Like most Romans, I escaped the city for the long weekend of Ferragosto, the feast of the Assumption, which is a public holiday in Italy. I went to a mountain resort with five other people, some of whom I knew well, others less. On Saturday morning, we decided to visit a nearby sanctuary of the Madonna of Macereto, renowned for its architectural value. None of us had any ‘religious’ intentions for the visit, and I would guess the relationships with the official Church of the rest of the group were indifferent at best, given some of their comments.

To our surprise, the sanctuary was celebrating its annual pilgrimage that day, and we found ourselves in the middle of marching bands that were gathering in the big courtyard. The sanctuary was packed with pilgrims but we had a look inside anyway. Nobody minded our tourism in the midst of prayerful adoration. Outside, the bands were ready to get going and out of a side-door appeared a gentleman with a mitre and staff, the local bishop maybe or his auxiliary.

We followed the procession at a small distance, being aware I guess of our intentions as bystanders and observers of religious customs of another era. I would have loved to hear the thoughts of the others, most of them Italians. They must have been quite different from my own, which went something like this:

“Interesting mix, these pilgrims – lots of old people, but also families with children, young women supporting their grandmothers, middle-aged men, young volunteers of the local fire brigade. Here comes the bishop. He is blessing the people further ahead, oh dear, I hope he is not going to bless us! What am I going to do if he does? Make the sign of the cross and embarrass myself in front of my friends? Good, he passes without a blessing–must have recognized us as tourists.

“There are maximum three priests in the whole procession, all at the front of course. That would have been quite different a century ago. Like the rest of the procession – it would have included everybody from the surrounding towns, and there wouldn’t have been any bystanders, everybody would have been part of it. They wouldn’t have walked to the parking lot and back but instead all the way down to the next town, about two and a half hours downhill (that’s what the sign said) but surely more like five hours with a heavy wooden Madonna and Child carried by six men.

I felt caught in a postmodern paradox. All these people in the procession so fervently singing and praying the rosary and believing that the wooden Madonna had miraculous capacities. And our little group with cameras and critical minds and disaffected hearts, not seeing what the pilgrims were seeing, not being able to sing along.

How can we find our own way of being pilgrims? Which part of the Church is there to call us, to make our hearts sing?

Photo: “Macereto” by fabiofotografie from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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