Page 24 - LOTN Autumn Issue 54 2023

FAITH AND CULTURE

and white markers which the friars had tied to trees and
bushes to mark the route and the notes (more than a little
garbled after they had passed through Google Translate)
downloaded from the website. Amazingly, we never got
seriously lost and the GPS traces were there on our phones
to keep us on track when in doubt.
It was billed as a Franciscan pilgrimage but we passed
through the heartland of the Benedictine Camaldolese
congregation. I felt we were never far from a site connected
with St Romuald, even at one point stumbling on a rock in
the mountains said to bear the mark of his knees where he
knelt to pray. The monastery where he died, Val di Castro,
has been severely damaged by a recent earthquake and the
church roof was propped up by a forest of scaffolding poles.
I was particularly keen to visit sites associated with Blessed
Paul Giustiniani. We passed two of the hermitages he had
lived in at Pascelupo and Cupramontana. The first of these
has been recently reoccupied by a small community of the
order he founded, the Hermits of Monte Corona, but they
go to great lengths to discourage visitors. Paul Giustiniani’s
biographer describes this hermitage as a an “eagle’s eyrie”,
it is perched high on a rock slope beside a waterfall. I had
slogged my way up from the bottom at the end of a long
day’s walk, only to find a locked gate and a broken entry-
phone. I could hardly complain. They had gone there to be
alone with God.

You can find out more about the Franciscan Pilgrimage here: The entrance to Blessed Paul Giustiniani’s hermitage chapel at
https://www.camminodeicappuccini.it/il-percorso/ Cupramontana - Like many of the monastic cells, the chapel is
excavated from the bare rock

The wisdom of St

Gregory the Great

as an aid against

ministry burnout

BY KIRSTEN SCHOUWENAARS-HARMS

“He must not relax his care for the internal life while he
is occupied by external concerns, nor should he relinquish
what is prudent of external matters so as to focus on things
internal” (St Gregory) acted upon until there is little left of oneself to give. Those
on the receiving end of ministry deserve better. Burnout
any of us in the Church are engaged with in ministry is something to be taken seriously, especially if
ministry, from catechists, Eucharistic those engaging in ministry are to help others to the best of
ministers and lector to spiritual directors their ability.
Mand the clergy, to name just a few. However, In 1974 the initial diagnosis of burnout was made by
as many of those engaged in ministry will know, it can be psychologist Herbert Freudenberger, who described it as “the
hard work. More a vocational calling than a secular job loss of motivation, growing sense of emotional depletion, and
might be at times. With this comes a great deal of pressure cynicism”. But ministry burnout has been around for much
to present the Body of Christ well. But just because a person longer. In fact, one of our Church Fathers and a Pope, St
gives their “Yes” does not mean that the calling should be Gregory the Great (c.540-604), already acknowledged the need

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