Pentecost Pilgrimages: "Youth renewed by the long history of the Church". The glory of Chartres.

From June 7 to 9, between Paris and Chartres, nearly 30,000 pilgrims, aged 21 on average, journeyed in faith, despite the headwinds of a materialistic society indifferent to spiritual impetus, rejoices Ambroise Tournyol du Clos, a history professor.

That He reigns on earth, as He does in Heaven

"Morning star, inaccessible queen,

Here we are marching towards your illustrious court,

And here is the plateau of our poor love,

And here is the ocean of our immense sorrow."

These tender, moving, and sublime verses, taken from The Tapestry of Notre-Dame, were woven by Charles Péguy in the spring of 1913 while returning from a pilgrimage of thanksgiving for the healing of one of his sons. A century later, in a country profoundly transformed by secularization, the feast of Pentecost continues to draw nearly 30,000 Catholic pilgrims of all ages, backgrounds, and genders onto the same roads of Beauce and Île-de-France for three days. Young people will play a prominent role, as indicated by the average age of the pilgrims: 21.

On Saturday morning, 19,000 walkers left Paris to reach Notre-Dame de Chartres on Whit Monday. Celebrating the social kingship of Christ and the hundredth anniversary of Pius XI's encyclical Quas Primas, which established its dogma in 1925, they remind secular France that God created not only individuals, but also human societies (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2105), and that faith risks being exhausted if it is confined to the "sanctuary of conscience" (Pope Francis, Ajaccio address of December 15, 2024).

In the opposite direction and at the same time, nearly 6,000 to 7,000 pilgrims departed from Chartres to arrive in Paris, meditating, in this Jubilee year, on the mystery of the holiness of the Church, which is the Body of Christ. Seventeen hundred years after the Council of Nicaea, which led to the writing of the Creed in 325 AD, they remember how the Church, despite the sins of its members, is "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic." In 1948, the atheist Albert Camus said he expected Christians "to speak loudly and clearly (...) in such a way that doubt, never a single doubt, can arise in the heart of the simplest man." His wish will be granted. Exhausted and surely dusty, these 21st-century pilgrims offer the wear and tear of their feet, the discomfort of too little sleep, and the fervor of their Hail Marys for the honor of Christ, the Church, and the salvation of souls.

Nourished by a traditional liturgy, silent, dignified, and profound, which has the merit of having survived the ages, by clear and proven doctrinal teaching, and by a sometimes heroic charity, these generous hearts strive to contemplate the treasure that inspires them, and then, very simply, to offer it to the world like poor monstrances. Three and a half centuries after the apparitions of the Sacred Heart at Paray-le-Monial (1675), they bear witness to the love that sustains them and which, as Saint Thomas Aquinas expressed it regarding good, "is self-diffusing."

How better to respond to the wishes that the new Pope Leo XIV has just addressed to the Catholics of our country in his very recent Letter to the Bishops of France? In it, the Holy Father encourages the "people of God who are courageously on pilgrimage there, under the contrary and sometimes hostile winds of indifferentism, materialism, and individualism." While the Assembly has just adopted, amidst general indifference, a false law trivializing euthanasia, leaving the fate of the weakest in the hands of a corrupted medical system, these three days of walking, prayer, and penance demonstrate that another way is possible, even if it is marginal and despised.

Tired and certainly dusty, these pilgrims of the 21st century offer the wear and tear of their feet, the discomfort of a too-short sleep and the fervour of their Hail Marys for the honour of Christ, the Church and the salvation of souls. But they also experience the joy of fraternal encounters, the freedom of walking and the pride of bearing Christian witness in a sleepy country. Offering their smiles to the onlookers they meet, they turn these days off into a wine of vigour capable of awakening slumbering consciences. On this Whit Monday, in the nave of Chartres cathedral, which is celebrating its jubilee (a thousand years), as well as at the foot of Les Invalides, they are certainly trying, by ruminating freshly on the words of Péguy, to renew the spiritual youth of their hearts and of our country, by drawing on the long history of the Church.

"Two thousand years of labour have made this land

An endless reservoir for new ages.

A thousand years of your grace have made this work

An endless resting place for the lonely soul."

Source