Brothers and Sisters, it’s good to be here today and here together.

We are in a year of Jubilee, and Jubilees entail pilgrimages. Though the focus this year is definitely Rome, though a Pope died and a new Pope was, as it were, born, it’s still good to make our own local pilgrimages. When the bishops of the Church were asked to name some churches in their dioceses as places of pilgrimage this year, naturally I thought of St Mary’s Cathedral, of and Pluscarden Abbey. But three is better than two and Beauly came to mind. And why Beauly? Well, it is a “beautiful place”, as Mary Queen of Scots is said to have said. It hosts an ancient Priory. This church is spacious and fine and with room to park. I wanted to honour the ancient monks and also the doughty Catholics of Strathglass who kept the faith during the penal times. The many bishops and priests who came from here, the Jesuits like Fr John Farquharson, and all who held fast, the people who didn’t flinch. The area was described by Presbyterians as “pestered with Popery”. There’s a senior pilgrim here today who can recount how mother, her parents and six siblings would walk 14 miles from Alltbeith in Glen Affric to Sunday Mass at Marydale and back home afterwards after a cup of tea at an aunt’s house. That’s the faith for you!

I wanted to honour all this by declaring this church a pilgrimage church for this year.

The Second Vatican Council reminded us that we are “the pilgrim people of God”. A pilgrimage like this is a reminder of this greater thing: the pilgrimage of life, the pilgrimage of believers.

What does this beautiful image of the pilgrim people of God imply? Let me mention three, anyway.

1. Firstly, it reminds us that we’re not alone. A pilgrimage isn’t normally made alone. (That is the problem of course!) St Cyprian used to say, “a single Christian is no Christian”. The divine plan is to take us out of isolation, to form a people: “At all times and in every race, says Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, God has given welcome to whosoever fears Him and does what is right. God, however, does not make men holy and save them merely as individuals, without bond or link between one another. Rather it has pleased Him to bring human beings together as one people, a people which acknowledges Him in truth and serves Him in holiness” (LG 9). Of this people, Christ is the head, the Holy Spirit the life, our Father in heaven the goal. We belong to this people as believers; this is our dignity and our freedom. The love of God and neighbour is our law, the heavenly Jerusalem our destination.

We’re not alone. We walk together. And the saints are part of that “together” – those who have gone before us and haven’t forgotten us. After the Mass, we’ll bless the new grotto of our Lady. Mary is close to us on the pilgrimage of faith, the closest person to Christ and the closest after him to us. She’s “our Lady of sorrows” and “ the cause of our joy”. She cares about the whole gamut of our life, our joys and hopes, our griefs and anguish.With Mary come St Joseph and St John the Baptist, and with them the apostles – ever-widening circles. In today’s first reading St Paul even calls himself an example of Christ’s patience to believers still to come. After these first saints, and their Old Testamernt forbears, follows the long, ever-lengthening parade of those honoured as holy – right up to those canonised by Pope Leo last Sunday, Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis. The saints keep coming: saints local and universal, known and unknown, ancient and new, canonised or not, the “saints next door” as Pope Francis called them, forgotten to history but powerful in God. Bishops are bidden to promote the honouring of saints in their dioceses. So, I’m glad we’re receiving the relics of St Carlo in Aberdeen this coming Monday and Tuesday. But let me encourage you to take the saints to heart, into your prayer. There’s no doubt the Lord sends saints from heaven into our earthly lives: as friends and companions, inspiration and intercessors; sometimes they choose us, not we them; they have a devotion to us before we have a devotion to them. Let’s love the saints and pilgrim with them!.

2. Here’s a second thing about being the pilgrim people of God. We are not a closed group or a sect. We may, in given times and places, be few and insignificant, a small flock and far from being the flavour of the month, but still as God’s people we are always “a most sure seed of unity, hope and salvation for the whole human race”, an “instrument for the salvation of all”, “light of the world and salt for the earth” (LG 9). We overflow our own banks. We irrigate. This is our calling. One of the Psalms (83) imagines the Jewish pilgrims going up to Jerusalem for the great feasts and says of them: “as they go through the Bitter Valley, they make it a place of springs.” That’s for us too. The world is full of bitter valleys, some people’s lives can feel like little else, and it’s our vocation, even in small ways, to make it a place of springs. To sow seeds of hope in sad hearts, to be peacemakers, to show the graciousness of God. To use the imagery of today’s Gospel, to be planters of vines and fig trees, and builders of solid houses that offer shelter to others. It’s one of the charges on a bishop yet again to encourage the charitable work of the Church, efforts towards justice and peace, and the care of creation. “As they go through the Bitter Valley, they make it a place of springs.” Thank you for all you do, small and great, institutionally and privately in these directions. Let’s not just say, “Lord, Lord” and leave it there. It’s encouraging to know that ¼ of healthcare institutions in the world are run by Christians, most of them Catholic? You could say similar things of the fields of education and international aid. Then what a support a Christian household or monastery or parish can be in a world where we are all so uprooted, so long to belong! And so the little stream we are can become a wide river carrying ourselves and others to the heavenly Jerusalem.
3. Thirdly, as we pilgrim, let’s keep our eyes on Christ. The Father always holds him up for us to see. He is the Good Shepherd. He is the Door. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is our hope. He’s the one, as St Paul says today, we “believe in for eternal life”. He is the first and greatest Pilgrim. In the Gospels he “went up to Jersualem” from Galilee. He did that with his disciples and all sorts of hangers-on. He went to keep the Jewish Passover but far more: to make his own Passover, through the Cross to Resurrection, from this world to the Father, and to open a passage for us. The life of every human being is a pilgrimage from birth to death, B to D. And here’s the simple task before us: to put the letter C between that B and D: C for Christ. To weave our pilgrimage – with its bitter valleys and pleasant passages, its joys and hopes, griefs and anguish – to weave our time, our life, into his. Every year at the Easter Vigil, the number of the calendar year is inscribed on the Paschal Candle. Day by day, let’s write our time, our lives into the flesh of Christ. Let’s live in him as he lives in us. Let’s eat his flesh and drink his blood. With such a C between B and D, everything opens out: to E for eternal life, F for fulness, G for glory, H for heaven, I for our real identity, J for Joy.

Brothers and sister, let’s keep walking!

St Mary’s. Beauly, 13 September 2025