness—it is deeper sight. To the world, the Cross looked like defeat, yet in faith, we see it as it truly is: the moment of ultimate victory. Without faith, suffering is mere tragedy; with faith, we see it can be redemptive. To see with faith means to recognize Christ in the Eucharist, though our eyes tell us we are seeing mere bread and wine.
In truth, because we are a union of body and soul, we can take comfort that God uses sensible, physical signs to communicate His love for us, whether in the Sacraments or in (repeated!) invitations into cathedrals. He is patient, He is kind.
And so, as I look back now over my first tourist experience in Reims, I realize that it was not a waste. Our Lord disdains nothing that He has made. Being a tourist can be very good! Those stirrings I felt, the way I was moved by the beauty: that was God’s call!
Later I offered that wonderful gift back to the Lord, and He made it better, allowing me to see more clearly the reality of it, with something closer to the gift of a heart to understand. Since God exists beyond time, we can ask Him to grant us a deeper connection to His eternal perspective, allowing us to see past, present, and future through the light of His divine wisdom. I made two visits, but it was really only one visit. He rewrote my story, grafting it into His.
Like the blind man healed by Christ, we must ask, “Lord, that I may see!” (Lk. 18:41). To see with faith is to glimpse Heaven even now, to recognize that in all things, God is present, loving, and calling us home, that we may hear one day “But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear” (Mt. 13:13-16).
Author’s Note: This article is part of a series “From Tourist to Pilgrim.” All other series installments can be found here.
Image from Wikimedia Commons. Photo in article provided by the author.
