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Towards Aachen

Pope John-Paul II added to
the rosary five extra decades, related to events in the Holy Scripture. Thus he
wanted that, when praying the rosary; people would remember the baptism of
Jesus, his first miracle in Cana and His Word
bringing good while asking for penance.

The arrival of a pilgrim always brings
along happiness: to the pilgrim who is happy to have arrived, or at least to
have reached his purpose, since the "purpose" 
is the essence of the pilgrimage. It is the purpose which makes a
difference between the pilgrim and the wanderer or the tourist. But it also
brings happiness to the people who welcome him. Even if they do not actually
envy him, they are glad that everything went well with his walk. Sometimes they
are glad to be able to be of assistance to someone and to help a traveller,
specially a pilgrim after his walk. The pilgrim himself, whatever his purpose,
does not demand anything from his guest, because he knows how much effort he
had to make and is ready to make even more for the sake of penance.

Some places of pilgrimage
have existed for many centuries: Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago.
Others are more recent: Lourdes, Fatima and La
Salette.

Aachen is the oldest place of pilgrimage on this side of the
Alps. It is one of the cities whose German
name was translated from German into the mother tongue of most European
countries.

The word pilgrim comes from peregrinus
in Latin, which means "he who walks across the fields". So there are pilgrims
who want to walk to Aachen from Bohemia and others from Moravia. The ones from Bohemia
want to start their route from the grave of St Wenceslas in St Guy's Cathedral
in Prague on 27 May 2007 and the ones from Moravia want to depart
on St Mark's Day (25 April). 7 years after other pilgrims returned from Rome
and in this seventh year of the new millenium, it seems the right time to
associate the pilgrimage to Aachen with the following threefold message:

1 - This pilgrimage is a
token of thankfulness for our recently acquired freedom and for the opening of
frontiers in Europe.

2 - This pilgrimage is a
token of reconciliation after the struggles and injustice which occurred in the
past on each side of the frontier.

3 - The pilgrim constantly
joins his prayer to prayers for the revival of Europe's
Christian roots, because he does not want these roots to wither.

Nowadays people often speak
of meeting cultures and therefore fly all over the world. You can fly all over
the world, but when you walk you may not go as far, but you can have a good
spiritual relation with the land you walk on, you can stay longer, look around
and ask questions.

I think that all Europeans
should travel and that this part of the earth, after the horrors and confusion
of the Second World War, has now a new face. This pilgrimage, which no frontier
will stop, reminds us of the age-long peaceful coexistence in Christian Europe
for centuries.

Father Jan Penaz