Photo provided by Rev. Patrick W. Hannon, C.S.C. Pictured far right is Fr. Hannon, C.S.C., with family members on a recent pilgrimage.
In mid-Autumn of 2024, I joined my sisters Julie, Margaret, and Sally, and Sally’s husband David in Lisbon, Portugal, where we departed for Fatima—a mini (pre-) pilgrimage. From there, after a few days, we bused it to Porto, where we set off on the famed Camino de Santiago de Compostela. We were, in a way, spelunkers of the soul— all of us intent on searching for, encountering, and celebrating the God who loved us—and loves us still—by sweat, aching muscle, prayer, soulful merriment, and patient endurance along 150 miles of pilgrim road, one that might lead us to the very heart of the human that embraces the divine.
My Camino siblings and I wanted to see how far and deep we might get to the homey heart — to its door — where God waits (humming, singing, laughing) generously and patiently. Meister Eckhart put it this way: “There is no need to look for God here or there. He is no farther away than the door of your own heart. There He stands waiting till He finds you ready to open the door and let Him enter.” I quickly learned along the winding Galician pilgrim road that turned and twisted and twined—here and there—through towns and forests and wide swaths of amber fields that the pilgrim’s journey propels us both outward and inward.
I’d like to say that my motivation was unalloyed, pure, noble, in a way articulated by Thoreau as he set off to his solitary cabin on Walden Pond on his own version of a soulful pilgrimage: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Inspired, indeed, but it might be helpful to note that his sojourn to the woods and pond of Walden was a scant mile and a half from his home, where, apparently, he brought his dirty shirts and trousers and socks home to be laundered by his mother and where he often stayed for supper. Grace, indeed, builds on nature.
I, like Thoreau, wanted to test my mettle — physical, spiritual, emotional — while also taking in all that the Iberian peninsula had to offer: its Mediterranean cuisine, its fragrant, crisp wines, its churches and chapels, its people, music, and stories. I encountered all of these things — happily—and more. Much more. Pilgrimages such as the Camino, uncannily strip us — or at least try to mightily! — of all pretension. Quirks and foibles elbow their way to the front. Frank speech replaces reticence. You don’t glisten with perspiration. You sweat. In short, the Camino became for me a living, breathing sacrament of God’s glory often hiding in plain sight, waiting to be reveled in.
The book that I wrote afterward, “From Glory to Glory: A Pilgrim’s Notes From the Badlands of Grace,” tells of those moments of surprising encounters with the Lord who desires to be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched. It is not so much a travelogue as it is my attempt to get at what it is that motivates any of us to set off on these pilgrim journeys (to Santiago de Compostela, Fatima, or a thousand other axes mundi where we humans believe we can mingle with the divine) knowing the journey will be at times perilous (thus: badlands!) and taxing, and prone to stumbles. My experiences on the Camino led me to a place of reflection where I hoped to gain some insight about those soulful badlands where the human and divine kiss. I wanted to see what the pilgrim road might teach me, lest I discover in the end that I had not lived.
It was a blast writing, to be honest, and I had an amazing editor. (Shout out to Zach Czaia, publisher and editor of One Subject Press! I am so thankful for your insightful and careful responses to my early drafts.) I hope you find the book a blast, too, and that it might, in some small way, inspire you to set off on a new journey — both inward and outward — to those amazing and exhilarating and exhausting but always hopeful badlands of grace.
Provided by Rev. Patrick W. Hannon, C.S.C., July 2026.
