Our pilgrimage this year is called The Vision of Beauty.Â
Somebody once said that: ‘it is beauty that will save the world’. And this is our theme, actually, this year in WCCM, in all our communities, we’re reflecting on the goodness of nature, the goodness of creation and the beauty of the world.Â
This is why we’re going to Italy, one of the most beautiful countries in the world, in the repository of perhaps our one of our classic ideas of what beauty is. If beauty is to save the world, it’s because it is the vision of God.Â
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Beauty, somebody also said, is a glimpse of the whole of creation, the whole of the world, reality in a particular. So we’ll be going to Italy on the 26th of September for nine days. It won’t be a rushed pilgrimage, it will be a contemplative pilgrimage. But we will be covering many different aspects of of beauty, the beauty of nature, the beauty of sacred sites, the religious beauty of the world, the beauty of places where people live in of civilization. The great cities and small towns of Italy and, of course, the beauty of art.Â
So we meet in Milan and we will spend time in Verona and at Lake Garda. We’ll be then going to Venice, so we’ll be bathing in the beauty of the natural world at a beautiful time of the year. We will then go to Venice, one of the most beautiful cities, of course, in the world and an inspiration for artists everywhere. And then when we’re there, we’ll be visiting my own monastery in Lendinara, an Olivetan monastery, not far from Venice and we’ll be a meeting with the abbot there who is a very cultivated and a very sensitive scholar of Italian art. We then go to Ravenna, another beautiful city in a place of great religious importance and we’ll be visiting there the little chapel where we’ll see the icon of the two birds on the chalice, which is the logo of the WCCM (that was where we were inspired to take as the logo, the symbol of contemplation and action).Â
We then go to Arezzo, which is a beautiful little city not far from Florence. We won’t be staying in Florence, which is rather crowded and touristy city, but we’ll be staying in Arezzo and using that as a base to visit places like Fiesole, the art of Florence and the beauty of the buildings of Florence, and particularly again, one of the monasteries in my monastic family, the beautiful monastery of San Miniato, the highest point of Florence, looking over the city, where we have had a meditation centre for many years. We’ll be then also able to visit San Sepolcro, the birthplace of Piero Della Francesca and we’ll spend time in contemplation of his most amazing painting of the resurrection, one of the most beautiful paintings in the world.Â
And then to Assisi, a place of spiritual and natural beauty and a place where we will contemplate the importance of rediscovering the experience of beauty in order to be able to save our planet.Â
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And then from there we go to Monte Oliveto, where the pilgrimage concludes.Â
Pilgrimage is about enjoying each other’s company, sharing common experiences and being able to talk about them, praying together. We’ll meditate morning and midday and evening, and especially at these beautiful places.Â
So, it will be a contemplative pilgrimage, and I hope that you’ll be able to to join us and join those who are already coming, because I think it would be a wonderful experience for you to take and share with your friends, your family or meditation groups and all your acquaintances. This is an experience that we can communicate. So that’s the idea of the pilgrimage, the main elements of it, and I invite you to join us in this Vision of beauty in Italy in September.
