“My entire life I've had a deep, deep love of the Eucharist,” revealed Danielle Schmitz, who, as an undergraduate at the Catholic University of America, was unsure at first if her deep love for the Eucharist meant she should apply to be a perpetual pilgrim.

One phone call home to her parents changed everything. Recalling that conversation, it was their words that galvanized her to apply. “My parents said to me on the phone, ‘Danielle, the US Bishops are asking for young adults to walk with Jesus for two months. You are a young adult. There's not going to be another time in your life when this opportunity is available to you.’”

She applied, and in January of 2024, “I got an e-mail, and they said we want you to be on the Marian route. I couldn't believe it. I still remember that moment of opening that e-mail and just being in total shock. Then I was convinced: it was the Lord's invitation to accompany Him.”

The Pilgrim as a Missionary

Danielle described the role of a perpetual pilgrim as a short-term vocation. It was a calling to journey with Jesus constantly and intentionally. Now more than a year after her pilgrimage, she considers it “the most real thing I’ve ever done.”

She and the other perpetual pilgrims, alongside several Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, traveled from diocese to diocese, often spending whole days in a location with activities ranging from Mass, adoration, and school visits to large rallies. This, of course, meant lots of walking.

“I would say between 10 and 20 miles of walking per day. One day, we walked 20 miles.” Seeing the faces of the thousands of people she encountered sustained her. “It was a lot like Jesus's public ministry, and we were like the disciples walking with Him. People came to visit Him, He would heal, He would convert, and then He would leave that town.”

When reflecting on her time on the Marian Route, she felt immersed in the missionary aspect of her role: “We walked to intercede for our country,” she explained, “to beg the Lord to pour out His grace, so that people would know His presence and surrender their lives to Him.”

Being her authentic self before Christ

Being one of the people who completed the entire route was not without its challenges.  "We traveled about 1,000 miles over the nine weeks of pilgrimage,” she shared. But even in the challenges, there was an invitation to encounter Christ on a deeper level. “Sometimes I was so tired; all I wanted was to take a 20-minute power nap or drink an iced coffee.  Jesus was willing to meet me and all the pilgrims there in our humanity.”  

When, after a full day of activities, Danielle would board the pilgrimage van — where Jesus was exposed in a monstrance — she realized something profound about Christ meeting her in her exhaustion. “As much as we were adoring our Lord, Jesus was looking right back at us and adoring us in our humanity.”

This realization transformed her perspective: rather than adoration becoming another task she was obliged to accomplish, it became an intimate invitation to rest in the Lord. “I spent so much time in the van, meditating upon the nativity and just the reality of Jesus being humble enough to enter into humanity’s messiness; into my messiness.”

When she returned from the Eucharistic pilgrimage, many remarked, “Welcome back to the real world.” Having experienced a deep sense of God’s love as a pilgrim, her response was (and is), “It was the most real thing I've ever done in my life!” Danielle expressed, “The reality is that our lives are like a Eucharistic pilgrimage that Jesus is literally walking with us at every moment!”

A Pilgrim’s Personal Faith

From being unsure about whether to apply to be a pilgrim, to now having the Marian route under her belt, Danielle has found herself transformed by the experience. “It completely shifted the way I see everything, the way I understand my entire life and my walk with the Lord.”

Danielle grew up attending Mass at Saint Lawrence the Martyr Church in Santa Clara. She now works full-time in Massachusetts as a youth minister, which is another way she sees herself as a Eucharistic missionary. “My sharing of the gospel has always been rooted in this idea of an encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist,” she shared. She, in turn, hopes that everyone can encounter the Lord in the deep way she herself experienced.

“My prayer is that, God willing, every single person would have the opportunity to experience what I experienced: of getting to walk with Jesus on a Eucharistic pilgrimage, whether that be one hour, one day, one week, one month, one year… whatever it is, that they would have that opportunity to just walk behind Him and experience His presence: to be face to face with Him in that way, as perpetual pilgrims.”