Striving To Be A Locally Adventurous Pilgrim

Please see my Disclaimer.

I’m striving to be a locally adventurous pilgrim. Kind of. I’m not that great at being such kind of pilgrim because of all the traveling I’ve been doing.

2016 was a ridiculous year of travel for me. Probably the biggest highlight that year was being able to attend World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland with 200 others from my diocese. Another big deal was completing the contract for my monthly, week-or-two work trips to Japan in August 2016. To top it all off, I visited my aunt and uncle in Sydney, Australia in October 2016. After these major travels, I had more mental bandwidth to think about local adventuring.

Traveling to Japan so many times and exploring Sydney had a weird effect on me. Because of these trips, I was more inspired to explore my own backyard much in the same way I had explored these particular places. When I say explore, this undoubtedly also means visiting churches and going to Mass in both Japan and Sydney. At some point before Thanksgiving turkey consumption in November, I got the crazy idea in my noggin’ to visit all the parishes in my diocese.

Visit all parishes in my diocese. That sounds kind of crazy.

The Challenge

Here’s the struggle with setting such a goal. My diocese covers 23,950 miles and 28 North Texas counties. Within those square miles are 97 parishes. That seems like a huge number, but this is Texas. Other dioceses in Texas are huge in both square miles and parish count as well.

The challenge I am putting on myself is to attend Mass at each of the 97 parishes. It’s not satisfying enough for me to merely just visit each church.

Why does going to Mass make it “count”?

One of the awesome things about being Catholic is being part of the mystical Body of Christ in a, truly, universal faith. With Mass, I’m really able to feel part of the Body of Christ because of celebrating the Eucharist as a community of God’s people. Going to Mass also allows me to experience the local community by actually being physically present among them. I’ve gone to Masses across Italy and other parts of Europe, across Japan, Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, and all over the United States. The beautiful thing is that it’s essentially the same experience, but in different locales.

I stress the point of attending Mass because you can better appreciate it when you’re not in tourist mode. When I visited many churches in Nagasaki, Japan, I wasn’t able to catch Mass but actually stayed a while and prayed at each of them. Likewise for churches in Rome when I went to Mother Teresa’s canonization. I’m more than just a mere tourist–I’m a pilgrim!

Why even visit all parishes in my diocese?

I’m a video gamer, and I’m likely motivated by treating crazy goals such as this as a quest or goal. On top of that, I’m an engineer. I want a creative, measurable way to experience the local church near me. 97 parishes seems like a lot of churches to visit, but it’s a finite number and achievable goal. Perhaps a precursor to this idea was my last semester of college. During my last semester, I made it my goal to visit every building on campus, both outside and inside if possible, and take pictures of two Pokemon figurines I had of Charizard and Blastoise. Gotta visit ’em all, I thought. And I did! Though I finished it mostly after finals were over… And so it is also with parishes–gotta Mass at ’em all.

See what I’m dealing with on this map:

Another reason why I want to go to Mass at all the parishes in my diocese is to save money. If you recall, I don’t have a whole lot of money for lengthy or extraneous travel. Air travel is expensive. Road trips are easier to minimize cost, and I haven’t put too many miles into my car since I bought it new in 2016 due to Japan-ing so much.

Before I even came up with the idea for Pilgrim for Less, I knew that I could do my own small-scale pilgrimages. Lessons learned from visiting churches overseas taught me that there is usually an interesting and/or rich history regarding a church as well as appreciating any architectural or artistic beauty found within churches. Though history and beauty are fascinating to me, the main goal is still Mass.

Lastly, I want to visit all my diocesan parishes in order to have bragging rights and a better resume for entering Heaven. Lol jk. Honestly, I think it’d be cool to be a locally adventurous pilgrim. I ain’t got no extra money and time (right now) to do the big and cool stuff in Europe, and that’s okay. I can still work on my pilgrimaging skills through local adventure and exploration. Sure, be a locally adventurous pilgrim it’s not as glamorous as walking the Camino or visiting the Holy Land, but I know I can still have a solid, fruitful pilgrimage experience locally.

Progress So Far

I officially started this back in November 2016 on the feast day of Christ the King. Coincidentally and intentionally, I went to one of the parishes called Christ the King. It was in Vietnamese, and when I first walked in, it took me 10 minutes to figure out they were chanting the Rosary.

Pursuing this crazy goal SMART-ly would make it timebound, but I haven’t given myself a time limit on this. Obviously. It’s 2018, and I’ve only hit up a few parishes’ Masses (not counting my own home parish). The other excuse is that I was in Japan for six months in 2017 so that hampered my ability to work on this challenge. I likely won’t make too much progress until I’m done with grad school sometime in the first half of 2019. Totally okay. I don’t plan on moving anytime soon.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s a Google Sheet I created to keep track of my progress. It’s technically “live”, but as I just mentioned, I’m not sure how much I can update it, but I can probably work on it on my remaining weekends I have before starting grad school classes again in a few months.

YOUR TURN–Is there some sort of goal or challenge you can locally do to get you out the door and pilgrim (verb) for less? Comment below!