Fathers walk while carrying their children during the July 2, 2024 portion of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage’s visit to the Diocese of Owensboro. RILEY GREIF | WKC
Pilgrims of Hope: In the Footsteps of Our Savior
Editor’s note: In celebration of the Jubilee of Hope, The Western Kentucky Catholic has launched Pilgrims of Hope, a yearlong blog series inspired by Pope Francis’ Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025: “My thoughts turn to all those pilgrims of hope who will travel to Rome in order to experience the Holy Year and to all those others who, though unable to visit the City of the Apostles Peter and Paul, will celebrate it in their local Churches.” Blog reflections will be written by individuals from across the Diocese of Owensboro, sharing their unique perspectives on the virtue of hope in a world that so greatly needs it.
BY DAWN C. LIGIBEL
By definition, a pilgrim is “a person who journeys, especially a long distance, to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion.”
In a sense, we are all pilgrims, whether we travel long distances to holy places or not, because every single day we should be traveling to the holy place of hope. Whether it is a conscious act or a subconscious act, when we choose to follow Jesus, we are essentially traveling through life with hope – a divine hope.
We are pilgrims in how we choose to live our lives following Christ. By virtue of the fact that we call ourselves Christian, we aspire to follow in the footsteps of our Savior who gave His life so we might have eternal life.
Can one truly follow Christ and not have hope? It would seemingly be impossible because hope is the vehicle in which we place our faith. We all know that faith is the belief in something not seen. Hope, therefore, is the expectation of the fruition of that faith. Faith without hope is, therefore, as unlikely as faith without works. (James 2:14-26)
In his great discourse on love (1 Corinthians, chapter 13), St. Paul concludes by saying, “So faith, hope, love remain, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” It was certainly by no mistake that St. Paul mentions both faith and hope when detailing the attributes of love. The three virtues of faith, hope, and love are so willingly intertwined by Paul, that any one of these three cannot truly exist without the other.
While love clearly stands above the rest, we understand the importance of the concert among all three, because it takes both faith and hope to propel the engine of love. Hope is crucial to both faith and love. What is the point of faith, if not for the hope of the fulfillment of the promises of Christ? What is the point of love without the divine hope that motivates our actions? Hope is the instrument by which we are able to exercise our faith and administer our love to others.
While we can certainly attract the attention of those in the world by showing Christ’s love, and our faith can show others how to believe, it is that divine hope which reaches deep into the souls of those watching and helps them come to understand what a Christian life can offer.
Therefore, as pilgrims in this temporal life, we should recognize the importance of hope in our daily lives. It is not only the love we show to others and the witness of our faith that should evangelize and preach the Good News. It should also be our hope in the promises of Christ that attract others to our Christian beliefs. We are in the world so that we may follow in Jesus’ footsteps and share the Good News of redemption and the hope of eternal life.
Dawn C. Ligibel is a parishioner of Sts. Peter and Paul in Hopkinsville.
To learn more about the Diocese of Owensboro’s celebration of the Jubilee Year of Hope 2025 visit https://owensborodiocese.org/jubilee-year-pilgrims-of-hope/.
