The Pilgrimage To The Heart

Strannik is the Russian word for "pilgrim," one with a vocation-a unique, holy calling. Pilgrimage is more than something you `do.' `Being a pilgrim' consumes all of you. The pilgrim is to "be the Gospel and to preach it with his words and with his being." In Strannik, Catherine shows that pilgrimage is not just something for a few spiritual ascetics with wanderlust. Even less does it resemble the modern tourist-style `pilgrimages' that try to cover as many holy places as possible in the briefest time possible. Rather, the true strannik begins by looking within the self, where God already is. While the author does tell us about external pilgrimages such as she herself experienced as a child in Russia, the pilgrimages she is writing about are principally interior. Pilgrimage comes out of a quest for God. Catherine speaks of the "nostalgia for paradise" which all human beings have experienced since Adam and Eve. Without Christ we cannot complete our journey. "Christ was the pilgrim who pilgrimed from the bosom of the Father to the hearts of men and women."