In 2019, I traveled with twelve students and three adults to Vail, Colorado for our Adventure Retreat. That week, we hiked every day through pines and aspens up the rocky trails of the mountains, and we laughed with each other around a campfire each night. Stories were shared, encouragement freely given. There’s something so natural about how community grows when a group steps outside their comfort zone.
Our retreat culminated as we celebrated Mass together on a mountain, overlooking the wilderness — God’s cathedral — breathing that crisp air. Sharing this sacred moment made it clear: this wasn’t just camping and hiking … this was pilgrimage.
In his 2025 Lenten message, Pope Francis invites all of us to be pilgrims: to “journey together in hope.” This phrase speaks to an urgent need in our world and in our lives. Lent isn’t just a season of sacrifice; it’s an invitation to movement — toward God, toward one another and toward a more healed world.
To journey means to be open: to growth, to astonishment, to grace. Like a trek through the mountains, a journey with God often involves unexpected terrain or surprising gifts. But in those moments of uncertainty, challenge or awe, we may find that our hearts are more teachable, more tender and more open to transformation.
To journey together reminds us that faith is not a solo expedition. We are called out of comfort and into community, to break through the walls of chosen isolation. Real relationships — whether around a campfire or in a classroom — require vulnerability and patience. The call to togetherness calls us out of our navel-gazing and toward encounter. It reveals God in the faces and stories of others.
And to journey in hope is perhaps the most radical call of all. Hope is not naive optimism; it is the deep belief that new life is always possible. In a culture that often prefers fear to trust, outrage to empathy and cynicism to belief, hope is a countercultural stance. It dares to love the unlovable, heal broken systems and work for peace where conflict persists. It is Easter’s promise breaking into Lent.
This Holy Week, let us resist the temptation to retreat into comfort, and instead become people of pilgrimage — seeking, risking and trusting that God is not finished with us yet. May we accept the invitation to journey, to accompany one another and to choose hope … not only for ourselves, but for a world aching for healing, hungry for justice and ready — if we are! — for renewal.
Emily Taber
Creighton Prep