How to become a pilgrim into God, others, and yourself... 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.
Strannik is Russian for pilgrim, one with a vocation, a unique, holy calling.
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 persons life.
