Pilgrimage Report: St. John Vianney Relic Tour in Atlanta, GA

I’m excited to bring you this edition of my pilgrimage reports on the St. John Vianney Relic Tour because it’s the first time I’m collaborating with Jason over at Light & Heavy!

Just to give you a brief background, I’ve known of Jason since high school, but we’ve only ever really became friends after college when both of us became both involved in youth ministry. Honestly, I can credit Jason with introducing me to pilgrimages when I helped with chaperoning youth to pilgrimages he led, including pilgrimages to the annual March for Life in Washington, DC and the international World Youth Days that occur every few years.

We met up earlier in 2018 to catch up, as it had been a long while, and to talk about pilgrimages for youth and young adult ministry when we realized that we both have pilgrimage projects. His, a YouTube channel, and mine, a blog. With our powers combined…

…we decided to collaborate on some pilgrimages going forward!

Looking at different weekends, we settled on a handful of possible dates for the remainder of 2018 and into 2019. He had several ideas on what pilgrimages to do, and I had a few as well. Long story short, it just so happened that the relic of St. John Vianney, a famous parish priest and canonized saint, would be touring the United States in the winter of 2018 sponsored by the Knights of Columbus.

The closest the relic would be to Texas, where Jason and I hail from, and the weekend that worked best meant that we could go see it in Atlanta, GA at the beginning of December. We corresponded via texts and calls to line out preliminary plans and decided a few things like renting a car, using some hotel points I have, and leveraging staying at monasteries for reduced lodging costs. We’d also share costs and driving time in order to pull this off. Actually, we originally thought of flying to Atlanta but after running some numbers, we opted to just rent a car to save a few hundred dollars.

Regarding more info about the relic—it’s St. John Vianney’s heart! Amazingly, despite St. John Vianney living over 150 years ago, his heart has not reached a level of decay that you’d expect for someone who’s been physically dead for that long! We say his heart is “incorrupt”. I explain what relics are, why they’re important to pilgrimages, and provide some crazy examples in this blog post.

Read on to catch the details of our pilgrimage to see St. John Vianney’s heart!

Pilgrimage Details

Location: Atlanta, GA / Hanceville, AL
Time Required: Weekend (Fri-Sun)
Cost: $$
Transportation: Car
Accommodation: Hampton Inn / St. Bernard’s Abbey/monastery
Essentials: Prayer intentions, rental car, camera equipment (for YouTube), money for food, clothes for cold/rain

Itinerary (estimated)

Friday:

• 0700 Meet up
• 0800 Grab rental car
• 0830 Leave Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
• 1230 Lunch at Raising Cane’s in Ruston, LA
• 1930 Dinner at Arby’s in Irondale, AL
• 2230 Check in at Hampton Inn & Suites Atlanta Buckhead Place
• 0000 Go to bed

Saturday:

• 0700 Wake
• 0730 Check out and drive
• 0800 Arrive at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in northern Atlanta
• 0830 Mass
• 0900 Venerate St. John Vianney’s heart
• 1000 Confession
• 1030 Drive to Atlanta’s cathedral
• 1100 Attempt to visit Basilica
• 1230 Lunch at original Chik-fil-a in Hapeville, GA
• 1330 Leave and drive
• 1600 Arrive at St. Bernard’s Abbey in Cullman, AL
• 1600-1730 Wander, check-in, gift shop
• 1730 Pray Vespers with the monks
• 1800-2000 Dinner at Moe’s BBQ in downtown Cullman, AL
• 2030 Retire to rooms

Sunday:

• 0615 Check out and leave
• 0630 Arrive at Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, AL
• 0700 Mass
• 0800-1000 Visit Mother Angelica’s grave, walk around the grounds, take pictures/video
• 1030 Leave and drive
• 1230 Drive-thru lunch at Jimmy John’s in Meridian, MS
• 1730 Take out Whataburger in Marshall, TX
• 2000 Arrive back in Dallas/Fort Worth
• 2030 Home

Map

Points of Interest

Friday

Nothing too exciting to explain here. Jason and I met up early in the morning in order to go grab the rental car. The challenging part of driving this day was the fact that in rained or drizzled heavily the. entire. time. Despite driving across 3-4 states, we couldn’t escape the rain. Thankfully, along the way, we had great conversations regarding pilgrimages and ministry. We also recorded video for Light & Heavy.

For food, we stopped at Raising Cane’s in Louisiana for lunch. Jason had never been before! And for dinner, we stopped at an Arby’s in Alabama.

We arrived in Atlanta kind of late in the evening. It was funny and awkward because I didn’t realize the Hampton Inn I had booked was literally one or two blocks away from another Hampton Inn, and we went to the wrong one first! The front desk couldn’t find my reservation, and I freaked out a bit. Thankfully, we were able to sort it out and go to the right one.

Saturday

We woke up early in the morning in order to catch Mass at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in northern Atlanta. Driving to the church, we passed by a large neighborhood full of multi-million dollar mansions. How do I know they cost that much? I checked.

Holy Spirit Catholic Church was where the relic would be in Atlanta, and this morning would be the last chance to see it in Atlanta before it went on to its next portion of the tour.

Holy Spirit Catholic Church

Arriving at the church, it was cold, dreary, and somewhat wet. It’s a huge church where the main part of it has really tall ceilings. Parts of the walls share the same aesthetic as the pews, which is a dark wood. Really nice looking.

Since we arrived a little early before Mass, we had some time to pray, record video, and take pictures. As Mass was about to start, the church filled with people. Now, I wasn’t sure if most people were there solely because of the relic, but since it was the feast of the Immaculate Conception, it’s a safe bet that most people were also there to fulfill their holy day of obligation to go to Mass due to the feast.

The Mass was great. The priest was quite memorable because he had a heavy-enough Irish accent with a personality of an enthusiastic yet senile, old man.

After Mass, two lines formed around the perimeter of the nave of the church for the St. John Vianney Relic Tour in order to venerate his heart. Thankfully, the line moved along decently. Jason caught this cool photo of me venerating the relic and praying for the prayer intentions I carried with me:

One crazy thing about visiting the relic was seeing a friend of mine. So, I support only one missionary, and he’s a missionary for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (or FOCUS). FOCUS missionaries get assigned to different universities in order to form disciples for Christ. During Mass, I realized that the guy sitting a few pews in front of me was, in fact, the one missionary I support. After Mass and venerating the relic, of course I had to catch up with him (briefly)! Turns out, and I missed this point previously, he’s a missionary at a Georgia college two hours away. He took his discipleship group of young men to come venerate the relic. Therefore, it is entirely crazy to me but not surprising at all for me to run into him!

When we finished venerating the relic, both Jason and I hit up Confession. The Irish priest from Mass was hearing confessions. Obviously, I don’t divulge what we talked about, but I could tell that Father struggles with memory because he called me “Jason” at least once (Jason went right before me), and asked me where I was from a few times. Memorable, indeed!

Atlanta In General

After visiting Holy Spirit Catholic Church, we drove a little in order to get to the cathedral, Cathedral of Christ the King. Jason and I agree that visiting the cathedral of major cities is a cool thang to do. And he wanted to show it to me because I had never been.

We took some pictures and recorded some B-roll video at the cathedral, and we also took a little bit of time to pray.

Feeling hungry, we headed off to go visit the original Chik-Fil-A. I know Chik-Fil-A is wildly popular, but I don’t think most of us waffle fry devourers appreciate the fact that it originated in Atlanta. The original standalone Chik-Fil-A is in Hapeville, GA, right by Atlanta’s airport. Inside is a diner-style cafe as well as a typical fast food-style Chik-Fil-A. The cafe side has an expanded menu! We attempted at waiting for a table or counter, but decided that it would take too long. We opted to do the fast food side instead. And I’m totally cool with that because you can’t go wrong with Chik-Fil-A, no matter how fast or slow it is!

With delicious chicken sandwiches, waffle fries, and chocolate chunk cookies satiating our hunger, we set off to visit the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus near downtown. Unfortunately, the basilica wasn’t open so we awkwardly look like we were trying to break in as we tried most of its doors. Unsuccessful, we hopped back into the car to drive back to Alabama.

St. Bernard’s Abbey

We drove the 3 or 4 hours to get back to the Birmingham area. As part of the pilgrimage planning, Jason saw that we could stay at St. Bernard’s Abbey in Cullman, AL since it’s near the Most Blessed Sacrament Shrine, our goal for Sunday Mass. We arrived a little later in the afternoon and spent a good while trying to figure out where on the grounds of the monastery was our rooms. It’s confusing because they have a retreat center, and they also have accommodations available inside of the monastery itself.

To get more info and to kill some time, we stopped by the gift shop. Did some light shopping. And Jason asked the cashier about where our rooms were at. We were able to get it all sorted out and find our rooms inside of the abbey. Similar to my experience at Clear Creek Abbey, the room was simple with a sink, twin bed, desk, chair, and wardrobe.

We settled into our rooms briefly, but then headed into the church to catch Vespers with the monks. Prior to this, I’d never been to a Benedictine monastery where they pray in English so it was a treat to be able to understand what monks were chanting!

After Vespers, we got into the car again to grab dinner at Moe’s BBQ downtown. The food was delicious, the beer was cold, and Jason and I had great conversations regarding ministry. After dinner, we headed back.

I tried staying up, but I felt really tired. I ended up going to bed at 8:45PM!

Sunday

Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament

Knowing that Mass was at 7AM, we left St. Bernard’s pretty early. Thankfully, it’s just down the highway (country road?) from the shrine so we were able to get there early enough before Mass.

It’s a little strange driving up to the shrine because it feels like you’re somewhat in the middle of nowhere in Alabama, but as you get closer and closer to it, the more and more it feels like you’re in Italy. In particular, Assisi. Crazy!

The Shrine is gorgeous, and Mass was really great. It’s weird because you hardly see the Carmelite nuns, but you can hear them singing beautifully.

After Mass, we went down to the crypt church to visit the tomb of Mother Angelica, foundress of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). In the American Catholic world, EWTN is a major media conglomerate comprising of radio, television, news, and social media platforms. Mother Angelica passed away in 2016 due to health reasons.

Emerging from the crypt, we headed outside. Jason wanted footage of the grounds so we headed back to the car to grab our cameras.

The major lesson we learned is that…you’re not allowed to fly drones unless you have prior permission. Whoops! Also, no photos or videos inside the shrine, but outside on the grounds is okay.

We spent a long while outside, and it wasn’t until late morning that we decided to get back into the car to start driving back home.

On Our Way Home

For lunch, we stopped by a Jimmy John’s. During the long drive back to Texas, we took turns listening to our different playlists, and pretty much just drove and refueled. Once in Texas, we hit up a Whataburger to go, and caught the Cowboys game on sports radio.

Amazingly, we arrived home a little earlier than originally planned! That was great because I had time to go to bed at a normal time in order to go to work the next day!

Pokémon Go

Turns out Jason is a big fan of Pokemon Go. He got me back into it. Needless to say, we played some over the weekend!

Stats and Achievements

• Total Cost: ~$500 (or $250 per person)
  • Rental Car: ~$150
  • Lodging: $25 car parking/33,000 points @ Hampton Inn, $40/person @ St. Bernard’s
  • Gas: $134 total
  • Food: ~$55 per person
• Total Time: ~85 hours (Friday morning to Sunday evening)
• Total Miles: ~1440 miles
• Times Scolded by Security Not to be Using Drone at the Shrine: 1
• Times Karaoke’d in the Car: 3
• Pokémon Caught in Pokémon Go: >50
• Pokémon Gyms Defended (JR): 1
• Times B-Roll Captured for YouTube (Jason): 10+

Response

Because this pilgrimage was to primarily to visit the heart of St. John Vianney, the major intention for the pilgrimage was for all parish priests. St. John Vianney is the patron saint of parish priests, and it’s fitting that his heart is incorrupt because it illustrates how much he had a heart for those he served. We’re still dealing with the “summer of scandal” of priests involved in sexual abuse, and it’s timely that St. John Vianney’s heart is traveling around. My own parish recently lost our pastor, and things seem kind of crazy right now. Therefore, it was great having this pilgrimage happen given the environment and times.

Executing this pilgrimage was also pretty great. It provides another example for me to show that you and I can pull off pilgrimages that are short and low-cost yet still spiritually fruitful with times for prayer and encountering God. If Jason and I split the total cost of the pilgrimage down the middle, it really only cost us ~$250 each, which is not too shabby given that we drove really far and saved costs on lodging. I appreciated saving money due to us not flying to Georgia and driving instead.

Speaking of flying… since I’m a frequent flyer, driving is really not my thing. Driving four states away proved to me that I can withstand really long drives. Developing this superpower will help open up more possibilities for road trip pilgrimages in the future!

Lastly, again, this was the first pilgrimage collaboration with Jason! And there will be more to come! 🙂

Jason has been chronicling our pilgrimage in video form. You can watch those videos and visually see the places we went to here:

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