Pilgrims of Hope

Bringing a vision for personal and parish renewal - called "Hope from the Margins" - that embraces all of God's children to Pope Francis

Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger and a diverse group of 12 mission-focused pilgrims recently had an audience with Pope Francis in Rome and discussed with the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development their common vision for personal and parish renewal called “Hope from the Margins.” (Photo courtesy of Bishop Scharfenberger)

You may have been hearing that another Holy Year is fast upon us. We have already entered in a “new year of grace,” as the start of a new liturgical year is often characterized. The First Sunday of Advent always marks the Church’s New Year, not with a shout and a bang, but a gentle breath of hope, a longing for spiritual renewal as we open our hearts to “the One who is to come.”  

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” is the ancient hymn that well expresses our faith that “Christ has come, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” Emmanuel means “God-with-us.” We live in the reality of the three-fold “coming” of the Lord among us. The Incarnation of the Eternal Word in time, in history is the first coming. The resurrected life of Christ in the world, present in the living witness of the disciples and the sacramental life of the Church, the mystical Body of Christ, is the second. The third coming, also in time, at the end of time, will signal Christ’s coming in glory, fully manifest as judge of the world and all within it. What happens during the second coming, every day of our human lives on earth, is what we might call a kind of pilgrimage of hope. We are “on the way” to an eternal destiny of complete joy and fulfillment. Only not yet displayed in technicolor, we might say. 

“Pilgrims of Hope” is the theme of another kind of Holy Year, an extraordinary one, announced by Pope Francis for 2025. It has become an ecclesial tradition to mark every quarter of a century with a universal celebration marked by pilgrimages to Rome, diocesan and parish processions, and other joyous manifestations of our living faith in the Lord who is with us. 

This year our Holy Father invites us not only to hope and pray for our world’s healing and deliverance from various evils, but to concrete actions that will promote integral human development. He has already written eloquently in “Laudato Si’ ” and “Fratelli Tutti” on what we may call the three essential relationships that define and fulfill our humanity: with God, with neighbor and with our common home, the world we all live in. 

Jesus clearly taught the universal truth that right relationship with God and neighbor sums up all the divine commandments, which order our lives according to divine justice, and are also the way to human happiness and fulfillment. Virtue is the practical living out of these relationships, the growth or cultivation of which relies on God’s loving graces and our cooperation. Pope Francis has highlighted a third theme which many popes have been developing for decades since Leo XIII (cf. Rm 8:22-24). We speak of the Holy Spirit as Creator who renews the face of the earth (Ps 104:30).

A group of some 12 diverse but mission-focused pilgrims accompanied me to Rome recently where we were honored with an audience with Pope Francis and an opportunity to discuss our common vision for personal and parish renewal with the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development. Our mission is called “Hope from the Margins.” 

Every member of our group has faith and hope, nourished by practical, even professional experience, of their life being evangelized and transformed by encounters with those who are poor, disabled, abused and otherwise marginalized in the world. We are not primarily theoreticians, self-styled visionaries, or even theologians, except what might be called dabblers in a “plaid shirt” kind of theology. Among us are both lay and clergy, married and celibate, men and women of many callings and trades. We are farmer, teacher, social worker, survivor of abuse, architect, businessperson, pastor, parent, physician, artist, artisan — most of us bearing more than one such appellation. 

What unites us in all our eclectic diverseness is a common experience and passion to bring those in the margins to the center, precisely because we ourselves have been and continue to be evangelized by them. We meet them every day where we work, pray and play.

We believe that solid parish renewal, which must be continuous and intentional — never a “one and done” deal, another program or a designer’s project — is less structural than organic and personal, engaging every disciple, as an integral member of the Body of Christ. This journey or pilgrimage may go out from the “Ite Missa EST” (“Go, the Mass IS”) of the Eucharistic assembly but must flow continually in and through the living ecology of prayer — private and communal — encounter with neighbor, cultivation of the earth and stewardship of our divine and natural environment. And it is the mission of every disciple, not just church officials.

We acknowledge a certain sense of unworthiness and lament its confusion among so many faithful with worthlessness. Everyone is an important member of the Body of Christ. Everyone has a struggle and a story, a personal journey of faith, with all its peaks and troughs, which can enrich us all. The synodal path of listening is not confined to the boundaries of our own co-religionists, but embraces all our neighbors, among whom the Gospels often shock us are so many by their sheer breadth of inclusion, Samaritans and Canaanites, lepers and outcasts, the woman at the well, to name a few. They are us and we are them. Just us! May our parishes welcome all as God’s beloved children and pilgrims of hope — especially our brothers and sisters from the margins.