How shall we proceed through the New Year? Timothy Jones (1955 – ), the author of A Place for God, provides helpful insight. In the following excerpt, he describes the radical commitment of early Celtic saints who embarked on missionary service without worldly assurances or visible support. Their faithful embrace of “peregrinatio” provides an inspiring example of the journey to which God calls his disciples:
The Celtic saints of earlier centuries made much of the idea of peregrinatio, a difficult-to-translate word that suggests an open-ended journey. It was not uncommon for medieval Irish monks to set out with no destination; they left with only the simple impulse to go and seek, guided by the Holy Spirit. Unlike the pilgrimages to shrines common to medieval lore, writes Esther de Waal, “there [was] no specific end or goal such as that of reaching a . . . holy place that allows the pilgrim at the end of the journey to return home with a sense of mission accomplished.” Rather, the idea was to learn to live as travelers, pilgrims, “guests of the world,” as sixth-century Irishman Saint Columbanus put it. There was to be a creative openness, even if that meant living in a kind of exile so as not to hold too tightly to one’s ambitions and spiritual itinerary. The idea was to leave behind the known and safe to find a truer basis for security.1
As we enter the New Year, may we do so more keenly aware of the One whom we follow and, therefore, proceed with a greater measure of faith.
Happy New Year!
Footnotes:
1 Timothy Jones, A Place for God: A Guide to Spiritual Retreats and Retreat Centers (New York: Doubleday Image, 2000), 47.
