Body locomotion, soul elevation

In the third of his reflections on prayer, Fr Charles Dilke discovers the joys of wandering prayer as he follows in the footsteps Itterally of the saints
ONLY GOD KNOWS how many saints there are, though in 1969 the calendar of saints was reformed. This provoked a protest led by an Italian film star, but she needn't have worried. Saints are an expanding industry. The present Holy Father has canonised more saints than any other Pope. The westward flow of eastern icons has introduced us to new dimensions of saintly culture.
All prayer is essentially a matter of mind and heart. Add to them, where prayer to the saints is concerned, the feet. Visiting the shrines of the saints on foot has actually made people into saints themselves, for example St Benedict Labre. He spent his life doing just that all over Europe. And why not? Didn't Our Lord say, "Follow me"? Didn't St Paul urge Christians to "walk" in his footsteps? When your prayer is getting nowhere try putting on your boots and trudge to a holy place where a saint has been. While the body makes locomotion, the soul
gets elevation.
It is best to go where there are not great crowds, though the great popular shrines can give one a sense of the Communion of Saints, a realisation that saints are reconstructed sinners.
London is full of such less popular holy places. In Fleet Street, where it is joined by Shoe Lane and Fetter Lane, there once were execution places where Catholic recusants were dispatched to heaven. Then there is Tyburn, at Marble Arch.
Another good hunting ground is Cornwall, where with the help of an excellent book of Cornish Saints and a car you can track down the exact spot where one of the many children of St Brychan built a font or an altar, before passing on to do the same in Brittany. Having found the place, you can kneel in the grass and nettles without much danger of being disturbed it is usually a lonely spot.
The saints are those who are deep
in the secrets of the Lord, God's intimate friends who share the thoughts of the Mind of God and whose hearts participate in the designs of the Heart of God.
And they can be our friends too. Without using your feet as above, you can imagine your saint as your guide and patron and ask him or her to take you to another saint and then the three of you go to visit Our Lady who immediately directs you to her Son.
Why can't I go direct to the Son? Well, you can, certainly. I am only suggesting initiatives you can take to make you more sensitive to what the Son may want to say to you. After all, in prayer we are not trying to get God to do what we want but trying to get ourselves to do what God wants. It would be foolish not to avail oneself of expert help. The saints are the experts. And they want us to join them.
Not many people want to be saints because we think it means making a dead set at being austere, grim, ultrapious, or just simply barmy. But in fact these things were not aimed at by the saints. They just loved our Lord, and saw their neighbours in trouble.
They had particular circumstances which with their particular graces posed problems, and they solved these in ways that sometimes seem bizarre.
For example, St Simeon Stylites lived on a pillar, partly because living in cramped and exposed situations was the fashion for high flying monks then and partly because by experience he found it had advantages. He tried it out and it worked, for him. Something else might work for you and me.