9.  Friday after Ash Wednesday

Today is a day of the Cross.  It is good to set down my travel gear and just rest my ashened head a while in the hope the Cross gives.  

The Lord Jesus was pilgrim long before me and all of us.  He left his Father's side and journeyed--in the dark of night, Isaiah tells--into the human world. Flesh covered, he began the pilgrimage to the Cross, passing through family life in Nazareth and venturing out into a world that knew him not.  He walked among the crowds whose sufferings impelled him to his destiny.  He saw, was touched, and he touched back.  He made pilgrimage through the rubble of broken ancestral traditions, up and down the mounds of despair over health and relief, over new beginnings and sense of well-being.   Often weary himself, he walked on, even with blessing for those who cursed his way.  He found walk-mates and mentored their pilgrim steps.  How could he not stumble when they bretrayingly abandoned him in the darkest hour of his Via? 

His pilgrimage brought him to the Wood and propelled him beyond.  It is in that "beyond" that I rest.  Christ Jesus now walks toward me, toward all of us.  He journeys, back-packed with glory.  He is pilgrim anew, halleluya!  

Will we meet in the sunlight or in a night of darkness on the way?  It doesn't matter.  Staying the course matters, the course toward the uplift of all things.  We are pilgrims for that.  It is the thought of that that allows the pilgrim to rest a while before the next step.