“Go on without me!” I cried dramatically, my mud-soaked tennis shoes sliding helplessly along the slippery forest trail. “I’ll catch up!”
My family was on a backpacking trip heading toward a rustic cabin in the Porcupine Mountains in northern Michigan. The six of us each carried a backpack full of equipment we needed to survive the wilderness for a few days.
Missing the correct footwear
Each of us had a hat, bug spray, rain gear, a sleeping bag, a flashlight, some food and water. And the correct footwear to get us to our destination.
Except me.
Somehow in the planning for our adventure, I forgot hiking boots for myself. And for a four-mile hike into the wilderness after rainfall — as we discovered — the correct footwear made all the difference.
At one point, my son had to pull me — and my mud-laden shoe — out of a bog. At another point, I lay with my pack — exhausted — against a muddy slope I simply didn’t have the traction to pass.
What unbridled joy filled my heart when — despite my falterings — we finally reached the little cabin in the wilderness, where we could unload our burdens and rest at last in the verdant paradise untouched by the outside world.
Tools to reach heaven
Our personal journeys toward heaven are not unlike this trip, marked with getting stuck in potholes and slogging through muddy quagmire. Whether the quagmire is our own sin or the sinfulness of society, we still need the right footwear — or tools — to navigate it, so we can reach our destination.
And what are the right tools?
The sacraments, including: Baptism, wherein Original Sin is washed away; the Eucharist, Jesus’ own Body and Blood passed on to us through the Catholic Church; Confirmation, in which we are graced with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in order to live out our faith; Confession, God’s own forgiveness gifted to us through the priest in the person of Christ.
Plus, we have the Rosary, Eucharistic Adoration, the Mass, the Bible, spiritual reading, and the examples of the saints who have gone before us.
These are the tools God gave us for our journey through this broken world toward our real home in paradise. With them, we can get closer to our destination. Without them, we can too easily slide off the trail.
God did not leave us alone to walk in the wilderness without His help. That’s why He sent us His Son and so many tools to help us along the way. But it’s up to us to make use of the tools He gave us, to don them in love and trust, with the hope that we will one day be reunited at our final destination.
“Love is the source of all good things. It is an impregnable defense and the way that leads to heaven,” said St. Fulgentius. “Those who walk in love can neither go astray nor be afraid. Love guides and protects them and brings them safely to their journey’s end.”
Thank you, O Lord, for the many tools you entrusted to us in order to navigate the wilderness of our lives. Help us to use them, to trust you, and to realize we simply do not have the traction to get to our eternal home on our own.
Julianne Nornberg, mother of four young children, is a member of St. John the Baptist Parish, Waunakee.