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I write these words on the airplane taking me home from my first visit as a bishop ad limina apostolorum (to the threshold of the apostles).
This is the pilgrimage, required by canon law of every bishop, to pray at the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul and to meet personally with the successor of Peter.
In an earlier column, I wrote of the extraordinary visit to the tomb of Peter and an even more extraordinary conversation with the Galilean fisherman’s successor, Pope Francis.
Several years ago, I made my first visit to Arlington National Cemetery. I had a specific destination: to visit the grave of one of our deceased neighbors.
She had served as a nurse during World War II and met her husband during the war. They decided to be buried at Arlington.
However, when she died, her husband was not able to attend the burial ceremony there because of his age and health. I happened to be traveling to Washington, D.C., for a meeting, so I told him I would visit her grave and take pictures.
Cecil DeMille, the famous movie director, was enjoying an overdue vacation at a Maine lake resort.
He was reading a book in a canoe, when he noticed a water beetle crawling up the boat’s side. When the beetle got halfway up, it stuck the talons of its legs to the canoe’s wood and died.
DeMille resumed reading. Three hours later he glanced again at the water beetle. What he saw amazed him. The beetle had dried up and its back began to crack open. First, a moist head, then wings, and finally a tail emerged. Out of apparent death, new life emerged in the form of a magnificent dragonfly.
As the dragonfly dazzled his eyes with its acrobatic flight, Cecil De Mille nudged the dried out beetle shell with his finger. It looked like a tomb.
The water beetle’s amazing transformation reminds us of what happened to Jesus on Good Friday when he truly died on the cross and rose from the dead.
Jesus’ body that rose on Easter was different from the body buried on Good Friday. It was not a resuscitated body, restored to its original life like that of Lazarus or Jairus’ daughter. It was a risen glorified body.
“Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days” (Galatians 1:18).
In my previous two-part preparatory article, I outlined the historical context and current format and content of the ad limina apostolorum pilgrimage, literally, “to the threshold of the apostles,” by bishops to Rome on a quinquennial basis, i.e., five-year basis.
Bishop Robert C. Morlino and the bishops of Region VII, comprising Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, recently completed their pilgrimage and I’ll offer a brief reflection in thanksgiving as a privileged pilgrim accompanying Bishop Morlino on the ad limina pilgrimage.
I extend my deepest thanks to Bishop Morlino for the opportunity to assist him and accompany him on the ad limina pilgrimage.
