LHS Inspiration

LHS Students’ Pilgrimage to Rome is a “Glimpse of Heaven”

For participants of the Lourdes High School’s pilgrimage to Rome, the journey began before they even boarded a plane.  Ten days before departing for Rome, three students, along with LHS teachers Michelle Weedman and Martine  Haglund, attended a Latin Mass presided over by Bishop Quinn at St. Bridget’s parish in Stewartville.  Jacob   Nordman, Victoria Smith and Jenny Vondrashek presented the Bishop with a pilgrimage T-shirt, and he asked them to keep him updated on all their experiences.

LHS pilgrims pause for a photo in Rome.

 “The idea was to present the school with a different kind of trip,” said Martine Haglund.  Haglund remembers  wishing the school could offer an experience that meshed with the Catholic identity and vision of Lourdes instead of just  another trip as tourists.  Michelle Weedman soon joined in the vision and invited Fr. Maher to guide the group spiritually.  Fr. Maher, an associate professor at Gonzaga University, “understood the idea of a pilgrimage from the get-go,” Weedman said. Lourdes Principal Tom Donlon also took part in the trip. 

 As word spread around the school about the upcoming trip to Rome, more and more students professed an interest in the pilgrimage.  Although most were Latin students, anyone who wanted to participate was welcomed.  There were no applications because Haglund and Weedman did not want to select certain students over others.  “Only the Holy Spirit could have pulled this group together,” Weedman said about the group’s cohesion.  Senior Jacob Nordman agreed.  “We ended up getting a great mix (of people),” he said. 

During the pilgrimage, the participants, 17 LHS students and four adults, were anything but tourists.  They learned to navigate several forms of public transportation, shopped at the local market for groceries and cooked and ate all their meals together.  “It was really a pilgrimage in that way,” Weedman said. “You really had to become a community.” However, the group became even more than that.  “We were like a family over there,” senior Milly Sauber said.

 One of the most influential accomplishments for the pilgrims was completing the Traditional Pilgrims’ Way of over three hours of walking to St. Peter’s Basilica.  The streets were lined with statues of angels and saints “to  carry you forward,” said 2011 LHS graduate Joey Kromrey.  Centuries ago, thousands of travelers walked these same streets as their pilgrimages from all over Europe converged on the road to St. Peter’s, Kromrey explained.  Besides this moving experience, the group  visited several other sites in Rome, took part in a Papal audience and even expanded their pilgrimage to Assisi and the Mediterranean.

 Even though the pilgrims were on the go, they took some time every day for group reflection.  “We all met in the piazza,” sophomore Maggie Lacy said of the reflection sessions.  “Sometimes we would have a group lecture or get into small groups and talk.”  While each participant had different ways of describing what a pilgrimage meant to them, everyone agreed it was amazing to see the spiritual progression of the group from the beginning to the end of the trip.  Haglund summed up the pilgrimage experience by saying, “Going to Rome gave me a glimpse of what Heaven is going to be.”