In his collection of his retreat meditations,
Images of Pilgrimage: Paradise and Wilderness in Christian Spirituality (Darton, Longman, and Todd, London, 2023), the late Robert Crouse declared that ‘[t]he fundamental and all-encompassing theme of spiritual life is pilgrimage: its images are images of wayfaring, of exile and repatriation, of alienation and reconciliation, images of journeying through wilderness to gain he promised land.’ In the first three chapters he addresses this theme in biblical and non-biblical literature, and in his fourth chapter, published here with permission, he turns to the theme in the writings of the church fathers, especially Augustine.
Passing on to consider the interpretation of images of pilgrimage in the ongoing development of Christian spirituality in the history of the Church, we do not leave behind us the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Indeed, one may see the whole of Christian history as an exegesis, in thought and action, of the word of God. Or, perhaps, we might even better call it an eisegesis – a ‘reading in’ of ourselves into the word and will of God, a reading of ourselves into the paradise of God, where, in a fundamental and altogether crucial sense, we already are.
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