FAM I LY VACATION S
SUM
Pilgrimages DR. ANTHONY LILLES Academic dean and associate professor of spiritual theology at St. Patrick’s Seminary & University
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t’s a couple of hours after midnight at an airport in Munich, with workers vacuuming the concourse. Sixty-five pilgrims from St. Patrick’s Seminary & University are trying to sleep as we wait for our flights later today. On our way to Bosnia-Herzegovina, we were stranded at an airport because of severe winds and mechanical problems with our flight. So far there has been much excitement with both laughter as things go wrong and smiles as unexpected things go right. Somewhere in this, I am hoping our future priests catch life-changing glimpses of divine providence. A pilgrimage is pregnant with such glimpses, even at an airport in the dead of night. Pilgrimage was an important part of my own childhood. While Santa Cruz was where
I went to school, my extended family farmed in the San Joaquin Valley. Summers included many long car rides back and forth across the Pacheco Pass. While my grandparents were not particularly pious, they would occasionally stop at Mission San Juan Baptista, if only to break up the long drive. My brothers and I loved the freedom to run in this protected garden paradise. The cloister-surrounded courtyard enchanted us with paths winding around beautiful flowers, exotic vegetation and old California artifacts. If it smacked of adventure, it also harkened back to a less secular and less frenzied time. We ran through the old cemetery terrorizing squirrels and looked at the grave markers, seeing who could find the oldest one. The enchantments of Spanish California JUNE 2022 | CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO
