In the Jewish-Christian religion there is a word that occurs frequently: the word exodus. This term indicates movement, journey, search. We know that life itself is a journey through time and in this "journey of life there are no flat roads, they are all either downhill or uphill". In this season even the television news talks about exodus, of torrid, carpeted streets of cars, under a sky without a breath, roads crossed by the desire for the new, the different, for new emotions. The emotions are proportionate to the expectations of the soul. Holidays are not a moment of suspension of our daily activities, they are a dive into free time, the search for different skies, colorful panoramas, but also a moment of recharging our energies. This applies to us today, but also in times of Saint Joseph and Jesus.
Every year Saint Joseph, in the company of his wife Mary, went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with the aim of reconciling the soul with God, receiving forgiveness for frailties, but above all to restore the motivation for the life of faith.
There is a prayer of the pilgrim, of a mystic, which is valid for every pilgrimage:
«I have come to prostrate my face / in the dust of my Friend's footsteps.
I have come to beg forgiveness / for what I have done.
I have come to serve / in your rose paradise.
I have come to bring fire / to incinerate my thorns.
I have come to be purified / from the dust of all my past."
The definition of pilgrimage indicates a purposeful journey, a time that the individual detaches from the continuity of the ordinary fabric of his life (places, relationships, work), to connect with God, rediscover the spiritual dimension of his existence. Motivate the meaning of his existence with greater clarity.
Ultimately it means asking yourself with confidence: But what does God want from me?
The first answer to this question is to trust in God. Trust starts from the heart. Whoever has had the grace the gift of positive experiences in his childhood with parents and relatives the gift of trust is at home in his soul. Whoever has learned to enjoy trust and trust has stored up the courage to face life and knows that God is on his side.
The term comes from the Latin peregrinus, from per + ager (the fields), Jesus is the divine pilgrim of history.
He walked throughout his public life. He made a pilgrimage with Joseph and Mary during the time he lived in Nazareth. After the resurrection he is already on the journey with the disciples of Emmaus and in that stretch of pilgrimage we have a method and a style of walking.
There is disappointment in the two disciples, they had hoped, but their hopes were shattered. Jesus then recomposes that rubble and, starting from Moses to the prophets, passing through the psalms, has reached him, that divine flesh that has placed his tent among us.
Jesus accepted being a pilgrim, but not a solitary one.
A journey with a road marked by a presence of solidarity and love.