What it means to me to be a pilgrim of hope

Embracing pilgrim qualities

By Sister Tracey Horan, S.P.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a pilgrim? Pilgrims live peacefully with an incredible amount of uncertainty. They may not have much clarity about where they’re going. They will have to depend on others along the way and cannot carry much with them. They will say many hellos and goodbyes as they journey from one place to the next. 

As a newer Sister of Providence, parts of the pilgrim archetype resonate with the life I live, and others remain aspirational for me. I am no stranger to movement, to hellos and goodbyes. I have lived in six different community settings in four cities in 10 years. With every move, I have become more determined to travel lightly, as I recognize the burden it is for a pilgrim to be weighed down by belongings. I have said goodbye to a number of sisters I have known as friends and mentors, and I have also had the joy of welcoming new vowed members who have decided to journey with us. All this movement—greetings and letting go, putting down tender shoots with care wherever I am, knowing they may soon be uprooted—is part and parcel of what it means to be a pilgrim. 

Now a decade into my religious life, I find hope as a pilgrim in a moment when we women and men religious are being called into deeper dependence and interdependence beyond the confines of our own congregations. Pilgrims are often forced to get creative in meeting their needs for food and shelter. For me, this is not a reality to fear but an adventure to embrace. When I felt a strong call to minister at the U.S.-Mexico border but had no success recruiting Sisters of Providence to build a community with me, I found a way to respond to this call: depend on the generosity of another religious congregation that opened its doors to me. 

While I have embraced the creativity involved in intercongregational interdependence, the vulnerability and dependence of the pilgrim is still a growing edge for me. It can be a challenge to be a vowed member in my 30s and to acknowledge having needs, especially when I see the increasing dependence of my elders. There is a temptation to try to be as “needless” and independent as possible, to somehow counterbalance the neediness of women in my congregation who have given so generously of themselves for decades. Yet in this Jubilee Year, I find a hopeful model in the pilgrim who builds community through her neediness. In the words of musician Sara Groves, “Thank God for our dependence, here’s to our chasm of need, and how it binds us together, in faith and vulnerability.” When a pilgrim humbly requests food or shelter, when she is willing to reach out and invite the generosity of others, she creates the space for a loving response. The beauty of leaning into the pilgrim way in community is that we are not alone in our human dependence. We can support one another in our movement, in hellos and goodbyes, in realizing our need for the support of others on this journey. 

Finally, there is the pilgrim’s peace with uncertainty. When I look around at newer members in my own congregation and beyond, I see this virtue in abundance. We are closer than our elders to what brought us here, and this has a way of grounding us in our general intention for the journey. I have yet to meet a woman who joined her congregation because of a motherhouse building or a piece of land or a particular sponsored ministry. We come because of what is alive in these places, because of our desire to aspire to Gospel values in a focused way and in community with others. 

Sister Tracey Horan, S.P. is a Sister of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, and currently ministers in education and advocacy at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Moving forward with an open heart

By Brother Christopher Campos Erran, O.S.C.

WHEN I FIRST HEARD about the Jubilee Year focus on pilgrims of hope, I couldn’t help but pause and smile. I thought, “Yes, that’s exactly what I am.” Not just because I’m a newer member still finding my footing, but because my whole life has been a pilgrimage of hope, often walking in trust before I could see what lay ahead.

Born and raised in South Phoenix in a strong Mexican-American family, I was shaped by faith, struggle, and perseverance. My parents, married for nearly six decades, taught me what resilience and unconditional love look like in action, my dad a former migrant farmworker and my mom a hardworking woman of great wisdom and faith. Our family didn’t have much materially, but we were rich in faith. We prayed, we hoped, and we carried each other through.

As a first-generation college student and then a higher education professional for 20 years, I carried that hope into the world, walking with students of color, first-generation scholars, and single parents trying to change their lives. I loved that work. I thought that was my lifelong path.

But God had other plans.

In 2020, amid the uncertainty of the pandemic, I heard the clearest call of my life: “It’s time to let it all go and follow me, Christopher.” And just like that, I found myself on a new road, one that led to the Crosiers, whose charism of touching suffering with hope mirrored my own heart. Saying yes meant leaving behind a home, community, career, retirement plan—and stepping into a life of prayer, community, and deep listening.

Now, as I journey through initial formation, I realize how profoundly hope shapes my daily life. Hope is in our morning prayers when we lift up the pain of the world. Hope is in our elder confreres who have walked this road faithfully for decades. Hope is in quiet spiritual direction sessions, where I accompany others through their valleys and mountaintops.

I think of hope as a kind of holy stubbornness, a refusal to believe that darkness gets the final word. It’s the lens through which I now see my ministries, whether I’m tending to an aging brother, helping plan a development campaign, or guiding someone in prayer, I’m constantly invited to hold space for possibility, healing, and new life.

Being a pilgrim of hope also means embracing the unknown with trust. As I prepare for my clinical pastoral education with our local Veterans Affairs hospital, I feel the stretch again. Will I be enough in the face of people’s pain? Will I be ready to meet suffering with gentleness and strength? The questions linger, but so does the Spirit’s quiet encouragement: “You’re not walking alone.”

And I’m not. My Crosier brothers, my family back home, and the communion of saints walk with me. The beauty of religious life is that we never journey in isolation. We walk together, offering each other glimpses of grace along the way.

This Jubilee Year reminds me that being a pilgrim doesn’t mean having everything figured out. It means moving forward anyway, with a heart open to God’s surprises. It means trusting that the One who called me will continue to lead, even when the road bends unexpectedly.

So here I am, a brother in formation, a spiritual director-in-training, a product of South Phoenix, a child of God, walking this road with my eyes set on hope. Not because I have all the answers, but because I believe in the One who does. And for now, that’s more than enough. 

Brother Christopher Campos Erran, O.S.C. is in formation with the Crosiers.

Hope can be gritty and tough

By Sister Audra Turnbull, I.H.M.

RECENTLY, I ATTENDED A WORKSHOP in which the speaker shared a poem by Caitlin Seida called “Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat.” The poem reflects on the gritty, tough nature of hope, and it caught me off guard. As I pondered further, the words started to resonate within me. I usually look for hope in traditionally beautiful surroundings, but as I reflected on my life as a Catholic sister, hope often came from ugly places in both my ministerial and communal life.

Hope doesn’t gracefully fly high above us like a bird. Hope comes out of nowhere and scampers by our feet, sending chills down our spines. Hope is much closer than we think and much harder to eradicate than we expect. Hope doesn’t know how to die. It comes back day after day, living in conditions most virtues wouldn’t dare go. Like a sewer rat, hope lives in dark, smelly, and oftentimes dangerous conditions. I find that hope thrives in these places. 

In my ministry as a professional guardian for adults, I have found myself in these dark and dangerous places, places where no human should live but where more and more people are found every day. I’ve witnessed the hope in these vulnerable adults that tomorrow will be better than today. There is a belief that with the right help, their lot in life can improve. It’s humbling to be a part of that help. A prayer I often pray is, “God, help me, help them.” Our Catholic faith implores us to be in these places and challenge the systems that often force people here. This focus is backed up by my congregation’s charism, which is to be and become the liberating mission of Jesus Christ. This charism continues to inspire and challenge me to this day. 

What also brings me hope—and helps me be a pilgrim of hope this Jubilee Year—is that God continues to work through not only me but my sisters in community. At times being in community can be just as messy emotionally as living in a sewer. There have been times I have been deeply hurt by my own sisters, and there are times I have hurt others as well. Living in community often means being shown areas of yourself that are just plain ugly. 

When I first entered my community I wanted to show my formators and sisters that I was a beautiful and graceful bird. I quickly learned that I had flaws I could not hide and other flaws I did not even know I had. Every configuration of community life has revealed some part of who I am, for better or worse. Even with all these flaws, I have continued to receive love and support from my sisters. Like a persistent sewer rat, we show up for one another in the darkest of times. Our love for one another and our shared charism is tenacious and fierce. In these dark and uncertain times, our grit becomes our most valuable trait. 

We women religious are ordinary humans after all, still striving to be better humans than we were the day before. We are still seeking new ways to bring about the liberating mission of Jesus Christ. This journey of discovery doesn’t end in old age. I know sisters well into their 90s who haven’t lost the willingness to learn new things. They may not be walking through the physical sewers, but they hold in their prayers all of us who do. We have a saying in the IHMs: “Where one IHM is, every IHM is there as well.” It gives me hope that I’m not alone in this journey of trying to navigate the physical and spiritual sewers of our day. 

Sister Audra Turnbull, I.H.M. is a member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and she ministers as a professional guardian for Compassionate Companions in Monroe, Michigan. 

Questions and grace

By Brother Nathaniel Pierce, S.J.C.

THE JUBILEE YEAR hadn’t been much of a consolation coming into Holy Week this past spring. I was in my first year at seminary, my fourth with the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius. It’s been a largely diocesan formation—busy, much busier than when I’m back with my community. The formation has been geared toward seminarians who will one day be on their own in a parish.

Consolation seemed to have faded as God was forming me into a public figure. Are you doing this, Lord, to show me something?

They say we hope in things unseen, that this is a principle in the spiritual life. God withdraws consolations. I once heard it described as no longer giving the dog the milk bone when he sits.

There’s a church just down the street from the seminary—a Jubilee church with Holy Doors. I tried getting in several times, but each time it was closed. You have to make special arrangements or go during Mass. It was never just open when I was driving by and could easily pull over and step inside. It seemed like every Holy Door this Jubilee Year was either inconvenient or hidden. 

Adding to my frustration, four years into my formation, I still find myself sitting in chapel with questions about what the future holds for me. I seem so resolved to stick with it that I wonder sometimes if I’m even listening.

How do we hear God’s voice that we may become pilgrims of hope? Dietrich von Hildebrand says we must conform to objective values with an integrated intellect, mind, and heart. The heart, the affective center of the human person, is, he argues, the fundamental part of who we are. We encounter objective values in the world, and we respond to them with rightly ordered affectivity. Here at Mundelein Seminary, they call it affective maturity. I’m still figuring out what that means. How do you make an objective response with your heart? What intensity of feeling is enough to be appropriate? Still, it’s the best idea I’ve come across at seminary this year. A powerful idea, it seems, if integrated.

My uncle died on Spy Wednesday. We hadn’t talked much since I had entered religious life. We’d grown apart. I’ve grown apart from a lot of people I used to be close with, one of the sacrifices of religious life, I tell myself. But I know better. I could have done better. I could have written or called him more. I rather like being ensconced away from the world. Regrets don’t disappear when you enter religious life. They often feel sharper. I failed to respond to the objective value of my uncle—he, as a subject, as a thou.

But hours before he died, my cousin got him last rites. I had prayed a Saint Joseph novena thinking he needed a miracle to receive the sacraments. And he did receive them—a miracle for him, a fallen-away Catholic. And all that the Jubilee Year promises—reconciliation, hope, conversion, a new beginning—suddenly became real for me. The Paschal Mystery. Christ’s redemptive suffering.
 
On Holy Thursday, I managed to get through some Holy Doors. All I could think about on Good Friday was that Christ ransoms us. That was enough. Redemption never made sense like it did that day. It was a grace of the Jubilee Year with its emphasis on pilgrims of hope. Then came the seven readings of Holy Saturday, and the dots connected. I felt God stooping down to me, to my uncle, to all of us. A privileged time, sanctified in God’s mercy.

Brother Nathaniel Pierce, S.J.C. is a member of the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius of Chicago currently preparing for the priesthood at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois.

We walk together

By Sister Katty Huanuco C.C.V.I

A FEW MONTHS AGO, I spent part of my Monday in line, waiting to update my driver’s license. It was one of those lines that tests me. We stood and moved slowly in unison. The wait stretched on for almost four hours. Some people chatted softly, others scrolled through phones, a few just stared ahead. Some people smiled at me, and those smiles lightened the weight of my wait. We were different in so many visible ways: age, language, clothing, posture. But we all had something in common: we needed to be there. We had chosen to wait. We were all hoping for something we needed, something that would allow us to continue on our way. And it struck me: “This, too, is what being a pilgrim of hope looks like.”

Just as I waited at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) for something not yet in hand, a pilgrim of hope walks toward a future shaped by trust, not certainty. So, how do I live a life of faith that stays in motion, even when I do not see the full picture? As a Peruvian Sister in the United States, I often feel like I, too, am in a line: learning how to listen, how to speak, how to stand with those whose hope has been denied or delayed, how to remain open to the unknown rhythms. But, thank God, pilgrimage is never just about me!

Many of us these days find our current pilgrimage is not always consoling. Our common home is marked by exhaustion, injustice, and despair. Some members of our own religious communities feel like everything is overwhelming. Others may get stuck. Yet it is precisely here that we are called to walk as pilgrims of hope. There are many sisters and brothers who are eager to serve. There are many around the world who keep us moving. They show us the line is moving, and we must move, even when we do not see any progress. 

Indeed, being a pilgrim of hope is a call to recognize that we walk with others. We walk a path shaped by the footsteps of others. And hope can be lived in spaces of uncertainty, discomfort, and delay. It is not grand, but it is persistent and communal. As a pilgrim of hope, I have been nourished by those who keep walking with me, even when the line is long. So many have shown me how to embody a ministry of presence and solidarity.

“Hope speaks to us of a thirst, an aspiration, a longing for a life of fulfillment,” Pope Francis writes in Fratelli Tutti. We, as sisters, are committed to keep standing where we are called to stand. We live in shared spaces, with different stories and different timelines. Our communities can be circles of care where others might glimpse the possibility of not standing alone. 

The DMV was a space where people from different walks of life stood side by side, united in vulnerability and in a desire for renewal, recognition, or simply forward movement. Like those in line, maybe we are invited to wait, to hope, because we believe. So, being a pilgrim of hope, for me, means standing in places of delay and longing, walking with others who are also waiting. It is trusting that even there, something is unfolding. It means being intentional about nurturing moments of joy in the waiting. It is believing that hope is not just something we feel; it’s something we choose, together.

Sister Katty Huanaco, C.C.V.I. is a Sister of Charity of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in social and public policy while serving as director of her community’s initiative, the International Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation Ministry.

Those who help me be a pilgrim of hope

By Brother Luis Ramos, F.M.S.

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion / When the wicked carried us away in captivity, required from us a song / Now how shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

These verses from Boney M’s 1978 hit cover “Rivers of Babylon” incorporate words from the Psalms. They perfectly describe how I felt during parts of 2024 and 2025. This time was packed with significant experiences for me: moving from one school ministry to another, preparing for my final profession, and losing two grandparents within a few months, both in difficult ways. It was also an election year, with news and commentary adding a weight to the background of my life. It felt like the world was frenetic, never still, never stable. Transition, grief, and world events can do that to you. I tried to remain hopeful, but I was definitely a pilgrim in what felt like a “strange land.”

Joys and difficulties pass across each of our doorsteps. No one is exempt. Even with joys at school and in formation, it seemed like my own hope was being depleted. When I found myself feeling low, I’d think, “All right Luis, there are things to be grateful for,” and, “God, how do I work with this? I’m in a rut!” As I contemplated, I realized that three groups of people help me to be a pilgrim of hope.

First, God speaks through our youth. For the past six years, I have had the privilege to be a high school teacher. It has built up my patience and made me a quicker thinker, a better listener. Young people are honest and willing to share, traits that show up in a special way through their humor and discussions. They are at an age of deep discernment and self discovery. 

As a religion and Spanish teacher, I’ve been able to listen to young people articulate their faith journeys and aspirations—their pilgrimages. Their questions, curiosities, and motivations are deeply moving. Unknowingly, they have helped me discern my own vocation. They possess a wealth of talent and faith activating before my eyes.

Another group that helps me be a pilgrim of hope is my community. Last summer, I began a year of preparation for final vows. This prompted reflection on the origins of my vocation. I met the Marist Brothers at Mount Saint Michael Academy in my hometown, the Bronx. Their passion for ministry and openness to new membership excited me as a student. Each brother had his own identity, but the Gospel mission joined them together. 

Additionally, they were normal. They laughed, spent time together, and shared faith. As the only member of my “group” (young and Latino) when I entered, my brothers were supportive, including me as a full member. And more have entered since I did.

Finally, my grandparents inspire me to be a pilgrim of hope. Losing two of them has been a great difficulty, but their example sets me on a path of hope. When I consider their lives, I think of how they shared their resources, energy, faith, and love. They exemplified love of God and neighbor. I carry their witness with me daily. 

My hope, then, in this Jubilee Year is to be receptive to God’s call as a brother, specifically by listening to those I serve, those I join with in community, and those who have gone before me. Another verse in Boney M’s cover says, “Let the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable in thy sight here tonight.” If I can make that my goal, I can press on as a pilgrim of hope—even in a strange land.

Brother Luis Ramos, F.M.S. belongs to the Marist Brothers and teaches Spanish at Mount Saint Michael Academy in the Bronx, New York.