May your journey not be merely a superficial passing through the places of life, without grasping the beauty of what you encounter, without discovering the meaning of the roads you travel, capturing brief moments, fleeting experiences to be captured in a selfie. This is what tourists do. Pilgrims, on the other hand, immerse themselves completely in the places they encounter, letting them speak to them and become part of their search for happiness.

Pope Francis

Life is a journey, say the wise, and the road is made by walking. The Porta del Cielo (Gateway to Heaven) meditative trail was born from the desire to rediscover the spiritual value of walking, following the human dimension of the step and its rhythm. Whether travelled alone or in company, the Porta del Cielo trail aims to be an opportunity to open a “door” to contact with one’s inner self or, for those who believe, to listen and dialogue with the Eternal. We propose, as a travelling companion along the 10 stages, Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, who, in her life, courageously travelled the dusty roads of Palestine countless times, following her Son or the inner voice that spoke to her.
At each stage, identified by a number and a work by the artist Ciro (Roberto Cipollone), a QR code will allow you to stop, read a verse from the Gospels and a thought offered by Christian friends of various denominations or other religions, to enrich your reflection or meditation. A magnificent adventure awaits you!
Have a good journey in the company of Mary!

• • • • Length: 4.5 km
      • Stages: 10
      • Type: loop
      • Difficulty: easy
      • Theme: spiritual | art and culture | nature
      • Map: Download the map

Homo viator. For tens of thousands of years, Homo sapiens were nomadic wayfarers. We followed the rhythm of the seasons and the blossoming of flowers; we tracked deer and bison; we returned thirsty to oases and springs; we were experts in transhumance. We did this to survive; we ran to escape death. Then, at a certain point, in a territory marked only by the natural rhythms of life, we began to discover different spaces and recognise special places. We started marking rocks, erecting monuments and building altars. The sacred was born. Along the ancient trails, we started stopping not only to gather, hunt, shelter and drink, but also in places where we felt a spiritual presence, which changed the landscape. Space became quality. From that moment on, eating, sheltering, drinking and reproducing was no longer enough for us. Walking in the footsteps of the deer was no longer enough. We wanted to understand the mystery of the deer: its thirst, its paths. We wanted to discover where our loved ones went after death and who moved the sun and the other stars. We started asking new questions about things, and so we started seeing the gods. The world changed forever, becoming filled with silent words, new languages and symbols. 

We learned new languages to communicate with nature, demons and angels. We have now forgotten almost all of them.
Millennia have passed and we have changed greatly, but we have never stopped walking. For war, for trade, for love — we have continued to walk. Even to see God in his places. When we reached the threshold of a temple, an altar or a shrine at a crossroads — the Italic peoples placed shrines at crossroads because they believed that spirits dwelled there — we entered another time. We felt our dead were alive again; we felt like relatives of the saints. We were given eagle wings to take crazy flights and try to touch paradise. That threshold was the door to heaven. Just touching it meant defeating death, if only for a few hours. We forgot the pain of living and our poverty, and in those moments, our hearts felt the thrill of being on the same level as the angels. Along with new fears, we learned new gratitude. Experiencing the sacred was experiencing the sublime; therefore it was transitory and punctual, but absolute. It was embodied in space and time, happening only there and therefore ending soon. It was wonderful, sometimes frightening, and always tremendous. It was wonderful because it was exceptional and extraordinary.
This is why no journey was more beloved than the pilgrimage. We liked the elegant, imagined houses of the lords, but above all, we liked the house of God. Today, we have forgotten how to recognise the signs of sacred places. However, when we decide to embark on a journey, we do not choose a random destination; we seek a special place. Space is not enough for us; we want places. We have forgotten God, angels and the spirit, but our spiritual DNA has not. It sets us on our way, even today.
Medieval pilgrimages are an ancient phenomenon that revives earlier traditions, adding elements that are typical of Christianity. Pilgrimage was a condition shared by the clergy, the nobility, the poor and insolvent debtors on the run. Pilgrims’ routes followed the commercial arteries of the new Europe and were dotted with inns and hostels, around which new villages, towns, and fairs developed. On the Via Francigena and the Via Lauretana, the journeys of pilgrims crossed those of merchants: traders of different goods with different motives. This biodiversity of things and motivations gave birth to Europe. Europe was born through the countless pilgrims who travelled, dreamed, and left their mark on it for over a millennium. Before nation states were created, Christians met along the roads where they heard different languages, practised the ancient and new laws of hospitality and learned that no one is so far away as to be out of reach. The sense of familiarity we still experience when travelling from Portugal to Puglia, Spain to Provence or the Marche to Tuscany is a legacy of our ancestors’ travelling faith. They were Europeans before they were Italian or French. Many centuries of travel, encounters, wounds and blessings were needed to learn how to meet others at a distance of less than a metre — one of humanity’s greatest treasures. Let us not forget this in a time of renewed distances. The pilgrim responded to the stabilitas loci of monasticism with the homo viator. Travelling became the labora of pilgrims – the words ‘travel’, ‘trip’ and ‘travaglio’ all have the same root (-tr).
The pilgrim travels through places where every detail is unique and irreplaceable; no two metres are the same. Travel was not yet a crossing of rational spaces, such as those on maps. For the pilgrim, the journey itself is more important than reaching the destination, as it is an encounter with the different: with people and places. If we learn to encounter places, we will learn to encounter others. Have a good journey. Have a good trip.

Mary, the girl from Nazareth, received from the angel the announcement of what constitutes the greatest charism in the history of Israel: to become the mother of the Messiah, the long-awaited prophet, and of divine origin, the Son of the Most High. Mary does not become proud but makes herself available to this divine will: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord.’ This is a true title given to great figures in the history of Israel, such as Abraham, Moses, David… By calling herself ‘handmaid of the Lord,’ Mary places herself among these servants of God and shows herself available to the divine plan for her people and for humanity.

And when she adds, ‘Let it be done to me according to your word,’ she is not expressing resignation to an inevitable fate, but a firm desire that God’s will be done. She desires with all her heart that the angel’s words will come true.

Gérard Rossé, biblical scholar

Mary is also an icon of the wise, practical and intelligent woman who reads into relationships and then acts. She is an expert in primary relationships and in caring for them, a peacemaker. She weaves webs of goodness in the service of life. Biblical women have an instinct for caring for relationships. Educated by life in its own time and in the time of the body, they know that in important relationships, time is the decisive factor. Women’s time is not that of men – for them, time and space are friends and allies, but at certain moments (such as when expecting a child), time is superior.

Over the centuries, Mary has become many things, but it is very beautiful and important that in Luke’s Gospel her first gesture outside her home is to visit a friend, to walk towards another person, to bring her greetings – an event of sisterhood. We do not know why Mary went to Elizabeth; Luke does not tell us, because the evangelist uses this dialogue to construct another passage of his theology of the relationship between Jesus and John, without clarifying the reason for this visit, this “visitation”, as the Church has called it. Perhaps it is because many women meet for the sole reason inscribed in that encounter, intrinsic to that relational good, because meeting and greeting a friend is a sufficient reason to set off in haste, without the need for any other reason external to this embrace of bodies, cheeks and tears. “Why should the mother of my Lord come to me?”: you owe it, Elizabeth, only to the beauty of a visit to a friend. And that is enough for you, and enough for us.

Luigino Bruni, economist

Reflecting on our being disciples of Christ in the world today, this passage makes us say: there is a cost; following Jesus is not easy. Like Mary, each of us is called to be a ‘bearer of Christ.’ Therefore, these words spoken by Simeon to Mary apply to all of us. If we wish to share in the immense joys of those who serve Christ, then we must also be prepared to face pain and failure.

Our hearts will be pierced, and like Mary – standing at the foot of the cross – our witness will be a silent vigil and a determination to persevere, to remain.

Let us pay attention, then, to those sources of regenerating grace offered to us through the Word, in worship, through the sacraments and in Communion, which enable us to persevere, to improve, to begin again, to love one another.

Stephen Cottrell, Anglican, Archbishop of York

Woman, behold your Son. Behold your mother! Mary, the mother of Jesus, and John, the beloved disciple, are at once two real people and two models of faith.
Jesus, Mary’s only son, knows that his mother will need to be supported. He therefore gives her John, who will take care of her. She will not be alone in her house on that terrible Friday evening, when her heart was buried along with her son’s body. She will have another son, a new family, and the one who promised the good thief that he would be with him in paradise will become part of their brotherly relationship. Yes, today he also promises John and Mary that he will fulfil his word: ‘Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’

But John and Mary are also two models of faith. The beloved disciple is never named in John’s Gospel. He is the model disciple, who stands at the foot of the cross and is also the first to believe that Jesus is risen. Everyone is called to identify with him. To be disciples of Jesus crucified and risen means therefore to stand at the foot of the cross and accept trials with faith, looking to the cross, knowing that they are not the last word on our lives. Every trial is a passage towards Life, towards a deeper communion with the risen Christ.

Martin Hoegger, Reformed Pastor (Switzerland)