Thursday, August 18, 2022

The Journey of Our Shoes


Dear Friends,

In late July Pope Francis spent a fruitful week in Canada on a “pilgrimage of forgiveness,” as he called it. Earlier in the year, a delegation of First Nation people, Metis and Inuit, came to Rome to deliver a personal invitation to Pope Francis. They brought with them a small pair of moccasins, a treasured relic from the times when their children were forcibly taken from them to go to government endorsed religious schools to become civilized and made “strangers to their own people.” “Bring the moccasins back when you come,” his visitors told Pope Francis. How could he not come? He had two missions – to utter on behalf of the whole church heartfelt words of apology and to bring back the moccasins.

That got me thinking about other times when shoes of various kinds figured into people’s spiritual journeys.

When Margaret Clitherow was about to be hanged in post-Reformation England for being faithful to Christ in the Roman Catholic Church, she made only one bequest: her shoes were to go to her daughter. “Walk in my shoes, daughter,” was the message.

One of the historic displays on Ellis Island is a steamer trunk overflowing with shoes: singles, pairs, worn out shoes, new shoes, children’s shoes, women’s fashion shoes, work shoes. One wonders: Were they left or taken away? Did their owners have other shoes? Where did the owners settle? Or were they sent back? Or died? The United States is a land of the shoeless and the shoe-d.

On the shore of the Danube at Budapest is a plaza with a variety of bronze statues. Touchingly, one is a pair of a child’s shoes. The plaque next to the shoes says the Nazis took prisoners from this place during their occupation. These shoes were found on the dock after one such raid.

Bridget O’Grady was a senior Irish-born woman who came to daily Mass at St. Mary’s Church in the 1980’s. We all had a hard time understanding her form of English, but we could all see that she wore tattered, sneakers, with rips here and there. Some parishioners wanted to know if they could get her new sneakers? Yes. A few days after the shopping expedition with Bridget, she arrived at church in her new sneakers…rips in all the same places as before. The dawn finally came. Bridget needed a podiatrist. That was (if I can put it this way) the next step.

The Scriptures have a dozen or so references to sandals, but only a few references to shoes, like this one in Ephesians 6.15: “Stand with your feet shod in readiness for the Gospel of peace.”

There’s a lot to think about in that brief line in Ephesians. Are we to be ready to welcome the Gospel of peace or deliver it elsewhere? When we put our shoes on, what are we ready to do? Where are we willing to go? In whose name? For what reason? Is there something of Margaret Clitherow in us? Do we stand firm in the shoes we are wearing? Do we go to help where people suffer at the hands of others?

Today, look at the shoes in your closet. Many? A few? More than you need? Look at your feet now and think, “What shoes do I really need?” After all, yours are the only shoes made to walk your journey. (Charles F. Glassman)  

~Sister Joan Sobala

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