pilgrimage Archives - Held By His Pierced Hands

Several years ago, I started falling in love with the Saints, with the witness they provide and the encouragement I find in their holiness despite their brokenness. And since I spend a good amount of time abroad, I got to visit lots of different Saints. It’s much harder to do in the US, I thought, but then I flew back from Europe and accidentally visited five Saints in six weeks. Turns out, it’s not as tricky as it might be, if you’re being intentional about it. So over the course of about 14 months, I managed to visit every Saint and Blessed in the US.

It’s much easier when you’re a hobo, of course, but some of these Saints might be driveable from your home–or a good excuse for a family vacation to paradise. If you’re looking to join me in visiting every American Saint, here’s how to do it–in the most epic Catholic road (/air) trip of all time.

We’ll begin just across the border in Montreal (though since we’re about to visit St. Kateri’s hometown you can skip this one if you must. This is where she’s buried, though, and you’ll get three extra Canadian Saints, too).

St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American Saint, is buried in the mission church on the Kahnawake Mohawk reservation just south of Montreal. The church is called St. Francis Xavier and is a beautiful witness to authentic inculturation, with prayers written in English and Mohawk throughout the church. You can pray in front of the tomb of the young woman who endured ridicule and persecution but never gave up her faith.

A few miles north is the incredible shrine to St. Joseph, built by St. André Bessette. In all honesty, I really don’t like the upper basilica, but there are some beautiful images of St. Joseph down below, as well as thousands of crutches left by people who came with disabilities and left walking on their own. Also, the body of St. André, the first Saint of the Congregation of the Holy Cross.¹

Canes and crutches no longer needed thanks to his intercession.

Not too far from St. Andre is the church housing the body of St. Marguerite Bourgeoys, though it’s closed for half of January and all of February, so plan accordingly. We didn’t get to go inside, but said hi from the street.

Half an hour north of the city is a beautiful church stunningly situated on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, where St. Marguerite d’Youville is buried, a woman whose life reads like a soap opera but ends with a halo.

Heading south from Canada (though really, you ought to make a detour to visit the Canadian shrine to the North American martyrs–it’s amazing), we’ll spend a little more time with St. Kateri in her hometown of Ossernenon. The shrine at Auriesville is the burial ground of St. Rene Goupil, St. Isaac Jogues, and St. Jean de Lalande. Ten years after the martyrdom of St. Isaac and St. Jean, St Kateri Tekakwitha was born in this town. The blood of the martyrs is truly the seed of the Church.

Four Saints in one village is nothing in Europe, but it’s a huge deal in the US.

Continuing south, we’ll stop in northern Manhattan to visit St. Francis Xavier Cabrini. While you’re in town, swing by St. Patrick’s Cathedral to visit a handful of Venerables and Servants of God (Ven. Fulton Sheen!) and make your way down to Staten Island to see Dorothy Day and Fr. Vincent Capodanno, both Servants of God.

St. Francis Xavier Cabrini, bottom; Jesus, top.

Fulton Sheen, Pierre Toussaint, and Terence Cooke, all at St. Pat’s.

Because she’s not far out of our way, we’ll swing through Convent Station, New Jersey to say hello to Bl. Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, a sort of American St. Thérèse. The church will probably be locked, but if you go through the convent, you may find a Sister who’s excited to tell you all about her. (Look for the Holy Family Chapel on the grounds of the College of Saint Elizabeth.)

She likely died of a burst appendix, so a good intercessor in cases of appendicitis.

From there, we’ll head down to Philadelphia, where we’ll visit St. Katherine Drexel and St. John Neumann. Though I visited St. Katherine Drexel at her motherhouse just north of the city, apparently her relics will soon be moved to the cathedral in downtown Philadelphia, not far from St. John Neumann’s shrine. If you’re headed to visit her, I’d call the motherhouse and see what the status is. If she hasn’t been moved yet, you can always go try to sweet talk one of the Sisters into letting you make a visit–it’s worth the detour from St. John Neumann to give it a shot.

He seems to have been absolutely tiny. (His body is in the crypt. I have no idea what’s in the sarcophagus-looking thing in the main church.)

She’s a beautiful intercessor for racial justice.

Next we’re off to see the very first native-born American Saint to be canonized, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, MD, just down the street from Mount St. Mary’s University.

Featuring my niece, Elizabeth Anna, who considers St. Elizabeth Ann Seton her “best Saint friend” and is proudly showing off her Saint block that is now a third class relic.

Now it’s finally time to leave the East Coast and head inland to visit some more Saint friends. Our first stop will be in Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, to see St. Theodore Guerin (spoiler: she’s a woman). Make sure to visit the adoration chapel while you’re there–it’s beautiful.

Further west, we’ll find St. Rose Philippine Duchesne (and Imo’s Pizza) in St. Charles, MO. It’s an…interesting chapel. But Jesus is there, and so is our Saint friend, so we’re calling it a win.

I kind of love it when they don’t update their tombs to say “Saint” because her being their Mother is so important.

Now we have to drive the rest of the way across the country, so we might as well stop by Oklahoma City to see Bl. Stanley Rother. He’s the United States’ first native-born martyr and our first beatified native-born priest, plus he’s an Oklahoma farm boy, so he’s all around awesome. He used to be buried out in his hometown, but his body has been moved to a chapel at the cemetery by the OKC Pastoral Center while they get an amazing shrine built.

I can’t find the picture of his grave, so you’ll have to settle for this shot of me with two seminarians, Bl. Stanley’s sister, his brother, and his sister-in-law, nbd.

Stop through Chimayo if you like on your way to the Carmel Mission, one of many mission churches established by St. Junipero Serra, our most recently canonized Saint.

From there I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to hop a plane to Hawaii. If you can make it out to Molokai to spend time in the leper colony where St. Damien de Veuster and St. Marianne Cope worked, that’s awesome! But if not, you can stop by the cathedral in Honolulu and visit their relics there.

Part of his body is in Belgium and she’s got a museum in Syracuse, NY, but you can’t truly visit them without going to Hawaii, right? Right.

Apologies to Bl. Solanus Casey and Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos, who didn’t make this road trip because they were geographically inconvenient. If you want to add Detroit and New Orleans to your list, you will have hit every single (U.S.) American Saint and Blessed.² Don’t even get me started on Venerables and Servants of God…. (Pro tip: www.findagrave.com is your best resource for all of them.)³

Bl. Solanus Casey, future patron Saint of ice cream, pray for us!

If you go see Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos, then you get to eat in New Orleans. Double worth it.

So there you have it, folks: how to visit every American Saint (and Blessed). Share your pictures with #AmericanSaintsPilgrimage and tag me (@mhunterkilmer on Instagram) so I can be excited with you. And to make it even easier, here’s a map!

Click the link for more details, though not exact addresses. You can find those by visiting the websites linked above.

Go Irish!! [↩]
And you can visit Ven. Henriette DeLille while you’re in NOLA. [↩]
Pretty sure nobody voice searches “Where is [X] buried?” as much as I do. [↩]

If you’ve been keeping up on social media, you know that I spent the last two weeks on an insane pilgrimage around France, Spain, and Portugal. I went with an amazing group of young people who have no patience for shopping and leisurely sight-seeing. They wanted to visit Saints and a lot of them. So we did. (You can stalk our pilgrimage here if you want.)

Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac, Catherine Labouré, Thérèse, Louis and Zélie Martin, Louis de Montfort, Marie-Louise Trichet, Josefa Menendez, Bernadette, Margaret Mary Alacoque, Claude de la Colombière, John Vianney, Francis de Sales, Jane Frances de Chantal, John Francis Regis, Thomas Aquinas, Saturninus, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Elizabeth of Portugal, Lourdes, Fatima, Mont-St-Michel, and the Normandy Beaches. In 10 days.

I was really excited about this pilgrimage. I’d seen Thérèse before, but that was about it. And a lot of these are in really inaccessible places, so doing it on a tour bus is much easier than trying to go it alone. But it was day 5 that I really couldn’t wait for. Bernadette—the incorruptiest of the incorruptibles—and John Vianney, the only diocesan priest ever canonized. What a day!

And they really were amazing. Bernadette was incredible to see—as though she were just sleeping. Honestly, though, it was the sign near her body that struck me the most. Here lies a miracle of shocking proportions, a body dead 150 years that hasn’t decayed in the least, and the caretakers of the shrine seem almost blasé about it. “Yeah, yeah, she’s cool and all. But God himself is in the next chapel over. And that’s really the point of all this.”

John Vianney’s shrine was marvelous as well, not least because our incredible priest got to say Mass on the altar where John Vianney celebrated Mass, using his very chalice. What a grace!

But it was the afterthought of the day that got me: Margaret Mary and Claude de la Colombière.

You’d think that I’d already have been a Margaret Mary fan. After all, my name is Margaret.¹ But I’d always thought of her as some nun Jesus appeared to. Like that’s not a big enough deal to warrant some attention??

"Come to me, all of you." — “Come to me, all of you.”

And you’d think that I’d already have been a Sacred Heart fan. The statue of the Sacred Heart is my favorite spot on Notre Dame’s campus. I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent sitting outside staring at it. Matthew 11:28-30 (a passage often connected with the Sacred Heart) was my favorite for years. And then there’s the fact that the whole point of the devotion to the Sacred Heart is the burning, passionate, desperate love of God, which is kind of my thing.

But most images of the Sacred Heart don’t really do it for me. There’s something wrong about Jesus’ face. So that’s never been a big devotion of mine.

Until Paray-le-Monial.

And yeah, Margaret Mary’s real body was there, which was cool. And the art was much better than usual. Charles de Foucauld was unexpectedly represented in the apse of the chapel, which was exciting. But I don’t think it was any of that. I think that the Sacred Heart just wanted me to love him.

Here is the Heart of Christ, ripped from his chest for me. It’s marked by the cross, burning with love, and surrounded by the thorns of suffering. It’s rent open, broken for love of me. How can I not love him?

Underneath the relics was the charge Jesus gave to St Margaret Mary: I want you to serve as an instrument to draw hearts to my love.

If there’s any better description of the mission God’s given me, I don’t know what it is.

So I spent the next few days just soaking in the love of God. I sat and said to him, over and over, “I love you I love you I love you.” I sang him silly love songs–Michael Buble’s “Everything” for one–and basked in some marvelous consolations.

But mostly I did something odd: I crawled into the pierced heart of Jesus.

I often want to be held by the Lord, but I’m too visual. I can imagine dancing with Jesus, but being held is more intimate, and then I’m wondering if I can sit on Jesus’ lap or if that’s too forward. Same thing with the image of being held by the Father: it’s nice for a moment and then suddenly I’m overthinking it.

This one, somehow, I couldn’t overthink because it was just too weird. All I could do was crawl inside the heart of Jesus and know that I was absolutely surrounded, that everything that impacted me came through him first, that I was protected and cherished and held.

2016-05-20 12.49.27 — Check out that throne of flames! This is no sallow-faced, pink-cheeked, shrinking-violet Jesus.

I put other people in there, too. I’ve spent years holding people up at the foot of the Cross or handing them to Mary so she can offer them to the Lord. This time around, I was done with middle men. So when I got ugly news from beautiful friends, I walked right up to the pierced heart of Christ and put my friends inside. When I couldn’t hold them or help them or even handle their pain, I put them in his heart and let him hold them.

Off and on, this is where I’ve been since. I’ve been praying the Novena to the Sacred Heart and the Litany to the Sacred Heart, learning what it means to burn with the love of God and be marked by the Cross. But above all, I’ve been hiding in his heart. I hope I stay there.