Plan a combination vacation and pilgrimage

By John and Therese Boucher
Special to The CFP

Want to include Jesus in your vacation? Lots of people enjoy vacations and may even include daily prayer during such refreshing times. Many experience glimpses of God’s love through visiting new places, relaxing, or enjoying family and friends. But how many of us have planned a combination vacation and pilgrimage? How many have chosen to add a holy place as a meaningful stop along the way?
We have successfully done this so many times. Our experiences have added depth to family vacations. With just a few simple additions,whole journeys have often become like retreats on the move.We learned that all the parts of any trip –preparing, traveling, meals, the beauty of nature –can take on a sacred dimension. To find the sacred dimension involves a shift in goals. We choose to move from gobbling up experiences to keeping an eye out for new spiritual insights, evangelizing moments, and renewed faith. Our goal becomes embracing a deeper quality of life, something above mere pleasure-seeking.

Here are some suggestions for you and your traveling companions:

• Add a prayer of thanksgiving at the start of each day. Thank God for the places and people you will encounter. While traveling to a conference in Detroit, we added a stop at the Shrine of Blessed Solanus Casey. The cab driver asked us where we were headed. Then he shared that he had carried a Solanus prayer card in his wallet for years, but had lost it. When returning from the Shrine to our hotel, we asked for the same driver by name and gave him a new prayercard.

• Choose a holy place near your destination or along the route.We added a visit to St. Elizabeth Seton Shrine when visiting Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. To our surprise, John was healed of a serious throat infection as we prayed.

• Consider a family spiritual heritage stop.Include a visit and shared prayer at a church (call ahead) where family baptisms, first Communions, or marriages took place. Consider a visit to a cemetery where a loved one is buried. (Some burial records are available at www.finda-grave.com)

• Recreate a moment in a saint’s lifenear where she or he lived. For us, a vacation in upstate New York included time in the village where St. Kateri Tekakwitha lived. At one point, Therese knelt to scoop up cool water from the same spring whereSt. Kateri drank more than 300 years earlier. As family members used the water to bless each other, the sun shining through the leaves above us highlighted God’s presence with our family.“May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.”–Ancient Celtic prayer