by Joseph Stoutzenberger / header image credit: pexels.com

The city of Ephesus, now in modern-day Turkey, was home to a thriving Christian community in the early years of Christianity. Today, you can still visit a small chapel that claims to have been built on the home site where Mary, the Blessed Mother, lived out her last days in the company of the apostle John. On the path leading up to the chapel is a sign that Pope John Paul II declared this site “worthy of veneration.” He didn’t support or reject the claim that the Blessed Mother actually lived there, but he said it is indeed a holy place. When I visited the chapel, I nonchalantly looked around at the altar and surroundings. I wondered, “What are the chances that Mary lived here?” Then, three men came into the chapel. They immediately genuflected and blessed themselves. Judging by how they made the cross sign, they were Eastern Catholics or Orthodox, not Latin rite Christians. They genuflected and blessed themselves three times on the way to the front of the chapel, knelt before a statue of Mary, lit candles, and bowed their head in a posture of great devotion. I realized I had approached this place as a tourist; these men were pilgrims. They were moved to bow down in adoration in the presence of the holy. The chapel allowed them to connect to the Blessed Mother, regardless of whether she lived there.

I began asking myself if I approached anything with the spirit of reverence that the three men exhibited in Mary’s chapel in Ephesus. Such expressive spirituality runs counter to our modern, secular age. As I go through life, am I always a tourist? Am I ever a pilgrim? Getting down on our knees in adoration is not a gesture that comes naturally to people steeped in secular culture. Aren’t we missing something because of this failure by so many of us? Isn’t something vital lost? Surely, there is someone or something we should regard with great reverence. The three men were onto something we might assent to intellectually but seldom bring ourselves into. Places of worship are meant to be that—places where people go to connect with the holy. Is there any hope for us who are increasingly numbering ourselves as among the “nones,” people indifferent to religion and, in large part, indifferent to any sense of the sacred?

Photo by MUGESH DSRAJ on Pexels.com

Some people still seem to be better at adoration than most Catholics, mainline Protestants, and secular humanists. Five times a day, devout Muslims prostrate themselves in recognition of the all-merciful, all-compassionate God. Many Evangelical Christians feel themselves transformed when they go to church, where they experience the presence of Jesus, their Lord and Savior. Some Catholics associate practices done before the changes brought on by Vatican Council II, such as the Mass in Latin, as conveying a spirit of reverence that they find lacking in the Catholic practices of today. What would help the rest of us reclaim a sense of the sacred? Catholic writer Carlo Carretto offers the following guidelines for how to cultivate an attitude of reverence and feel connected to the holy that secularists might find helpful:

Try very hard to have a child’s heart and a child’s eyes, then everything will be easier for you. Gaze at things, study things; don’t be afraid of wasting time strolling along by the sea or looking in a microscope….God looks at you through all the signs of creation all around you that are filled with God’s presence. They will speak to you of God.

If we can slow down our racing minds, step away from screens, and tap into a sense of wonder and pondering, we might discover what Carretto says: God is gazing at us, present all around us, and speaking to us. Then we can smile and join the chorus of people who bow before the holy and sing God’s praises in heartfelt songs. We can become pilgrims on a sacred journey through life.