URGENT prayers for speedy, miraculous recovery of the Father of pilgrim-organizer Rory Burke – Pilgrimage 2020

NOTE: This post originally wrongly reported Rory, Mr. Burke’s son, as the victim of the auto accident. I beg pardon of The Burke Family and pilgrim-friends for the error. — G. Lloyd, Director

With profound sadness news touches fellow pilgrims far and wide, telling of dreadful, life-threatening injuries to pilgrim and Father of generous veteran organizer Rory Burke of Baltimore, Maryland. Read More

To know Bob Murray was to love him

Long before his death yesterday, those who knew him said Bob was a saint. For he had the most extraordinary ordinary way of introducing and re-introducing Jesus Christ to those whom he encountered. But he would be the first to cringe at that assessment, and demand prayers for his blessed repose instead.

So that is what his friends are now asking. The Pilgrimage Director asks Read More

“Adirondack Life” magazine covers Pilgrimage 2009

Complete with great black and white photos, including the one below, the award-winning Adirondack Life magazine wrote up our spiritual journey through their part of the world. An excerpt follows, with the essay by Lisa Bramen and photographs by Jason Hupe also linked below.

pilgrimage for restoration
St. Isaac Jogues Brigade en route, September 2009

MOTORISTS slow at the sight of a long line of pedestrians—more than 270 of them—stretching single-file along the dirt shoulder of Route 9N south of Lake George. A few of the walkers, teenage girls, wave cheerfully at the passing cars, and the gesture is occasionally reciprocated, if with quizzical looks.

A long walk in the Adirondacks is a common enough endeavor. Even a 65-mile trek, like the one this group is undertaking, is barely notable—dozens of people hike the 133-mile Northville-Placid Trail each year—but most distance-walkers follow wooded trails, not two-lane highways.

Other details about this procession are bound to stoke the curiosity of passersby: Almost all of the females wear long skirts—hardly the usual hiking attire—and many cover their hair with lacy scarves. At the head of each group of 15 or so is a leader carrying a satin banner or flag proclaiming the name of the “brigade” it represents—Sainte Jeanne d’Arc, Our Lady of Fatima Scouts. Others hold up tall wooden crucifixes. If these hints don’t clue the drivers in to the fact that they are witnessing a religious pilgrimage, the smattering of nuns in habits and priests in black robes might clinch it.

The Pilgrimage for Restoration, organized by Pennsylvania-based National Coalition of Clergy and Laity, has brought hundreds of the faithful to the Adirondack Park each September since 1996 for four days of walking, prayer and fellowship. The route—from the village of Lake George to the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, at Auriesville, 40 miles west of Albany on the Mohawk River—commemorates the life and martyrdom of the saint Isaac Jogues, a 17th-century French Jesuit missionary who was captured, tortured and eventually murdered by the Mohawks, one of the five original nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Jogues is believed to have been the first European to see the heart of the Adirondacks.    Read more …