“Try, with God’s help, to see the connection–even physical and natural–which ties your labor to the building of the Kingdom of Heaven; try to realize that heaven itself smiles upon you and, through your work, draws you to itself; then, as you leave church for the noisy streets, you will remain with only one feeling, that of continuing to immerse yourself in God.”
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Divine Milieu. Translated by Siôn Cowell. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2012, p. 24.
“When applied to the spiritual life, the metaphor of a journey is both helpful and somewhat misleading. Helpfully it reflects the fact that the essence of spirituality is a process–specifically, a process of transformation. Unhelpfully it obscures the fact that we are already what we seek and where we long to arrive–specifically, in God. Once we realize this, the nature of the journey reveals itself to be more one of awakening than accomplishment, more one of spiritual awareness than spiritual achievement.”
(Benner, David G. The Gift of Being Yourself. Expanded ed. Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Books, 2015, p. 3)
A journey, pilgrimage, or walk is something that takes time, evolves, progresses, processes. But then that means that we aren’t “there” yet, that we still have effort to expend, work to do. Instead, Benner says, we should be aware that we are even now in God’s hand in God’s land. You could say that in faith and in Baptism we are now exploring within the borders of God’s Kingdom. We have arrived at our goal. Now and not yet.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 