A Pilgrimage

One of the reasons we chose the mid-Hudson river area to visit was that Kathy wanted to make a pilgrimage to the final resting place of a famous French Jesuit priest named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  Kathy has been in an online Zoom group for nearly a year now, run by a Priest in Boston, Mass, which she found out about from her cousin Sharon.  They have been talking about some of the writings of de Chardin for a while now.  The interesting thing is that his resting place is on the grounds of the CIA!  That’s because the current campus of CIA was once a Jesuit novitiate, which means that priests were trained there before their ordination.

So we were told to go to campus security and get the key to the locked cemetery.  It is an absolutely beautiful cemetery surrounded by trees and all the gravestones of the priests are exactly alike which was striking.  It was very quiet and peaceful.We wondered how we would find the one gravestone we wanted.  It was easy, however because the stones were arranged chronologically.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a French Jesuit theologian and scientist renowned for his pioneering field work in paleontology. His visionary writings on the reconciliation of faith and evolutionary theory aroused the suspicions of the Vatican and he was forbidden to publish on religious matters during his lifetime. After his death, the publication of his many books marked him as one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of this century - a mystic whose holistic vision speaks with growing relevance to contemporary spirituality.

Finding his grave was easier than we thought, because there is a tiny garden in front of his gravestone.  Something added to by different visitors, I am guessing.  She spent some quiet time there while I photographed this beautiful setting.  Our visit turned out to be memorable because of the quiet and beauty of the place.