The Christophers: The Power of Pilgrimages
- Editor
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Toni Rossi
Director of Communications
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Deacon Don Grossnickle shouldn’t even be here anymore. Diagnosed with Stage 4 heart failure in 2016, doctors told him he would be dead within two years. Shocked by the unexpected news, Deacon Don started going to cardiac rehab five days a week to exercise his heart muscle and simply maintain the status quo. His efforts have worked since his diagnosis took place 10 years ago, and he has obviously lasted well beyond his predicted expiration date. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Deacon Don observed, “Every day is a blessing . . . I give all the glory to God. It is a miracle that I’m living. Most people say it’s because God has got work for me to do, and I’m not finished yet.”
In light of all his exercise, the Chicago-based deacon was in good shape for the walking required when he took the opportunity for a family pilgrimage to the Camino de Santiago in Spain with his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and grand-daughter. And by choosing the shorter Camino Finis-terre, the trip was not as physically demanding as the full pilgrimage trail would have been. It did, however, result in connecting with his daughter and her family in a better way, since they live in New York and don’t see each other often. ”We talked about our faith life. We talked about God, which is not always easy in just phone conversations . . . We [visited] churches and [had] prayer time. So, it was heavy duty spiritual.”
A few months after that, Deacon Don participated in a pilgrimage to Poland with 103 of his fellow Chicagoans to visit a variety of shrines, churches, and holy places. Deacon Don noted that he learned about “the larger context of how Poland has risen from the claws of communism. I came back tremendously inspired, maybe even with some saintly powers…It opened doors to me, giving me great spiritual strength. . . When Maximilian Kolbe or St. Faustina or John Paul II were down, the Spirit empowered them more. The great question, of course, is: how do saints do it? I think visiting their sites, knowing their stories from birth to their spiritual formation and vocational development, I could see myself in them. If they can do it, we can do it.”
Despite his 77 years of age and 38 years in ministry, Deacon Don admitted that, spiritually speaking, “I was a juvenile and I’m still learning so much and growing and so humbled.” That especially held true for his trip to Auschwitz, where he learned the details of St. Maximilian Kolbe’s sacrificing his life for a fellow concentration camp victim.
Regarding this part of his pilgrimage, Deacon Don said, “I was struck in disbelief, particularly with Birkenau. Auschwitz was small in comparison to the 20,000 that were interred in makeshift buildings, living among themselves on the way to certain death that they didn’t really know or understand. It was shocking. I was very heartened with the idea that God gave me the potential to go there and look at what racism or discrimination can do when it goes wild. [It] empowered me and my preaching, maybe to be more open, to caution the world that each of us have an impact, basically to halt, each in our own way, that kind of discrimination, whether it’s in the U.S. today with immigration issues or with discrimination going on in the world today against Jews. It had the impact, I think, of really inspiring and motivating, but it was deeply saddening.”
For free copies of the Christopher News Note THE GREATEST AMONG YOU WILL BE YOUR SERVANT, write: The Christophers, 264 West 40th Street, Room 603, New York, NY 10018; or e-mail: mail@ christophers.org
