Seven Churches pilgrimage sharpens student’s drive to be Catholic
Nora Pryor caught a breath of incense as she entered the St. Peter Proto-Cathedral in Jefferson City on Holy Thursday.
Her gaze turned to the Most Blessed Sacrament, surrounded by candles and flowers below a statue of the Blessed Mother.
“That really struck me,” said Miss Pryor, a University of Missouri senior who was two days from being fully initiated into the Catholic Church.
“I have a deep reverence for Our Lady,” she said, “and thinking about how the Passion of Our Lord unfolded and how she would have felt and responded, and the sorrow and also the acceptance of that whole saga for her.”
Miss Pryor and a group of friends from St. John Henry Newman Parish in Columbia traveled to the Capital City to take part in the Seven Churches Visitation devotion.
“I’m really glad they invited me to go with them,” she said. “It was a beautiful thing.”
The Seven Churches is an ancient custom that originated with visiting the seven major basilicas in Rome on Holy Thursday.
It’s a Catholic remembrance of Jesus asking his disciples to stay and watch with him in the Garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper.
Seven churches in and near Jefferson City stayed open until midnight for prayer and pilgrimage on Holy Thursday.
People were encouraged to visit all seven after the Mass of the Lord’s Supper and prayerfully contemplate seven moments leading up to Jesus’s betrayal and death.
Participating parishes included: St. Andrew in Holts Summit; Cathedral of St. Joseph, Immaculate Conception and St. Peter Proto-Cathedral in Jefferson City; St. Martin in St. Martins; St. Francis Xavier in Taos; and St. Stanislaus in Wardsville.
At each of the seven churches, participants stopped to adore Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament, enthroned on an altar of repose.
They then meditated on one of the events of the first Holy Thursday:
- Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39-46)
- Jesus bound and taken before Annas (John 18:19-22)
- Jesus taken before the High Priest, Caiaphas (Matthew 26:63-65)
- Jesus taken before Pontius Pilate (John 18:35-37)
- Jesus taken before Herod (Luke 23:8-9,11)
- Jesus taken before Pilate again (Matthew 27:22-26) and
- Jesus crowned with thorns (Matthew 27:27-31).
Pilgrims read an appropriate Scripture passage for each station and engaged in private prayer and Adoration.
Some concluded their pilgrimage by observing a Holy Hour at the seventh church they visited.
Watch and pray
This was Miss Pryor’s first Mass of the Lord’s Supper, which concludes with a solemn procession of the Most Blessed Sacrament to a separate place for Adoration.
Seeing the altar of repose below the image of the Blessed Mother in the St. Peter Proto-Cathedral inspired Miss Pryor to renew her own radical acceptance and “yes” to God’s plans for her life.
Across the Capital City in Immaculate Conception Church, she noticed the large images of angels painted on the walls above the sanctuary.
“I found that very striking,” she said. “I love thinking about being in communion with the saints and angels and their constant protection for us.”
Having visited the first six churches, she and her fellow pilgrims arrived at the Cathedral of St. Joseph shortly before midnight.
“We were very lucky to come in and pray in the Cathedral for a few minutes,” said Miss Pryor. “So, we were able to visit all seven.”
A New York minute
Miss Pryor is ecstatic to be Catholic.
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done, the best decision I’ve ever made,” she said. “I’m so happy to be finally in the Church. How could I not be overjoyed?”
She grew up in a St. Louis suburb, in a family belonging to another Christian faith tradition.
“That gave me the seeds of faith that I’m really thankful for,” she said.
In college, she took her faith into her own hands and “for the first couple of years didn’t manage it the best way.”
God gently, persistently called her back to what she was created for.
“I started reading my Bible again and got involved in some Bible studies,” she said.
Reading John 6 — in which Jesus’s insistently refers to himself as the Bread of Life — made her uncomfortable.
“‘This is my flesh?’ Did he really mean that? Maybe this is really important,” she remembers thinking.
That launched her on an investigation into various Christian faith traditions.
Some good Catholic friends were nearby to answer her questions and pray her through her time of inquiry.
“This is definitely not what I was planning on,” she conceded. “I was raised to believe that Catholics are misguided or have added things that just aren’t necessary.”
Through continued prayer, study and mentorship from friends, “I learned that everything the Church teaches is grounded in truth and in Jesus Christ, himself,” she said.
She landed a summer internship in New York City last year and decided to take her investigation to the next level.
“You can find every kind of church in the world in New York,” she reasoned. “I could go and visit any kind of church I want to.”
By summer’s end, the only churches she had visited were Catholic.
She went to Mass in St. Vincent Ferrer Church on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on the feastday of St. Mary Magdalene.
She thought about how often she had been going to Mass and praying the Rosary.
“During that Mass,” she recalled, “I prayed, ‘God, is this really what I’m supposed to do? Is this really your Church?”
The answer felt like a resounding “yes.”
“I was convinced that it would be disobedient for me not to go through with it and partake of the Eucharist,” she said.
“The Lord had brought me here,” she stated. “For me to make the choice to sit on the sidelines would not be a good fulfillment of the journey he had brought me on.
“So, I became Catholic.”
Heart to heart
Miss Pryor feels blessed to attend the University of Missouri, with a solid and robust Catholic campus ministry at St. John Henry Newman Parish.
“I was able to go through (the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults) at Newman and have a lot of great Catholic friends and be surrounded by the Sacraments,” she said. “It’s been a wonderful, wonderful experience.”
Her parents and some of her friends were concerned for her.
“I think my family was hesitant about what I was getting myself into,” she recalled. “But over time, they could see me growing closer to the Lord.
“I think they’ve come to see it as a good thing in my life, even if they don’t personally agree with a lot of the teachings of Catholicism,” she said.
She appreciates her friends who do not share her outlook, but her becoming Catholic has strained her relationship with some of them.
“The Church has teachings in the moral realm that are countercultural,” she acknowledged. “As I’ve grown stronger in my faith, conversations sometimes can get quite uncomfortable.
“At the same time, I realize that these are places where we need to be present and minister,” she said.
Toward that end, she turns to St. Francis de Sales’s motto, “Hearts speak to other hearts.”
“I don’t think there’s any other way to get the point across that the Catholic Church is the fullness of faith and truth than to love through Christ and the Sacraments,” she said.
No turning back
Miss Pryor intends to remain Catholic forever.
“Absolutely!” she said. “The fullness of faith and truth and the way the Lord ministers to us and gives us his grace and love through the Sacraments — it’s all essential.”
She cannot imagine ever walking away from the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist.
“I see them as the pinnacle of practicing our faith,” she said.
She finds it difficult to understand some of the Church’s teachings, such as the need for people who have been found worthy of heaven to undergo a purification process before entering.
“The Lord has given me the grace to know that I trust the Church, so I trust its teachings, I trust the Magisterium, I trust that it’s all true, even if I can’t always wrap my head around it,” she said.
A friend recently cautioned her against mistaking strong emotions for strong faith.
“We talked a lot about how in times like this, when you feel on fire, to make sure your will and intellect are in right order, and to know that love is an action, not a feeling,” said Miss Pryor.
For the rest of her time on campus, she wants to cultivate spiritual discipline and a healthy rhythm for practicing her faith after graduation.
“I have time to go to daily Mass, and I have access to frequent Adoration,” she said. “I’m trying to take advantage of all that to set me up for success.”
Glad to be home
Receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation at the Easter Vigil filled her with immense gratitude.
After spending so much time and energy seeking happiness in other places, she has come to accept that God is the only one who can love her the way she wants to be loved.
“I believe my whole 21-year life was set up to lead me to this point, and I’m only getting started,” she said.
She chose St. Mary Magdalene to be her patron saint for Confirmation.
“I’ve always felt drawn to her,” said Miss Pryor. “I think it’s the idea that she had sinned and there was a lot of demonic influence in her life, and the Lord delivered her and she devoted the rest of her life to spending time with him and following him and loving the mission.”
Likewise, receiving Holy Communion for the first time filled Miss Pryor with “overwhelming love and overwhelming joy.”
“I just felt so complete,” she said.
All she could think was “I can’t wait to do this again.”
She’s convinced that her “restless wandering” is at an end.
“I have everything I need in Christ and the Sacraments, and I don’t need to search anymore,” she said. “I’m at home, I’m at rest, I have nothing to find this side of heaven, other than to grow more deeply in faith and trust in the Lord.
“I still can’t believe the Lord has brought me here and entrusted me with something so good and so beautiful and invited me into something so special, something that is accessible to anyone,” she said.
