Lutetiae Parisiorum

There's a Jesuit saying: "Ignatius is our father; Paris is our mother." I'm visiting our mother right now.

I am making my way back to LA, really I am.

I spent a really wonderful evening with some friends I know from Toronto, Colin and Margaret Visser. Ten years ago they retired to Barcelona; more recently they moved to Paris, technically in a little wedge just outside of Paris, Saint Mandé. I met them through Terry Kruger, formerly of the English-speaking Canadian Jesuit province, and hadn’t seen them since I hosted them in Cleveland when Margaret gave the Arrupe Lecture at St. Ignatius High School in 1995.
From Dubonnet to coffee it was a wonderful evening. They, too, have found themselves caught similarly in the crosshairs of providenceat different times in their lives, and our catching up on our lives over the course of these years (though we have kept up via email) was incredibly consoling.

Some years ago I received an email from them when they were both living in Toronto. They concluded the email with the word ultreia. After looking in a few dictionaries, I began asking everyone I met what that word could mean. I thought for sure it had something to do with Margaret’s past as a Classics professor -- it obviously was related to ultra. It was Fr. Bob Welsh, then president of St. Ignatius HS, Cleveland, who told me that he thought it was related to the Cursillo movement, and indeed it is. But there’s more to the story, and I’d like to share it with you.

In my next email to Margaret I confessed that I was unsure of the meaning of ultreia. She responded:

“Ultreia!” is how pilgrims greet one another on the road to Compostella. It means “Further!” like the Italian Avanti! (compare it with the Latin ultra). Also like Corragio! Colin and I once walked to Compostella. July 25th, 1995, was the 10th anniversary of the climax of that pilgrimage – St. James’s feast, as of course you know. We did it when we were converted back to the Church. That was when we began what I like to call our Second Journey – a phrase I like because it lets the First Journey remain meaningful: it’s the way you got to the starting post for the Second Journey.

In some ways -- in many, really -- I'm beginning my own Second Journey.