"The realization of our pilgrim status can help bring us this type of awareness. By realizing that we are only journeying on earth for a short time, we learn to see the relative and transitory nature of all our relationships, activities, and preoccupations in this life. Paradoxically, however, this leads us to see them not in a stoic fashion, but for what they really are: a tremendous, undeserved gift. Only when we sense that something is given to us for but a short time do we fully realize its gift dimension. If, indeed, we knew that we were to die tomorrow, we would, on this our last day, quickly come to the realization of how precious are the gifts of life, friendship, love, health, and work." (Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, "The Restless Heart.")
Too frequently, we take everyone and everything in this life for granted. We think that everything is owed us. Sometimes we over-expect from our relationships and experiences, as if they were "messianic," the final solution to the loneliness that is part of being "on the road." When no person, thing, or experience can possibly fill the God-Void in our hearts, we become bitter and self-pitying. Or else we use people and things, reaping as much pleasure from them as we can, thinking to fill that God-Void before we die.
We are pilgrims, traveling to the wedding feast of the Lamb, the unending banquet accompanied by the finished symphony of all creation finally completed, fulfilled, made whole. Our life here will always be an unfinished symphony of unfulfilled expectations and dreams. That's part of being human, of being who we are. It's why we travel light, not expecting to put down final roots in any place, in any city on earth. The Lord is always beckoning us forward, to follow Him down the road. To keep reaching out, as part of his Body, to preach, to teach, to heal, to serve, new lonely faces and broken minds and bodies of Christ along the way. That's what really matters in this life on the road.
Pilgrims are lonely because, until we see our God face to face, there is no perfect, final resting place for our hearts or our heads. In this way, we experience the loneliness of Jesus, true God and true Man.
"Our loneliness, too, has value in that it is an invitation given us to share in the redemptive loneliness of Jesus. As scholars and mystics have always pointed out to us, the loneliness of Jesus was an important part of his redemptive act. He redeemed us not just by teaching and doing miracles, but also, and especially, by his suffering and his loneliness. It is not too strong to say: By his loneliness we have been healed and made one. Just as the passion and crucifixion of Christ continue until the end of the world in those who suffer, so, too, the loneliness of Christ continues in all those who are lonely.
"Today we help form Christ's body and presence on earth. The Incarnation is not an experiment that ended when Christ ascended. God is still incarnate in Christ, in us. It is up to us to actualize Christ's presence on earth. And we must actualize the whole Christ: his word, his healing powers, his reconciliation, his death and resurrection, and his loneliness.
"Our own, loneliness, then, is an invitation to keep incarnate the lonely ministry of Christ. In our own loneliness, we are asked to weep with him over Jerusalem, sweat lonely tears with him in the garden, battle the forces of Satan in the desert, and, from a cross somewhere, cry out with him in anguish at a silent God." ("The Restless Heart").
As pilgrims yearning for God, carrying in our hearts the roads to Zion, we walk lightly. We simultaneously treasure and hold all those undeserved gifts in our lives - those beautiful, bountiful people and experiences, our health, our jobs, our temporary "resting places" that give God to us. Yet simultaneously we prompt ourselves to be ready to let them go when their time with us is over.
As pilgrims yearning for God, we simultaneously see His Face in the face of everyone we encounter, and are Christ to everyone we encounter - as they give God to us. We re-enact Jesus' lonely, life-giving journey, actualizing his presence for others.
We treasure those other gifts God gives us that remind us of Him: living in community, reading God's Word, breaking bread together, challenging and consoling each other, and reenacting through the liturgy the major saving words and events of Christ's life. They keep alive God's promise that one day He will return for us to bring us to His lasting city, where everyone and everything we have treasured here is made new, restored, made whole for us to treasure forever, in the light of God's Face. There our loneliness will be healed. Our pilgrimage come to an end. All incompleteness will be made complete. Our hearts will finally be satisfied. We will have reached the end of the roads to Zion, and found our peaceful, eternal home.