{"id":11294,"date":"2025-06-14T13:00:34","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=11294"},"modified":"2025-09-23T19:15:39","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T19:15:39","slug":"waystations-on-the-pilgrim-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/14\/waystations-on-the-pilgrim-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Waystations on the Pilgrim Way"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Waystations on the Pilgrim Way<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Loving places, from countries and cities to homes and churches, provides us with rest and comfort on our journey through life.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Alice Little<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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From an early age, I was told that a church is God\u2019s house. In my experience, this line is often wielded as a tool to keep children quiet during Mass rather than being offered to be pondered as a theological statement. Questioning it would be similar to questioning whether my guinea pig really did go to the farm\u2013it\u2019s discouraged. However, as a child singing \u201cHe\u2019s Got the Whole World in His Hands\u201d with my church choir, I remember wondering: if God holds the world, why does He need a house? The paradox of God as home and God having a home confused me.<\/p>

My confusion stemmed from the myriad interpretations I was already aware of for the word \u201chome.\u201d For some, home is a place of rest, safety, and intense familiarity; for others, it is a place that must be made by hard work; others say that any place can be our home if we are in the presence of those who love us. A church is all of these\u2014a refuge, both legally and spiritually; a place where we commit ourselves to the work of worship; and a place to experience more fully the presence of God. The importance of the tangible church building has become very clear to me as I watch my fellow Catholics in Baltimore cope with the recent closure of half of the city\u2019s Catholic churches. Every Mass begins with a welcome for those who are seeking their new church home.<\/p>

Even outside the church building, I have learned much about the concept of home from Baltimore and its people. Since moving here last August, I have grown familiar with many of Baltimore\u2019s neighborhoods: hipster Mt. Vernon and Hampden; the high-end townhomes of Butcher\u2019s Hill and Fells Point; family-friendly Canton and Locust Point; fast-paced, medical Middle East (my current home); the Caribbean restaurants of Park Heights; and nightlife hub Federal Hill, among many others. Each neighborhood is saturated with an intense personality that grows from Baltimore\u2019s rich\u2014and sometimes, troubling\u2014history.<\/p>

I have met people from many of these neighborhoods at my assigned longitudinal clerkship clinic in Midtown. Most of the patients at the clinic are born-and-raised Baltimoreans, and their love for this city and its people\u2014despite the harms that living here may have dealt them from time to time\u2014is nothing short of inspiring. I have seen teams of people distribute over 500 turkeys at an East Baltimore school as if it were just another Friday afternoon. My preceptor tacks on at least three unpaid hours every day by taking time to create an individualized plan for lifestyle adjustments and remote blood pressure monitoring for each patient. On a micro level, I am never in want of food at any local gathering; I have received Maryland pears and fried chicken liver from complete strangers. While the rest of the nation often views Baltimore through the lens of crime statistics<\/a> and street aesthetics<\/a>, Baltimoreans are living proof that love is not love that alters when it alteration finds<\/em>. As an oft-seen bumper sticker reads, \u201cBaltimore: Actually, I like it.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Each time we return to our hometowns, familiar faces and places recall younger versions of ourselves, and we confront the choice to reclaim\u2014or reject\u2014the place as home.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Watching Baltimoreans commit to the work of loving this city has often made me wonder if home, like love, may be more of an action than an idea; more of a choice than a feeling. Perhaps it is a feeling that leads one to make the same choice over and over again. Each time we return to our hometowns, familiar faces and places recall younger versions of ourselves, and we confront the choice to reclaim\u2014or reject\u2014the place as home. What is this elusive feeling that anchors such a pivotal choice, woven so deeply into the fabric of identity that it seems indistinguishable from the self?<\/p>

If any medium best sheds light on this feeling, it is the poetry of returning to home. Poems of homecoming are one of the oldest genres of poetry\u2014heir to a tradition that contains the Odyssey, among others\u2014and bear testament to the universal human desire for home and homeland. The greatest poem of return is Catullus\u2019 Carmen 31<\/em>. (As a Classics major, I am entirely unbiased.) It is a love letter to the author\u2019s home in Sirmio, a peninsula at the southern tip of Lake Garda in Northern Italy. Although Catullus is best known for his years in Rome, he was born in Verona and spent much of his childhood at his family\u2019s villa in Sirmio.<\/p>

He opens Carmen 31 with the line Paene insularum, Sirmio, insularumque \/ ocelle<\/em>, \u201cSirmio, eyelet of peninsulas and of islands.\u201d Note that ocelle<\/em> is an ancient Roman pet name meaning little eye or eyelet, often translated as \u201cdarling,\u201d which sets a tone of deep affection for Sirmio, as though it were a loved one. He continues, expressing disbelief that he has returned at last from Bithynia (modern day Turkey) and is looking upon Sirmio in tuto<\/em> (\u201cin safety\u201d). Throughout this paean to Sirmio, sound and meaning work together to convey the pure joy of the traveler returning home, weary from the task and the journey. It is best felt in the original Latin.<\/p><\/div>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u014c quid sol\u016bt\u012bs est be\u0101tius c\u016br\u012bs,
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0cum m\u0113ns onus rep\u014dnit, ac peregr\u012bn\u014d
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0lab\u014dre fess\u012b v\u0113nimus larem ad nostrum,
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0d\u0113s\u012bder\u0101t\u014dque acqui\u0113scimus lect\u014d?
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Hoc est quod \u016bnum est pr\u014d lab\u014dribus tant\u012bs.<\/p>

\u201cO what is more blessed than cares dissolved, when the mind lays down its burden, and we\u2014exhausted from labor abroad\u2014come to our home*, and relax in our so desired bed? This alone is recompense* for such great labors.\u201d<\/em><\/p>

*larem<\/em> in this case means a household god. It is often translated here as just \u201chome.\u201d
*est pro<\/em> lit. \u201cis in return for\u201d<\/p>

I fell in love with this poem in high school, when I was processing a disruption in my own concept of home. During my sophomore year, my family had moved from the town where I was born and raised\u2014Newburyport, Massachusetts\u2014to San Juan, Puerto Rico, for my father\u2019s new job. My parents, aunt, uncle, and I moved all the items from my childhood home into a storage unit, sold them, or gave them to relatives, a process that took several months. My sister, then on the cusp of high school, refused to leave her room to visit the storage unit, which she called \u201cour new home.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I coveted the spiritual rest and distance from worldly cares that Catullus had in Sirmio.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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For the next two years, I lived at boarding school in New Hampshire. During school breaks, my sister and I lived with my aunt and uncle, and my summers were spent in San Juan, working as a camp counselor. It was constant motion from place to place, but never anywhere that felt entirely like home. Exploring San Juan was an incredible adventure, but the austere walls and office-like tile floor of the rental apartment, flanked by vacant buildings, felt worlds away from my childhood home in Newburyport. In addition, there was the ever-present pressure of college applications. Catullus\u2019s peregrino labore<\/em> seemed to my 17-year-old self a reflection of the toils of applying to college and my overwhelming courseload. I coveted the spiritual rest and distance from worldly cares that Catullus had in Sirmio.<\/p>

In reading Carmen 31<\/em>, I could artificially experience the homecoming emotion I so desired, just as someone may reread their favorite novel or rewatch a favorite movie to relive the events depicted therein. Through Catullus\u2019s return to Sirmio, I gave myself the inner peace and relief of returning home to walk the empty Plum Island beach in winter, which was almost as good as the experience itself. The poem helped me frame home not only as a physical place but also as an emotional refuge. I began to wonder whether such a refuge could exist within one\u2019s own mind, independent of location. But no matter how hard I tried, I found that my internal vision of home could only complement, not replace, the physical experience of my hometown. Again, I questioned whether a set location was essential for home: could the emotional refuge of home be created simply by the presence of friends and family? Yet I have never embraced the popular opinion that \u201chome is where your people are.\u201d After all, it\u2019s not as if meeting up with your family for dinner at a restaurant makes that restaurant \u201chome.\u201d<\/p>

It seems that home must include something fixed and known\u2014a place imbued with memory and continuity, in which loved ones play an integral (but not all-consuming) role. This is the sense captured by the German poet Friedrich H\u00f6lderlin in his 1802 poem Heimkunft \/ An die Verwandten<\/em> (Homecoming \/ To Relatives<\/em>), where he writes:<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 But it’s really them: sun and joy shine for you,
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 My dear ones, almost brighter than ever in your eyes.
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Yes, it’s still the same. It thrives and ripens,
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 For nothing that lives and loves relinquishes loyalty.
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Best of all, this treasure, which rests under the arch
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Of holy peace, is reserved for young and old alike.
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I speak foolishly. It is pure joy.
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u2014transl. James Mitchell<\/p>

For Holderlin, as for Catullus, his home has not changed, and he is able to return to it. From this he gains a holy peace. Here again is the feeling that defines home\u2014the soul being at rest, an inner peace that comes from the safety of what is familiar. This home need not be where one grew up. At the end of his poem \u201cNew Hampshire,\u201d Robert Frost realizes that he has decided New Hampshire is his home, even though he spent his childhood in Massachusetts. He famously ends the poem, \u201cIt\u2019s restful to arrive at a decision \/ and restful just to think about New Hampshire. \/ At present I am living in Vermont.\u201d Home is a place that is restful even to think<\/em> about. If fear is mostly based on the unknown, then a homecoming is the opposite: a sense of peace in what is deeply known. Therefore, without a feeling of safety and deep knowledge of a place, one cannot truly say they are at home.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I faced a choice: I could either reject this new version of home or accept it for the familiar pieces that remained.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This longing for peace in what is deeply known\u2014the kind that Catullus, H\u00f6lderlin, and Frost describe\u2014led me to reflect on where I had experienced such peace in my own life.
As I neared the end of my senior year of high school, I used Carmen 31<\/em> as an epigraph for my senior meditation, a capstone essay and longstanding school tradition. I had planned to write about stopping by my hometown after years away, reflecting on the boarding school experience. But my thoughts kept returning to one specific place: my home church. \u201cImmaculate Conception Parish was the village that had raised the child,\u201d I wrote.<\/p>

I walked up the center aisle, just as I did with my classmates in second grade to receive our First Holy Communion, passing by the window of the familiar angry-looking lamb glowing in the evening light and stopping at the font where I was baptized as an infant. These were the same steps I took when I graduated from eighth grade and made my Confirmation.<\/h2>

Here was my<\/em> holy peace, saturated with memory as was Holderlin\u2019s. I was struck by how the tangible elements of place can strengthen faith, which is consistent with the psychology behind environmental cues. This is the reason pilgrims travel to the Holy Land, not for abstract inspiration, but for a physical encounter with the sacred. Although Jesus\u2019s words to Thomas come to mind (\u201cBlessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed\u201d), there is no denying that visible symbols, e.g. sacramentals and sacred relics, engage the senses in order to keep us more spiritually attentive; serve as reminders of our faith in everyday life; and provide a link with the communion of saints. The church building is perhaps the greatest visible symbol of God we have. The church is the closest we get to heaven on Earth, since, as the Second Vatican Council\u2019s Sacrosanctum Concilium<\/em> puts it, in Mass we \u201ctake part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy City of Jerusalem, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.\u201d Not only do the walls of the church witness the incarnation of Jesus in the Eucharist, but these walls also witness all the most important moments of our lives\u2014the sacraments.<\/p>

In retrospect, it makes perfect sense that I could not think of home without thinking about my church. It is a place where I am made more aware that I am deeply known by God. This became clear as I settled back into Newburyport during the summer of 2018. My parents moved back half a year after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico\u2019s infrastructure to an extent the island is still recovering from today. I saw my hometown with fresh eyes\u2014grateful to have somewhere to go with reliable electricity and water quality when our neighbors in San Juan were sometimes without. However, I quickly realized that the hometown I was returning to was not the town I had left. In the years we had been away, the town had undergone an episode of gentrification. Any house in our neighborhood that was sold had been either torn down by a wrecking ball or completely gutted and remodeled. It was strange to see the homes of my friends and longtime neighbors destroyed, and it was easy to feel as if the new owners were taking a wrecking ball to my own memories made in those homes.<\/p>

I faced a choice: I could either reject this new version of home or accept it for the familiar pieces that remained. Ultimately, I chose to accept it. My home parish is still an unchanged place of peace for me. The long beach on Plum Island is the same. I am loyal to the brick buildings, even though the stores inhabiting them have changed. For nothing that lives and loves relinquishes loyalty. <\/em>Still, there are days when I do not recognize the town that I grew up in.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I would like to feel about God the way Frost feels about New Hampshire, and Catullus about Sirmio, and Holderlin about Swabia.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This understanding of home extends to our calling to be \u201cat home with the Lord.\u201d Much like the ongoing decision to reaffirm a place as home, daily we confront the choice to reclaim\u2014or reject\u2014God as our home. Some days, this reclaiming comes easily to me, and returning to a home in God is like returning to the sparkling Lake Garda and olive-silvery ocelle <\/em>Sirmio, with its familiar laughter. But on other days, it is like returning to East Baltimore, a home that is made through hard work and felt primarily through the compassion of those who share it. On the days when returning home to God is hard, and I am having trouble laying down my mental burdens, I ask myself: how can I find it restful even to think about my God? I would like to feel about God the way Frost feels about New Hampshire, and Catullus about Sirmio, and Holderlin about Swabia.<\/p>

This calls me to deepen my personal knowledge of God and, through that intimacy, to grow in my reliance on Him as a refuge. In His farewell prayer, Jesus said that eternal life is to know God and to know Christ Himself, who was sent by God. Scholars note the significance of the Greek verb used for \u201cknow,\u201d which denotes experiential, relational knowledge. This was deliberately chosen over a similar term implying factual or observational understanding. In doing so, Jesus emphasizes that eternal life comes not from abstract awareness, but from a relationship rooted in lived experience with God.<\/p>

How do we get this lived experience? As every good friend is aware, genuine insight into a person requires time spent in each other\u2019s presence. In an era of Zoom calls and working from home, it has become clear that no proxy for spending time together fully captures the depth and authenticity of in-person connections. The same is true for God. Whether through adoration, daily Mass, or sitting in church for a few minutes after a long day, putting myself into the presence of God in the church building itself allows me to grow familiar with God\u2019s presence in a singular way. One-on-one time with Him in this consecrated space is unable to be replicated elsewhere.<\/p>

A single exchange recently brought my reflections on home into focus. After Mass recently, I was speaking with a parishioner in her 80s whose previous church (which she had attended throughout her life) was among those closing here in Baltimore. The pain in her face was evident as she explained that her parents and son had been buried there, and she had hoped to someday have the same done for her. Nevertheless, when I expressed my condolences that she had lost her home, she looked startled. \u201cGod will take me home no matter where I am buried from,\u201d she said.<\/p>

It was a good reminder for me. By nature, I fall prey to strong attachments to places, whether my childhood bedroom, my hometown, or Immaculate Conception Church. I strive to remember that these places are merely spiritual aids for growing my relationship with God, in whom lies the only home that is eternal. Yes, spiritual aids are important; time spent in worship and reflection in church grows our understanding that He is our true home. Pope Benedict XVI expressed this most eloquently during one of his pilgrimages to the Shrine of Loreto: \u201cFaith lets us reside, or dwell, but it also lets us walk on the path of life. Here in Loreto we find a house which lets us stay, or dwell, and which at the same time […] reminds us that we are pilgrims, that we must always be on the way to another dwelling, towards our final home, the Eternal City, the dwelling place of God and the people He has redeemed.\u201d The physical church building encourages us to rest in God\u2019s presence and choose, each day, to pursue an everlasting home in Him. As I progress through Baltimore and wherever my future residency may lead, I will continue to seek out church homes that serve as waystations on my greater journey of faith. Then, no matter where I go or how sudden the transition, I will never again feel truly uprooted. Instead, I will be anchored in the hope of a homecoming that brings pure joy\u2014the long-awaited Sirmio that God prepares for each of us.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Illustrations by Sarah Clark, from photos by Yianni Mathioudakis on Unsplash (Baltimore), Samantha M. on Unsplash (Massachusetts), Sonder Quest on Unsplash (San Juan), Peter Lewis on Unsplash (New Hampshire), Marco Ghirello on Unsplash (Lake Garda)<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Alice Little<\/strong> is a first-year medical student at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the Dartmouth College class of 2022. She has not yet decided on a specialty and is keeping an open mind.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Loving places, from countries and cities to homes and churches, provides us with rest and comfort on our journey through life. 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