Walk to Mary

Last Saturday, Iris and I had the opportunity to participate in the 13th Annual Walk to Mary. The full 22-mile walking pilgrimage begins at the Shrine of St. Joseph in De Pere, WI and ends at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion. But since Joel's birthday was the day before and we wanted to spent his birthday with him- plus we hadn't really trained for walking that distance- we decided to just walk the last 14 miles by hopping in at the join-in point at Saints Peter and Paul Parish in Green Bay. We drove up to Appleton the night before, so we only had a 45 minute drive in the morning to get to the designanted parking spot by 9 and took a bus to the church to join in with the pilgrims.

Right away, we were able to find the other family from our homeschool group we were trying to meet up with, but they had started from the beginning. That was a feat, considering there were more than 10,000 pilgrims registered to walk! And the line of people stretched for miles! Our other friends, whom I messaged to see where they were, said they were miles behind us at that point and were an older crowd, so we abandoned the hope of connecting with them.

But guess who I did meet?! Nancy Bandzuch from Catholic Sprouts (And The Catholic Parent on Formed and The Just One Small Thing Podcast)! I saw her, looking tired and exasperated (who wasn't at this point?), at Holy Cross parish, where our lunch stop was, and thought, I know that woman, but from WHERE? And then it came to me- she's the founder and host of Catholic Sprouts! So after we took busses to cross the interstate into the country and I ran into her again, I said, "You do Catholic Sprouts! And she said, "I do!" and stuck out her hand and introduced herself. So that was a highlight of my day.

This was our friends' tenth(!) year of doing the walk as a family. Most years, they've done all 22 miles. This year, they had one in a stroller, one in a wheelchair bike with the eight year old mostly riding on the back of that. Seeing all of the young children and strollers, I'm hopeful our whole crew (at least anyone still at home) can tackle it in the future. Jack actually did it a few years ago with a friend's family.

We made it!

Good friends

There was a lovely Mass behind the shrine afterwards with Bishop Ricken of the Green Bay Diocese. I stole these photos from the WTM fb page.

:-D

The sky was incredible throughout Mass, and everyone kept pointing to it, in awe. I wanted to take a picture but didn't during Mass. I saw this that someone else had posted on the WTM IG page, though it doesn't come close to how cool it looked in person- the clouds looked like rays splayed out behind the stage where the Mass was being said.

Servant of God Adele Brice's grave (Read her amazing story and the apparition account here)

What a glorious day! I felt so blessed to be able to participate in the pilgrimage, and I hope to return with more of our crew next year- what a gift to be so close to the Shrine of Our Lady of Champion- the first and only Church-approved Marian apparition site in the United States!