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Pilgrimage in Judaeo-Christianity and in Intensive Therapy
By John Sheehan, S.J., Ph.D., Psy.D.
Copyright 2004

This past August marked the tenth year of my association with the Saint Louis Behavioral Medicine Program for Psychology and Religion. I have accumulated a great deal of valuable experience over this time, and much satisfaction.

In recent years, often while listening to one of our clients, I have noticed a new type of experience. I would describe it as a kind of déjà vu: “I have been here before!”

And where was that?

Only relatively recently did the answer dawn: “This feels like pilgrimage!”

What in the world is the connection? Let me explain.In the course of my life, I have made two, relatively low budget, solo pilgrimages.

I did not choose the low budget option out of any particular wisdom or sanctity but, as I eventually learned, the low budget much enhanced the experience.

In the language of American peacetime soldiers abroad, I was “living on the economy,” constantly interacting with the local populace.

Paradoxically, I also experienced a qualitative “solitude.” In Lourdes, my French could best have been described as “modest.” At Fatima, my Portuguese was positively primitive. Thus, despite much functional interaction, the level of interpersonal sharing was quite shallow.

In those pilgrim experiences I found myself both alone and deprived of most of the comforts that my American lifestyle provided at home.

I found myself not so much treated with modest respect (as might have been the case for a more articulate and/or better financed tourist living at some remove from “the economy”) but with some concern that “this confused simpleton may hurt himself if we do not help him!”

More than once (and I was only a few days at each place) I found myself relying on the kindness of strangers. They explained patiently how I was to get to the shrine, where I could find a place to eat, and (perhaps most important) the availability of clean local rest rooms.

Eventually, I came to understand the positive dimension of this often disturbing reality. I realized, “I really am a pilgrim!”

Words intrigue me.

It is at least interesting to note that the word, pilgrim, comes to us circuitously in English from archaic words for “foreigner”. In this sense, the word is connected with what has become, in our modern and sometimes-maligned “political correctness,” a pejorative. Perhaps our own English-American Pilgrims would have understood.

For Germans, of course, the word is “Wanderer,” with connotations of rootlessness and loneliness. Maybe wanderer is a better choice.

The word elicits images of persons far from home, perhaps treated kindly, but reminded often that they do not belong here. They are persons keenly aware that they “have not here a lasting city but look for one to come.” (Heb 13.14)

I can say that as a pilgrim-wanderer, so obviously bereft, it was much easier to be open with my needs.

This notion of “wanderer” rests at the very core of the Judaeo-Christian heritage. I have prayed to that Virgin who had experiences herself of being a wanderer. I have considered Abraham, called to go out of his own country (Gen 12.4) and the Jews who were called out of Egypt (Ex 3.17-20). I have remembered David, who called his people to a new life in Jerusalem (2 Sam 5.7).

Jesus, too, was pilgrim.

The following exegesis may cause some biblically sophisticated readers to wince. Nonetheless, I offer it as a reflection very meaningful to me.

In my very early youth, now so many years ago, I read an ancient New Testament commentary in which Fr. Anthony Maas, S.J. also wrote of Jesus as pilgrim.

Discussing the “pearl of great price” (Mt 13.46), Fr. Maas considered that Christ was the merchant who discovered that pearl--the sinful human race.

“The Whole Kingdom of Heaven is, as it were, for the good of souls and Jesus sold as it were all his heavenly possessions when he came down to earth to secure the possession of souls.”

Fr. Maas offered an image of pilgrimage begun.

I build on that image as I recollect that just as the Hebrew high priest was at one time called annually to enter into the Holy of Holies (Lv 16), the eternal high priest was called to enter the Holy of Holies not built with hands once and for all (Heb 9.25-6).

In His answer to that call, Christ ended his pilgrimage.

Ignatius also was drawn to the image of Christ as pilgrim.

A profound reader of scripture, if not an exegete, Ignatius makes much use of New Testament passages in his Spiritual Exercises. The passages selected reflect clearly what was alluring to him.

In the text of the Exercises, Ignatius suggested only six miracle stories in contrast to some forty stories in which Jesus is in the role of “pilgrim:” on the road, between cities, foraging for food.

Ignatius often referred to himself as “the pilgrim”. Clearly, Ignatius regarded that phase of his life when he was an actual pilgrim, traveling to the Holy Land, as perhaps the high point of his life. Metaphorically, he remained a pilgrim to the day of his death, ever in search of a closer relationship to the Lord and a deeper knowledge of his will.

Now, as I step back a moment from this flow of thought, I imagine that even if I have succeeded in charming you with this weaving of the threads of my own meditation, you may be left with the question, “What in the world does this have to do with intensive psychotherapy?”

“Enigmatically, he answered, ‘The truth will make you free.’ (Jn 8.32)”

Let me explain.

Most of us, certainly by the age of 5, become adept at keeping secrets from ourselves. By age 25, most of us are brilliant at it.

The illusion is so compelling that we are convinced frequently, no matter how often we have seen through the veil, that we are performing act A out of motive B, when in fact the motive might be hiding anywhere else in the alphabet.

In all human relations, this “not knowing what we don’t know” can lead to serious problems.

Marriages break up between good people because one (or both) members of the relationship do not understand their own needs and desires. Deep hurt ensues when the other party (perhaps speaking with insight regarding the partner while remaining blind to the self) delineates the partner’s real motives, judges them harshly, and leaves.

Yet, with love and perseverance, even stormy relationship can become the vehicle for the truth that does set one free.

For those clergy and religious who have been called to celibate life this keeping of secrets from the self is unhappily relatively easy to maintain.

The celibate does not have the built-in opportunity for honest confrontation offered by a spouse. The diocesan priest, to all intents and purposes, lives alone. For most religious, after the earliest years, the politeness of “live and let live” is a dominant ethos of community life.

Therein, for clergy and religious, is found the unique advantage and importance of an intensive therapy program.

Practically speaking, most clergy and religious do not have or do not avail themselves of the opportunity for intensive psychotherapy, or even of intensive spiritual renewal, until some problem has emerged. Nevertheless, in necessity, most do have the opportunity for this powerful form of therapy.

It is a grace and a blessing not so often afforded to lay persons.

Intensive psychotherapy usually emphasizes the modality of group work. Intensive work in groups builds in much confrontation. In the context of an carefully structured therapeutic program, this confrontation is experienced in the context of the love and perseverance that are necessary if one is to profit from (rather than be crushed by) the truth about oneself.

There is a critical tension here between truth and love.

As strange as it may seem to the outsider, and especially to the newcomer to intensive psychotherapy, comforting the client is not the highest or only priority.

Whereas in supportive counseling the counselor seeks only to shore up the current level of adjustment by entering fully and almost exclusively into the client’s perspective of events, in intensive psychotherapy the team seeks the appropriate balance between support and challenge.

Therapeutic work that provides only a comfortable wrap-around environment will not develop clients that are more capable than before, more resilient and better able to live in health in that environment from which they have been temporarily separated.

In the intensive psychotherapy program, the client becomes pilgrim.

Walking with others, yet at the same time alone, clients may feel sometimes quite dependent, very much the stranger, and even deprived.

In most ways, of course, their needs are met. Residential programs provide dormitory housing; outpatient programs place clients in local parishes or religious houses. No one starves. The world within and around the treatment facility operates at its normal level of activity to insure the continuity of civic and religious services.

Yet, the client is not “home”. The bed, the chair and the meals are not their own. The people around—fellow travelers, helpers or members of the “local economy””—are plentiful, but not the intimates or familiars of the life lived. Those friends at home are still available by phone and Internet, but they are not here.

Those clients who have identified themselves with their work or with the activity of taking care of others feel another type of jarring displacement.

Enforced leisure does not feel like leisure at all. For some, receiving care is actually painful psychologically.

Pilgrims they are, strangers in a strange land. Yet, most often, they do not surrender easily.

Opportunities to regress to inappropriate defenses abound. In the early stages of treatment, most do not eschew them. In response to frustrations with peers or to challenges from the team, and when polished defensive strategies inevitably fail, even clients very controlled and successful in everyday life display quite childlike resistance.

To the client it is dismaying. To the naïve observer it may be shocking. But to the trained therapist, it is reassuring. The process is unfolding as it must.

What has been hidden is revealed. How it remained hidden so long becomes clear.

The client is able, with assistance of peers and therapists alike, to revisit and rework the primitive defenses. Having begun that part of the journey, the client is then able to identify and consider the truth to which he or she has been blind.

How shall I bring this reflection to a close?

The Hebrew Bible (2Kings 5) tells a parable that illustrates the heart of what I am saying about therapy and pilgrimage. One travels, surrenders and, in the end, accepts healing.

Naaman, a most successful Syrian general, suffers one, most serious problem. He has leprosy.

A captured Jewish slave girl, moved with pity, suggests that the general travel to ask healing of her nation’s great prophet. He is intrigued, and seeks permission of the King. It is not only granted, the trip is entirely funded. Arrangements are made and the caravan sets off.

The pilgrims arrive after a long journey at the place in which the prophet dwells. His presence is announced.

The prophet, Elisha, does not deign even to come outside. Instead, he sends a messenger who tells Naaman to move on, to bathe in the River Jordan.

Understandably, Naaman is furious at this apparent insult to his honor and prestige. He rages, “Do we not have far better rivers in Syria?” It is only because a member of his group, wise in the perspective of someone looking in from the outside, dares to speak that Naaman begins to consider the situation differently.

He is persuaded to defer to the prophet. He acts “as if” Elisha made sense, travels further, bathes and is made clean.

Is there a more clear metaphor for the power of surrender? Having traveled a great distance, the general yields, goes somewhat further, and finds healing (2Kings 5.14).

In an earlier essay, I wrote about my conviction that religious conversion and the psychological cosmic shift that results from good psychotherapy are at least metaphysical cousins. I had come to understand that James’ analysis of multitudinous spiritual autobiographies about conversion led, at least remotely, to the Twelve Steps.

I strongly suspect that another reading of those conversion autobiographies would find fair mention of pilgrimage, geographical or metaphorical, but that suspicion must await a further essay for investigation.

The journey continues.

1 The Life of Christ, A.J. Maas, 6th Edition (St. Louis: 1916), p. 168, sub verbo