A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

The pilgrimage “Following the Footsteps of St. Paul” is actually the second part of the two-pronged program of the Filipino Ministry of the Diocese of San Bernardino called “Discovering and Rediscovering our Roots”. The two dimensions of the program are: (1) Discovering and Re-discovering the Filipino Roots. Every year this program brings Filipinos and Filipino-Americans, and friends from the different cultural roots (Anglo-European, Afro-American, Hispanic-Latin American, etc.) to the Philippines. There they are introduced to the Philippine landscape, history, culture and the present ways of life of the Filipino people. They live with Filipino communities and families, hop from one island to another, besides swimming in the blue seas cradled by white immaculate sands of the Pacific Philippine beaches. This January 2011, we will have Discovering and Re-discovering the Filipino Roots through Medical Mission.

(2) Discovering and Re-discovering the Roots of our Faith. This is a three-year cycle of our journey to yesterday. The first is a pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Israel, Jordan and Egypt. The second is a pilgrimage to the early Christian churches, the churches that St. Paul organized. So we have: Following the Footsteps of St. Paul in what is now Turkey, Greek and Rome. And the third is a pilgrimage to the officially Church-approved sites of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary in France, Spain and Portugal.

The accounts of my trip to Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica and Rome were part of the second cycle. The third cycle will be in the first two weeks of October 2011. We hope to celebrate the feast of the Holy Rosary and Our Lady of Fatima in Spain and Portugal next year.

So, come on board and be part of this great spiritual adventure.

What is unique about this spiritual journey to the discovery and rediscovery of our roots is that it is not mere tourism. It is study and prayer on site and immersion with the people of the place. As a biblical scholar who reads Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Egyptian hieroglyphics and an avid student of history and archaeology, I prepare the study materials for the pilgrims to learn and ponder about. This way, we hope to deepen our living faith, cultivate a deeper bond of friendship and international solidarity, grow in our identity as persons in communion with others and realize more profoundly that we share a common origin, a common history and a common destiny: Jesus the Christ.

In the spirit of Christmas and the New Year, may our journey to yesterday be guided by the words of St. Paul: “that Christ may dwell in (our) hearts through faith; that (we), being rooted and grounded in love may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that (we) may be filled with all the fullness of God.”- Fr. Ben Alforque, MSC