Land where my fathers died / Land of the pilgrims’ pride
Did you know that the Pilgrims who arrived in 1620 and whom we remember every Thanksgiving were not called Pilgrims until 1840? At the time of their arrival they were known as “Separatists” from the Anglican Church. The name Pilgrims was later selected as a truer title because of their leader William Bradford’s description of them, drawn from the New Testament, as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, seeking a better country, a heavenly one.
I suppose it was something like that that Jacqueline Hayes was seeking during her recent pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James in Compostella – requiring a walk of 500 miles across northern Spain. And not only she but so many people who have trekked their way for millennia to certain places which are somehow holy – due to significant events or the mysterious nature of the terrain, a forest, a mountain, a magical well. Why? To acquire some boon, a healing (Lourdes), a touch of holiness to bring back home.
Graymoor Mountain, home of a Franciscan order I joined back in 1943 as a minor (high school level) seminarian, was such a place of pilgrimage accessible to Metropolitan New York. Since the early 1900’s busloads of blue collar (Irish and Italian) Catholics came rolling up the mountain to visit St. Anthony’s Shrine, attend outdoor Masses and Benediction, light dollar size candles, buy religious articles – and basically enjoy a day far removed from the dinginess of the city. As a seminarian I was assigned work every such Sunday. Sometimes it was in the cafeteria. My job was to stand behind the hot pans of food and, as people passed by with their trays, to ladle a touch of gravy upon each mound of mashed potatoes. Otherwise I was assigned to the religious article shop – to the low cost items: rosaries, medals (miraculous, St. Christopher, etc.), prayer books, (no mezuzahs), crucifixes, statuettes, . . . After a week at that counter I had learned an essential economic skill that I’ve never forgotten: the ability to make change.
A noteworthy change occurred during those years. Word about Graymoor reached African-Americans living in Harlem. Considering the discrimination, the cramped urban living conditions, their limited access to the refreshing freedom of the Hudson highlands in the 1940’s, the possibility of a pilgrimage to Graymoor struck a chord. Soon busloads of Harlem Baptists were winding up the mountain to park amid the blue collar Catholics.
Now the Harlem Baptists were a lively bunch. This did not sit well with Fr. Aloysius Craven, Irish born and with a brogue as thick as that of Barry Fitzgerald. In a state of panic before every outdoor Mass, Fr. Aloysius would mount the outdoor pulpit and shout, “Only Catholics can go to Holy Communion during the Mass.” The Harlem Baptists who numbered half the congregation all nodded their assent. Nevertheless when Communion time arrived the Harlem Baptists came up en masse (so to speak) and nothing could be done about it. To attempt to sort out Catholic from Baptist along the communion rail would have jammed the gears of the whole liturgy. And so despite Fr. Aloysius’ restrictions the Bread of Life made its way into Baptist souls.
That in itself was a boon worth pilgrimaging up to Graymoor to receive. But were such events forecasts of an even larger boon to come within thirty years: an integration of peoples, solidarity among churches, a chance for once segregated people to breathe free, to be free? To which did not Graymoor as a place of pilgrimage make its small if confused but – well ahead of time – contribution?
From every mountainside / Let freedom ring.