I have attended the North America CL University student pilgrimage every year since it started in 2014, as an accompanying adult. And once again this year, I was the “driver” – taking care of many behind-the-scenes logistics details, to ensure a smooth experience for everyone. My participation in the pilgrimage was very different from most of the other people there. Until, that is, at one point it all changed, and became the simple experience of belonging to these people. But let’s go with order.

For the first three full days of the walking, I was not able to join the group for even a quarter of a mile. Unlike everyone else, for me there were no sore legs or feet, no blisters, no getting drenched in the rain, no sharing in the time of silence or rosary during the walk. I was, however, able to share in praying the hours during the stops, attending Mass, and I got to know many new friends at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but otherwise I was just driving – by myself (until some friends unable to walk started becoming my companions on the van).

In the mornings, I’d do the “trash round”, then I’d drive ahead with the food crew. Throughout the day, I would go into town to buy something that we ran out of, or scout the route looking for a place for lunch, or drive ahead to the next designated snack-break stop, or pick up someone else who could no longer walk, etc. A couple of afternoons we also had to “drive the drivers” of our 26 vehicles in a caravan, so that they would be positioned for us at the end of the pilgrimage.

For me all of this was my own way of being at the pilgrimage, fully engaged in it, and offering all of my time for the same intentions as everyone else. In this very different way, I was entirely united with the group. Every morning I cleaned the bathrooms with care, and this had the exact same value as everyone offering their fatigue and pain along the way (frankly, I was never this happy in my life cleaning bathrooms, for real!). I picked up every small bit of trash from the floor where each one of us spent the night, “for” them. In sincere, if hidden, thanksgiving to the people who allowed us to use their parish spaces, I wanted to leave the place the same as, or better, than we had found it the evening before.

It was my task, it was clear, it was easy. Everything I did had a profound sense of purpose: I knew why I was doing it, and I was putting all of myself into serving the pilgrimage with all of my energy in the best way possible. It was good.

Then, on day 4, the day before we reached the Shrine, everything changed. With assertiveness and without much explanation, both Fr. Pietro and Francesco told me that I needed to walk with the others, and that Francesco would drive the van that day. I didn’t like it. I felt that these tasks were being taken away from me, which I understood as “my responsibility” for the pilgrimage, and which I was happy to do, and to which I was already giving my best. In other words, I had to let go of “owning” even the tasks that were given to me in the first place. It meant, literally, giving Francesco the van keys, with no strings attached; letting him drive instead. And it meant that I had to start walking.

As the first fruit of this, it became possible for me to do what until then I was doing only implicitly: bringing to mind all my prayer intentions, all my concerns in life. For my friends who are in need, for my very elderly parents and for the sufferings that the Lord will ask of them in the future, for the friends in my house, for the community, for all the movement. And beyond all that, for myself (how often have I been praying for myself, lately?) I needed that.

And then the greater sign came. While I was towards the front of the group, as we all proceeded in silence along the ever-changing and ever-monotonous Wisconsin farmland, Fr. Pietro nodded at me to take my turn carrying the cross. (I had really wanted to do it, even if just “symbolically”, for a short time and distance, and yet in the moment when he nodded at me, my action of taking the cross wasn’t mine, it wasn’t because I wanted it: it was a pure obeying to that invitation.) So all of the sudden there I was, holding that cross and walking with it, “symbolically” leading for a short time and distance these 87 friends, known and unknown, “feeling” them behind me looking at this cross.

Within seconds of that, it all came together. God loves us; God loves me. I do all of my things, and I try to do them well, but in the end I have to let go of all of them, and I have to follow. Even when I’m leading these 87 people by carrying, myself, the cross, I am not leading. In truth, I am following Christ. I am in the path of God who loves us, of God who loves me. With all of my concerns and desires. I realize that we are all here in the changing and monotonous Wisconsin farmland, because God loves us: “the Word was made flesh, and dwells among us”. And because Our Lady appeared here, a few short miles up the road from where we are, and some 150+ years ago, asking Adele to “pray for the conversion of sinners, and to teach them what they need for their salvation”. And because Fr. Pietro called us here, precisely here, and together, to pray for peace in this troubled world as “witnesses of God’s consolation and peace”.

A pilgrimage is a metaphor for our entire life: it’s about going through difficult situations, it’s about aiming for, and reaching, some intermediate goals, and it’s about going together with friends, with a guide, and with an ultimate desired destination. By facing with positiveness the struggles that present themselves on a pilgrimage, we learn and become better equipped to live the entirety of our lives for what they truly are. We even learn how to make a difference ourselves: how to “drive” for others.

This pilgrimage changed me, this pilgrimage was profoundly an experience. It didn’t matter that I had attended it nine other times before. This time, it taught me that this peace (or gladness, or freedom) is simple, that it’s not all up to me. That it “comes with” my belonging to this people, which I encountered some 35 years ago as a teenager, and that it “comes with” my simple remaining a part of this people, with my following Christ on the path. Even when I have responsibilities, even when I am the one “driving” and making decisions for others: the best part is when I am following, belonging.

So really, in life, who is driving?

Paolo, Chicago