As part of the Church’s worldwide celebration of the Jubilee Year, the Aquinas Institute organized a fall break pilgrimage to Rome for 16 senior students who have been deeply involved in our ministry. By walking in the footsteps of the Apostles and saints, these students experienced the history, universality, and living witness of Catholicism in a unique way. Two students, who share the presidency of the Student Ministry Team, share their reflections on the pilgrimage below.
Journey Towards Hope – Nadia Makuc ‘26
The motto seen around Rome this jubilee year is pereginantes in spem, “pilgrims towards hope,” though the Latin verb peregrinari has as many meanings as “to be an alien,” “to wander,” “to sojourn in a strange country.” Being in a foreign country, even surrounded by faithful friends and such beauty, it is all too easy to become lost – so what did it actually mean to journey towards hope?
The best embodiment of this pilgrimage I found to be the scala sancta, the steps which our Lord walked up during his passion on Good Friday. The 28 steps can seem ominous – no one is talking, but it’s not silent either. Traditional reverence for the holy site means that pilgrims for centuries have been kneeling their way up the stairs which are now covered in wood. At the top, an image of Christ crucified is visible. The environment, in contrast to the joyful crowds all around the rest of Rome, was suddenly somber. The setting is made all the more serious as Isaiah 53:5 is legible below the cross: vulneratus est propter iniquitates nostras, attritus est propter scelera nostra “he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins.” It’s a brutal reminder of our own faults, of the ways in which each of us has personally wounded our Lord. This steep journey would seem to the world devoid of hope, and yet it was at this moment that I was filled with the most desire for God’s goodness and trust in His promise of salvation.
I had to my side two incredible and true friends, my sisters in Christ, and I was so blessed to be there, to even see the steps, never mind touch them. I was blessed to have good enough health to travel to Rome, and then to be able to kneel. I prayed for as many people as I knew who wish that they could kneel again. I was blessed to know a fraction of what Jesus felt, knowing that his sacrifice was not made great by His suffering, but by His love. I am blessed because I know the end of the story – that the depiction of Jesus I was looking at is not the one who reigns above at this moment with the Father and the Holy Spirit, that nothing in the whole wonderful city of Rome, not its pasta nor gelato, nor beautiful basilicas nor even the wonderful people I was with, can compare with the heavenly home God has prepared for us who love Him.
Walking with Saints in the Making – Joe Silva ‘26
As I began my pilgrimage to Rome with the Aquinas Institute, I wrote down some thoughts on the concept of pilgrimage in general. I especially focused on the idea that an earthly pilgrimage functions as a microcosm of our spiritual lives. We are, all of us, pilgrims on this earth, engaged in a journey with a specific end in mind. We are not here merely to wander, but to seek, and eventually to find.
Though this spiritual journey will be filled with joy, it also necessarily entails suffering. There are ups and downs, highs and lows. An earthly pilgrimage is no different. It is hard to describe the joyful wonder that stepping into Saint Peter’s Basilica for the first time entails. But that joyful wonder would not be so strong had one not first been forced to experience long hours of waiting in line, in the heat of the midday sun, surrounded by hundreds of other sometimes impatient pilgrims.
When I was standing in what felt like a mile long line on my journey to see Peter, looking longingly at the facade of the basilica and wishing I could already be inside, I myself felt that I had reached the end of my own patience. But then something wonderful happened. Someone suggested that we pray the rosary, and so we did. Thirty minutes later, the line didn’t seem nearly as long, and I felt somewhat more relaxed. Then I began to talk to the other students, and that really made the time fly. I learned new things about individuals I hadn’t been very close to before the trip began, and forged even stronger bonds of friendship with those I was already close with.
If there is one thing that I could take away from this incredible pilgrimage, it is that we are not journeying on our own. If we were, I daresay we would all be doomed. But we are not. God has granted us the people around us so that we may all make the journey together. That fact is sometimes hard to see in everyday life, especially in the busy haze of a Princeton semester. On this pilgrimage, however, I was able to see this reality clear as day. God has given us friends to make the journey with. And it is not only the friends alive now.
A pilgrimage to Rome is, I would guess, as close as we can get to experiencing the communion of saints here in our earthly lives. Each visit to a saint’s tomb makes Paul’s exhortation that we ought to remember the cloud of witnesses urging us on more and more tangible. I am walking this journey with Peter and Paul, Ignatius and Dominic, Francis and Clare, and most of all, my Blessed Mother. Even more than that, I am walking this journey with saints in the making. A pilgrimage unveils, in a very direct way, the reality behind the spiritual journey in which we are now all engaged. It tests you and tries you, encourages you to rely on those making the journey with you, and in that way allows you to bring back a wonderful proof of faith to your daily life—and that is a priceless gift for which I will be forever grateful.
