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   Ross on March 7, 2008 at 12:56 pm

   This article reminds of what Father Dennis M. Lineham, S.J., says in the end about pilgrimages in “Of Many Things” (February 25, 2008 issue of America magazine), namely:

   “Not one of the above experiences matches the spiritual reality, for me, of the pilgrimage I made every day during the time of the dreaded thesis preparation. After lunch every day, I would walk the few hundred yards from our house in the Rue de Grenelle in Paris, where I lived with 100 French Jesuits and two American Jesuits, Michael Cooper and James Bernauer. My goal was the motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity in the Rue du Bac, a site more visited than the Eiffel Tower. It was then, and still is, a shrine to St. Catherine Labouré, the sister whose vision of Our Blessed Lady in that very house led to the diffusion of the Miraculous Medal devotion. Zoe Labouré, Sister Catherine, was a most extraordinary woman. Among her sisters she seemed quite ordinary, having only one assignment during her 46 years of religious life. And she told only her confessor about her visions.

   “For 46 years she worked in obscure silence as administrator of a retirement home to which was attached an orphanage. Her “cover” was broken only in the last year of her life. She spent her religious life among the poor and marginalized in the far reaches of Paris, and it was there that she died.

   “Such spots invite us to consider ordinary places closer to home that are worthy of a pilgrim’s attention.”

   cf. http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10628