From the Pilgrim's Road: Letter 8
July 2025
My friends,
I’ve been wanting to write to you again for a while, but I never had the time or the words. But now, at the turn of the page, it’s time. Much has happened this spring, so I’ll front-load a lot of important changes that have occurred over the past few months, as well as the trips, just to get it out of the way and clarify where the Lord has brought me up until now. And then, with great labor, I will attempt to say something interesting.
Here it goes:
First, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, the lay religious community which founded Creatio (as well as other apostolates), and which was the nucleus of our wider community in Denver, was dissolved and suppressed by the Vatican on account of the sins of its founder.
Then our executive director Chris, who was a “Sodalit” brother and has been with Creatio since the beginning, who built virtually all of its formation, a man who has led and formed us as a boss, mentor, friend, and more, discerned it was time for him to move on. He is officially done now after a transition period and will be teaching at a local Catholic school in August.
Then, our director of operations, Mary, who originally came back to Creatio to help Chris when he became ED, discerned it was her time to move on as well, and to leave Creatio to others (she was one of the first missionaries, so she’s also a big part of what our apostolate has become). She wrapped up her time on June 1st, and now works at our parish in Denver.
Once Chris announced this to the board of directors, one of them stepped up to fill the gap and is our new executive director. Bo Brustkern is captain of the ship in this new era of Creatio.
Shortly after that, I was asked to stick around beyond my two years, in a new role, with more responsibility and leadership. I originally took this on as a mandate even before there was an official offer, but have now actually confirmed that this is what I want to, am called to, and will do. I will remain at Creatio beyond my two years, and will be overseeing all the pilgrimages next year.
As far as trips go, I was on
1 training trip with COR in Utah (April)
1 Chimayó pilgrimage (April)
2 North American Martyr pilgrimages (May)
1 Camino de Santiago (June)
with a total of 67 participants across the four pilgrimages
And now, everything in-between:
Every single time I’ve walked into Santiago I’ve had the same pain in my lower leg. I have never had it beforehand, nor the day after. For whatever reason, the morning I’m on the way into Santiago I always end up developing a shin issue. It’s actually very painful, and usually extends throughout my lower leg. It used to bother me a lot more though, and this time I actually smiled at it. That’s an odd response, and a grace. I want to smile more when I suffer.
I’ve written and said a lot about pilgrimage. Ironically, one of my most consistent thoughts this last time in Santiago is that I wish we would stop talking about it so much, at least among the pilgrim crowd. In a way, it cheapens and belittles the experience to reach the end of a very, very long, personal ordeal and be surrounded by dozens of books other people wrote about it. Let the experience be your own and stop thinking about it so much. Or, to say it more succinctly, just be quiet. Part of the mystery of pilgrimage is that you’re often silent and actually less conscious of yourself along the way because life is simple and fixed in one direction. Thank God I’m a pilgrim. I would have never learned to stop thinking about myself otherwise.
I haven’t written to you in so long because I wanted to be quiet. I used to think I would never stop writing because I always have things to say. There’s always more to explore, more to understand, and I feel as if I have been given many pieces of knowledge and understanding that ought to be given to others. That’s still true. But if the winter was an experience of finding the proper place and purpose of the heart (in my assumption of leadership, longing for devotion, and orientation on greatness), the spring has been something like a slow process of submitting it all (body, mind, and heart) to the mystery of the spiritual life, which is a silent process. I suppose that’s what the true beginning of the spiritual life is — someday you’re finally, finally ready to align your entire self in that one direction.
It’s not that the physical, psychological, emotional, or social layers of life don’t matter, but it is only in relation to the spiritual life that they can each be seen and understood clearly.
I really, desperately want to see clearly. Not think clearly — see.
A few of my last posts referred to this ever-increasing longing I was experiencing. Thank God that pace has slowed, or it probably would’ve kill me sooner or later, but it really was a beautiful grace this winter and spring. I’ve heard it said about many of the greatest things in life (love, sex, happiness itself, etc), that the pursuit is actually the best part of the whole experience. The thing itself is wonderful, but if we’re honest we would all admit that the build up, the anticipation, the longing for the good of the thing actually pierces our heart more than the acquisition does. At first, that thought is a bit of a downer. Apparently nothing in this life will ever satisfy me. But the experience of the longing tells us that I must be longing for something that will satisfy me. I don’t thirst to thirst. I thirst because I need water.
There’s a quote by Pope St John Paul II that I’m thinking of:
“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise…”
This, and other bits of writing and wisdom, have long been familiar to me. I knew, for a very long time but almost exclusively intellectually, that in some mysterious way, all of our desires point back to God. That’s why I enjoyed my last several months of constant longing. It’s not actually that this feeling will be perfectly satisfied upon sight of the ocean, or a day in a beautiful garden, or in any other good thing my heart longs for, it’s that these are all shadowy, refracted images of God. However the sea or a garden shows me God is a mystery, but they both came from Him, so I know that they do.
I sat in this for quite a while. This Lent was the best of my entire life, and I experienced this longing basically every day. I was driven on by a new kind of love (at least in my relationship to God), wanting Him so badly that I was beginning to do, or consider doing, increasingly dramatic things. Better yet, I was better able to endure difficult things along the way because I wanted the End1 far to much to be turned aside, and so I could finally, truly say, with the whole church, the Lauds antiphon from Monday of the second week:
“When will I come to the end of my pilgrimage and enter the presence of God?”
which is followed by Psalm 42:
“Like the deer that yearns
for running streams,
so my soul is yearning
for you, my God.My soul is thirsting for God,
the God of my life;
when can I enter and see
the face of God?”
That’s what I want. That’s all I want. Beneath, behind, within, above all my desires, every longing of my heart is this: I want to see the face of God.
Having realized this at the “end” of all my longing, I was walked right into the natural maturity of my winter confidence. Namely that,
I have never done anything as humbling as being in charge.
When you’re young (not that I’m old), all you want is to be in charge. One wants things his own way, which is an understandable, if proud desire. Even if you’re not so prideful about it, you at least think that “yes, I could be a really good leader,” and that may be true. To a degree I actually think this is what you’re supposed to be like when you’re young. That confidence is essential for eventual greatness. The elders will always try and temper it, which is their job, but when you’re young you’re supposed to have that fire and zeal. Oftentimes, someone has to want to take the lead. This is especially true in our era of mediocrity, of subversive, downward-facing equality, and countless pathetic, effeminate men. No one steps up. It would be better if we had too many people step up.
Eventually, sooner or later, I did. I accepted the call to be a missionary and I was formed to be a leader. Praise God, for that has brought many blessings and I’m grateful to have been able to guide so many people over the past couple years. I finally started to understand it in the winter, and attempted a rousing call for more to join me in Position and Decision. Who knows how well that worked, but in any case, I was riding the high of successful leadership and loved my time doing it. That’s a good thing, but I now realize its only the lead-up to what leadership is actually supposed to teach you.
The older and wiser among us are actually right about leadership. You can’t rush to that wisdom. I now know you have to live it for yourself even if you accept that they’re probably right. But, either way they’re ultimately correct. Being in charge isn’t all that. It’s less fun than following, more pressure, more stress, it can be lonely, its often thankless, its tiring and much, much more work, and on top of all that, if you’re going to do it well you have to push through and live entirely for everyone else even when you feel how much fun it was back in the day when you were just along for the ride. This shouldn’t scare you out of taking on leadership roles. That’s actually why I think you need to start with that youthful bravado that truly believes you can do the job well. But once you let that carry you to the actual position, the proper response to the burden is a deep, profound recognition of your limits — even your inadequacy. That’s the only way. Leadership, once assumed, is supposed to be a via humilitatis, not a power trip.
I don’t even have that much authority or power. I’m only a missionary guide leading a small group on a pilgrimage, and sharing that station with a co-guide. It’s not like I’m running a country, battalion, business, or even a family. Yet I still feel it. For however short a time, I am entrusted with not only the physical safety, but the spiritual welfare and growth of these people, these persons with profound and mysterious dignity and depth. I’m given these people to lead and guide, and I know I am capable of it (thanks be to God, through the people He sent to form me), but now that I’m fully sent out to do it and am the lead, the head, the one at whom “the buck stops,” I realize my limits. I know my poverty, and I have accepted the reality that I can and will try my best, do everything I can, try to figure out every problem and reach every person, but I won’t be enough.
And then, tired and spent, confused and confounded, I will pray.
“We do not want to gather with men around a man! We want to see Jesus! Show him to us in the silence and humility of your prayer!” - Cardinal Sarah, the Power of Silence
In my first year as a missionary guide, I used to tell every participant that walking is the primordial movement of the body, just as prayer was the primordial movement of the soul. Our bodies were meant to walk, and our souls we’re made to pray. That’s simply what they are for. The failure to pray is therefore not unlike the failure to move. It results in a sluggish, degraded (and degrading), ineffectual soul, stuck on the recliner of its own ego, ever relying on itself, and never joining in the dance. If you would be human, you must pray.
I bring up this primacy of prayer because just as it is among the most basic acts of man, it’s status as his primary duty also makes it both the source and summit of his action on earth. You pray and act, you act within your prayer, and then, when you realize you can’t do it all anyway, you release it in prayer, giving it all to God. What else are you supposed to do? The Christian, following His Lord who was Himself a marriage of “extremes”2 in one person, must set out to do all things and yet realize he can do nothing without God. This is no pathetic, half-hearted, mediocre manner of living. It’s the great tension of the Christian life. You actually have to spend yourself in the effort, do all the you possibly can, and somehow, someway, with the help of God’s grace, accept that you can’t do it all, you can’t say all the right things, you can’t fix all their problems, and you can’t save everyone.
If I am to stay at Creatio for a while longer, it must be like that. Supporting the team with planning and logistics is one thing, but I’ve been asked to take on a greater role accompanying the missionaries too. It won’t be all on me, but I’m meant to help them live their life well, to help form them as persons and as MGs, and while I will always have many thoughts about what to do, I won’t do that job perfectly. I can’t. I’ll need help, friends and mentors and others who know better than me, or who are simply not me. It will require a kind of humility I have only had in bits and pieces, and that is why I know I have to stay; because I have never done anything as humbling as being in charge.
And so with great effort, and unceasing prayer, I will do everything I can, I will spend myself in support of this mission and its missionaries, and then I will pray, and leave it all up to God.
I suppose, in the end, this is all what I asked for. If you remember my last few essays, which feel so long ago, you remember my boldness in standing up as a leader and asking for — maybe almost demanding — my path forward. I don’t regret that. I was serious in saying that I would take the position given to me and that I wanted to commit and devote myself to something; specifically to relationship (the foundation of all other commitment). Well, it seems I got that. This spring was difficult for Creatio. Chris and Mary leaving, our wider community being shaken by decisions of the Church hierarchy, and being personally presented with a path I did not particularly anticipate were all difficult burdens to manage. But this is it, no? I said I wanted to commit, I said I wanted to live and die for relationship, and I got my chance to in a small but very personal way. I wasn’t asked to die in battle, but I did have to put my own feelings, uncertainty, and desires aside to weather a lot of unexpected change and, at times, difficult situations at home and on-trail.
This was made far more difficult because I wasn’t sustained by constant joy on our trips anymore. I had a whole year of amazing trips where every moment was happy and I was always easily grateful, but God seemed to withdraw that grace this spring. I couldn’t rest in quite the same community back home either, as the dynamic at work was changing, the team was not doing well, and our wider community lost a lot of its structure and consistency. The world would say I was justified in moving on and finding wherever suits me better (ie. makes me feel better), but if I had been serious about everything I said for the prior four months, I couldn’t just pack up and leave.
So I didn’t, and it was difficult. To this day, even though I suppose I do have plenty of reasons, it seems somewhat mysterious as to why it was so hard. Perhaps the reality of deep, committed community and relationships is still a mystery to me. Maybe it always will be. In any case, this spring of change was burdensome and tiring, and my friends had it worse than I did. I began to see the light on the other side in May before my two most recent trips, but it seems I still needed the via humilitatis before I was brought back to a new consolation.
And so I remember that the Lord’s ways are not my ways. Deo gratias. One may ask why things happen the way they do, and God hears those cries, but at the very end of this last Camino I was reminded of His answer to Job. In the midst of all Job’s suffering, all his confusion, all the attempted explanations of his friends, as he is brought lower than he probably ever thought possible, God’s “answer” seems to explain nothing:
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements — surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” - Job 38:1-7
And to that, I can only answer with reverential fear and awestruck trembling. There are no words.
Why must things change? Why are some participants difficult? Why must our communities be dissolved? Why can I not do more? Why must we encounter so many difficulties? Why can I not have it happy and easy all the time, with perfect joy? It seems I was not meant to know these things, just as I was not meant to do everything for everyone. I can only do what I can do, and then pray and keep my faith in a God so utterly beyond me that His ways remain unsearchable even to His friends. The page has turned, Creatio is confidently charging off into this new era, and in all seriousness all is well here. Do not worry. The way was difficult, but God is good even in the midst of death and uncertainty. I only ask that you pray for us, as we have for you.
Last week I told my spiritual director that I didn’t understand how to reconcile the confidence and strength I was given back in the winter with the humility I came to know at the end of the spring. I think now, after writing this. I’m getting there.
in statu viae,
Ryan
Once again, telos. The “end” of the human being is in God. You ought to long for what you’re made for.
I use this word broadly and loosely.