“Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it.”

On Pilgrimage: The Analogy of Departure

By Timothy J. Gordon and Joseph Polizzotto

The Christian life has often been described as a pilgrimage. 

For the purpose of self-description, the Catholic Church has used this word in her sacred liturgy and in her Catechism. There is abundant basis for the concept of pilgrimage as a Christian metaphor, rooted in our biblical theology, salvation history, and anthropology.

In the blockbuster film Heat—not ostensibly a pilgrim’s tale—the criminal mastermind Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and his nemesis police lieutenant Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) share the following remarks about their duty before the wandering lifestyle:

Neil McCauley: A guy told me one time, “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”
Vincent Hanna: What are you, a monk?
Neil McCauley: I have a woman.
Vincent Hanna: What do you tell her?
Neil McCauley: I tell her I’m a salesman.
Vincent Hanna: So then, if you spot me coming around that corner… you just gonna walk out on this woman? Not say good bye?
Neil McCauley: That’s the discipline.
Vincent Hanna: That’s pretty vacant, you know.
Neil McCauley: Yeah, it is what it is. It’s that or we both better go do something else, pal.
Vincent Hanna: I don’t know how to do anything else.
Neil McCauley: Neither do I.
Vincent Hanna: I don’t much want to either.
Neil McCauley: Neither do I.

​This exchange illustrates a commonsense principle that most successful people take seriously: in order to chase down the sun, one has to be willing to make difficult sacrifices.

The Christian tradition and the teachings of Jesus Christ also affirm the concept of sacrifice in subservice to him—for example, the total or partial sacrifice of pursuing beauty, a career, a good education, a healthy body—no matter how valid some of these other activities may be. For those of us who claim Christianity as the rule for our life, we might therefore honestly observe that Jesus would perhaps critique how we are so willing to observe McCauley’s “discipline” vis-a-vis the transitory but not the eternal.


- Pilgrimage in the Bible ...

- Pilgrimage in Salvation History ...

- Pilgrimage and Analogy in the Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas ...


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