A devotion to the Virgin Mary inspired two seminarians in the Twin Cities to share a pilgrimage in body and spirit. They planned to walk more than 150 miles from the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Patrick Storms, 19, and Aiden Nicholas, 19, set out July 30 as part of renewing their devotion to Mary, culminating in an Aug. 7 consecration at the shrine. What began as a challenge of physical and spiritual endurance became more focused on a spiritual commitment as the two seminarians traded their walking gear for meditation and prayer after suffering heat exhaustion and road fatigue while hiking more than 50 miles.
“I was in a seminary class that went to the shrine of Our Lady of Champion in Champion, Wisconsin,” said Storms of St. Charles Borromeo in St. Anthony, soon to be in his second year at St. John Vianney College Seminary (SJV) in St. Paul. “And on our way there, one of the seminarians from my class told me the story of how he went from the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse to the Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in Champion (near Green Bay). He walked the whole way there, 238 miles, with a couple of seminarians from his diocese. As I heard him tell the story, I thought — that’s amazing, I wanted to try to do something like that.”
Storms first met Nicholas — who is also entering his second year at SJV — in shared classes at the seminary. In addition, Storms and Nicholas, a member of Mary, Mother of the Church in Burnsville, were Totus Tuus teammates at Sts. Joachim and Anne in Shakopee as they participated in this summer’s catechetical program for grade school children and high school youth. They got along and worked well together, and eventually decided to walk together on a Marian pilgrimage as part of their Marian Consecration — a formal, 33-day period of prayer that ends with a prayer of consecration.
Like the seminarians who made the Marian pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Champion, they traveled light. They carried no food or money of their own, relying on the Lord’s providence and the charity of those along the way for lodging and sustenance. They brought water, rain ponchos and light camping gear. And at the suggestion of Father Joseph Johnson, rector of the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, they brought a cellphone for emergencies — as an act of kindness for their loved ones. They also brought with them prayers in their hearts, rosaries and crosses hand-carved by a grandparent of one of their Totus Tuus teammates.
“I would hold that cross and keep reminding myself I was walking with Christ and carrying his cross like Simon of Cyrene,” said Nicholas, recalling their struggles on the trek. “I would also finger the beads on the rosary and say, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, living God of mercy, I’m a sinner’ over and over again as a way of uniting every step with his Passion.”
Storms and Nicholas arranged to spend their first night on the road at St. Rita in Cottage Grove. They emailed the parish office ahead of time, and Father Mike Reinhardt, the parochial administrator, welcomed them when they arrived with a meal of pork chops and sweet corn, though Storms didn’t feel much like eating. After about nine hours of walking nearly 25 miles with temperatures hovering near 90 degrees, both men felt the effects of heat exhaustion.
“When we were in the middle of the day and still had nine miles to go in the (sweltering) heat and blisters were forming on my feet with each painful step,” Storms recalled, “Jesus was there and taking those steps with me. As painful as it was for me, he suffered first. He did this first; and this was a way for me to do it myself.”
They traveled a shorter distance on the second day, and lodging for the night was planned for them by a parishioner at St. Rita who worked in the parish office. Mary Jo Norum gave her telephone number to Storms and Nicholas with instructions to call at the end of their walk that day. They called her when they arrived at St. Joseph in Prescott, Wisconsin, at the confluence of the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers. Norum, just across the river in Denmark Township, hosted the travelers for the night and packed them off the next morning with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples, beef jerky and $10. She also gave them contact information for her brother in Trempealeau, Wisconsin, farther along their proposed route.
Nicholas and Storms followed U.S. Highway 10 almost 20 miles that day to Ellsworth, Wisconsin, and found lodging for the evening at St. Francis of Assisi. Storms had been there just two weeks earlier with Totus Tuus and had mentioned his plans for a Marian pilgrimage to the pastor, Father David Olson. Father Olson now welcomed two wet and weary pilgrims dressed in rain ponchos for shelter from rain that fell during the last 20 minutes of their hike.
“We walked along the side of U.S. 10 for half an hour with no shoulder,” Nicholas said. “We would do silent prayer — two 45-minute stretches of walking 100 feet apart, and I would usually find myself almost talking out loud to my guardian angel, or Mary, or Jesus. It was very surreal — like they were walking right next to me and listening.”
At one point, during a moment of silent prayer, Storms said it felt almost as though Jesus and Mary were on either side supporting him and carrying him along, like an injured athlete hobbling off the field with the support of teammates. In stopping at St. Francis in Ellsworth, the pilgrims had made it to the Diocese of La Crosse, though not to their planned destination within the diocese. They had passed through sweltering heat and pounding thundershowers, suffering heat exhaustion and bruised and blistering feet. They decided to end their walk, but not their pilgrimage.
“I think God is calling them to a different kind of suffering than they planned or wanted,” said Storms’ mother, Mary Urdahl, by telephone at the time. “Stopping was the prudent thing to do. But knowing these men’s determination and faith it was harder for them to (decide to) stop than to continue.”
There were several days of feeling lost and helpless, separated from their goal of making a Marian pilgrimage on foot from Minneapolis to La Crosse. But Storms later noted that when people find there’s nothing anyone can do, they need to rely totally on God.
On Aug. 7, the pilgrims reached the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, though not in the way they had planned. They were rested from their long walk and had spent time at home thinking about their experiences and praying about the future before driving to La Crosse. It was not how they expected to get there, Nicholas’ mother, Sarah, commented, but maybe they had learned that God doesn’t always work in ways people expect. They had prepared physically and spiritually to renew their Marian Consecration, their devotion to Mary, on that day. And there they were. After a period of prayer and meditation, they said a prayer of consecration together at the Marian shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“Even though it didn’t go as planned,” Sarah Nicholas concluded, “I thought it was a very successful pilgrimage.”
