ARTICLES

In Serra's Footsteps

ONE CHANGE OF CLOTHES, NO SLEEPING BAG

By John-David Black

In October and November of 1998, I walked the entire distance of the California mission chain from San Diego to San Francisco. My motivation for doing the walk was to make a religious pilgrimage of prayer and meditation. The inspiration for doing the pilgrimage was the life of Junipero Serra. Actually, it began in 1995 while I was visiting Mission Carmel near Monterey. While I assisted my in-laws in setting up the sanctuary of the church for a concert, I pointed out to my mother in-law how well kept the mission was. She noted that part of the reason this mission got a lot of attention was that Junipero Serra was buried there. When she pointed out to me that I was at that moment standing on the grave of Father Serra, I looked down at my feet and saw the grave marker. In what can only be described as a powerful religious experience, I was suddenly filled with an unexplainable sense of inspiration and awe. I knew next to nothing of the man or of California Mission history. But this experience was so intense, that I determined then and there that I needed to learn more of that era of California history.

The study of the life and times of Junipero Serra proved very inspirational to me. During this period, I began to consider doing a pilgrimage to the missions on foot who built the missions. When I noticed that Father Serra also did a pilgrimage on foot from Vera Cruz to Mexico City when he first arrived from Spain, that clinched the idea for me. I chose to do a pilgrimage in honor and emulation of Junipero Serra. Consequently, I chose to do the walk much the way he did. (He brought nothing with him on his journey of over 200 miles and trusted God to provide for him and his companion along the way.) So I left San Diego with a daypack, one change of clothes, no sleeping bag, a few necessary items, and enough money for about three or four days. Then I simply walked back to San Francisco where I live. It took about two months to get home. (I also walked from San Francisco to Mission San Francisco de Solano in Sonoma. About 60 or 70 miles north of San Francisco.)

I did not have more than a couple of lodging arrangements lined out in advance, though I did have a few friends who knew I was coming and offered to put me up for a night or so. What few arrangements I did have were several days' walk from each other. Everything I needed was provided for me along the way, but only as the need arose. It was a difficult journey at times. The most difficult aspects were managing the fatigue and pain in my feet, missing my wife and kids, and trying to figure out the route I was to take as I walked.

My longest day was forty-six miles, my shortest was twelve. On average, I walked about twenty miles a day, though about four times I had to walk over thirty miles in a single walk. Three times I was forced to walk through the night after walking all day because there was no place for me to stay. When that happened, I just walked to the next place I knew I had a place to lodge.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the trip was the overwhelming influence the pilgrimage had on my own spiritual journey. This was not at all expected, and I am still processing the effects of the pilgrimage on my personal life. I discovered that the mission chain in California may be composed of late medieval relics, but there is something still active about those old missions in a spiritual sense. I thought I was walking the El Camino Real out of a nostalgic respect for the history they represent. But by the time the pilgrimage was over, I discovered that the spiritual milieu of the missions had deeply impacted me and that they, in some strange way, were exerting a level of spiritual influence in California even today.

I had grown up a Protestant. But this pilgrimage worked a distinctly Catholic conversion in me. The mechanism of that conversion was the very real experience of a Catholic belief that Protestants generally reject: The doctrine of the Communion of Saints. It is the belief that the faithful who have departed this life continue in heaven to labor alongside those who are alive on earth. More than the inspiration they inspire by their godly lives, the faithful departed are actively involved in shaping the spiritual milieu of the world by their prayers and intercessions for those of us who are alive on earth.

By this view, Father Serra and the other friars of the mission era still labor in prayer for the welfare and spiritual benefit of California. Though some would think that it is foolish to assert such a notion, my experience on this walk confirmed that Catholic belief in me. There was a definite sense that I was not walking alone no matter how far out into the countryside I got. Each time I arrived at a mission there was a very peculiar sense that made me feel as if someone there was welcoming me and was overjoyed that I had arrived. This experience was consistent even when there was not a living soul who said a word to me. At first, I dismissed this inner experience as affectation, the mere emotion generated by arriving in a mission after a long and arduous walk. Eventually, however, the continued experience of this peculiar intuition forced me to reconsider what was happening. Could it be that I was feeling the prayers and encouragement of the friars who labored to establish the spiritual foundations of the Golden State?

I was privileged to stay for a couple of days at Old Mission Santa Barbara, the only one of the missions to remain in continuous use as a church and friary, and always under the custody of the Franciscans. One of the friars, a good friend of our family, was so touched by what I was experiencing as I walked that he entrusted to me a first-class relic of Father Serra: It was a certified piece of bone from Father Serra's grave. He told me to take it with me to the rest of the missions along the El Camino Real and expressed the belief that Father Serra would walk with me on my journey. I accepted the responsibility of carrying this valuable treasure, regarding it at the time as no more than a touching gesture of support from my Franciscan friend. Certainly, it was an important symbol to me of my desire to identify with Father Serra. Given my Protestant upbringing, however, I was a little incredulous about the idea that Father Serra would be walking with me as I left Mission Santa Barbara. However, as I walked the remainder of the state, that almost haunting sense that I was never alone on any part of this journey was even more pronounced. In fact, on the leg from Mission Santa Barbara to Mission Santa Inez, I had a provocative experience that initiated in me the conviction that Father Serra had taken note of my pilgrimage to the missions and my "quest" to discover the spiritual foundations of the Golden State. I came to believe that he was praying for me if not walking with me in the spirit.

The leg to Santa Inez from Santa Barbara posed a logistical problem. The main road through San Marcos pass was not a suitable road to walk on. There was no shoulder and a dangerously high volume of traffic. Consequently, I chose to hike over the coastal mountains on a dirt access road. It was a distance of forty miles and entailed a 4,300-foot climb and a 2,000-foot descent into Solvang. Since there was nothing but wilderness in between , it would have to be done all in one walk. It took seventeen hours and I had to walk through the night. I left Santa Barbara around noon and started my ascent up the hill around 2:00 in the afternoon. I climbed continuously until 9:30 that night. I was so exhausted by that time that I could hardly stand. It was very warm and hard to carry my own water as my pack was extra heavy. When I started down the backside of the of the mountains, I began to realize the extremity of my situation. Walking down hill is extremely hard on one's feet, and after a short while, both feet were starting to swell and were in great pain. I was running low on water and there we no facilities out there of any kind. I still had more that six hours of hiking left before I would reach Mission Santa Inez and when I got there before dawn, it would be closed.

About this time, I distinctly heard a voice speaking. It was an inner voice but it was audible enough to make me turn my head to see who was talking. The voice simply said, "Let's pray for John!" Almost immediately, a sense of peace and security came over me, and I felt that I was not alone out there in the wilderness in the middle of the night. The next day when I called my Franciscan friend at Santa Barbara to let him know that I had made it safely to Santa Inez, he told me that as he was dropping off to sleep the night before, he was suddenly filled with an urgent sense that he needed to pray for me. He got out of bed and kneeled in prayer and asked that heavenly assistance would be granted me as I walked. I asked him what time that incident had occurred; it was at the very time I heard a voice calling for prayer on my behalf.

Some would dismiss such things as nonsense, but I was certain that this experience was not imagination or affectation. That and other similar experiences along the way were responsible for initiating the conversion that I have spoken about above.

The spiritual blessings I received on my pilgrimage were a great impetus in my decision to enter the Catholic Church. After a period of initiation and preparation, I was baptized and confirmed in April 1999, taking "Junipero Francis" as my confirmation name. I continue to be inspired and blessed by the witness of Blessed Junipero Serra.

John-David Black lives in San Francisco with his wife and sons. This column is reprinted from the California Mission