Strannik: The Call to the Pilgrimage of the Heart

Learn how to fulfill the hunger and dream of the pilgrimage that we must all take to unity with God.

"Strannik" is Russian for pilgrim, one with a vocation--a unique, holy calling.

Pilgrimage is more than something you 'do.' 'Being a pilgrim' consumes all of you. The pilgrim is to "be the Gospel and to preach it with his words and with his being."

In Strannik, Catherine shows that pilgrimage is not just something for a few spiritual ascetics with wanderlust. Even less does it resemble the modern tourist-style 'pilgrimages' that try to cover as many holy places as possible in the briefest time possible. Rather, the true strannik begins by looking within the self, where God already is. While the author does tell us about external pilgrimages such as she herself experienced as a child in Russia, the pilgrimages she is writing about are principally interior.

Pilgrimage comes out of a quest for God. Catherine speaks of the "nostalgia for paradise" which all human beings have experienced since Adam and Eve. Without Christ we cannot complete our journey. "Christ was the pilgrim who pilgrimed from the bosom of the Father to the hearts of men and women."

Written for all Christians, those who have found and those who seek.

This is the pilgrimage of each person's life.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty used her heritage as a Russian Christian as a matrix for responding to the needs of Christian life and work in the modern world. Her own personal pilgrimage led her to be "poor with the poor Christ" in the slums of Toronto and in Harlem; and later to the establishing of the world-wide Madonna House Apostolate. A dedicated wife and mother, Catherine was also a prolific writer of hundreds of articles, a best-selling author of dozens of books, a renowned national speaker, and a pioneer of social justice. Catherine Doherty's cause for canonization as a saint is now under consideration by the Catholic Church.