A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith Audiobook (Free)

‘What a wondrous work! This beautifully created and totally clear-eyed accounts of his pilgrimage will have you wondering whether we have to all attempt such a journey, either of your body, the spirit or, as in Egan’s case, both.’ –Cokie Roberts

‘If this book doesn’t quite settle the issue of belief for you personally, it will at least fortify your trust in scrupulous reporting and fascinating storytelling…Egan is indeed well informed, he starts to appear just like the world’s greatest tour instruction. You follow in regards to a Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome searching for a Faith along as much to hear him talk as to see the sights. Reading it, you feel yourself in the presence of goodness — the type you might simply have to decide to believe in.’ –The New York Moments

Among Oprah’s Must-Read Books of Fall 2019

Transferred by his mother’s death and his Irish Catholic family’s complicated history with the church, Timothy Egan decided to follow in the footsteps of centuries of seekers to power a reckoning with his have beliefs. He embarked on the thousand-mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity, exploring one of the primary stories of our period: the collapse of religious beliefs in the world that it created. Egan models out along the Via Francigena, once the major medieval trail leading the devout to Rome, and makes his method overland via the alpine peaks and small mountain cities of France, Switzerland and Italy. The goal: strolling to St. Peter’s Square, in hopes of meeting the galvanizing pope who is struggling to carry together the cathedral through the most severe crisis in half a millennium.

Making his way through a landscape laced with some of the most important shrines towards the faith, Egan finds today’s Canterbury Tale in the chapel where Queen Bertha presented Christianity to pagan Britain; parses the supernatural within a French town built on miracles; and journeys to the oldest abbey under western culture, founded in 515 and home to continuous prayer within the 1,500 years which have followed. He’s accompanied by a quirky cast of fellow pilgrims and by a number of the towering figures of the faith–Joan of Arc, Henry VIII, Martin Luther.

A thrilling journey, a family story, and a revealing history, A Pilgrimage to Eternity looks for our future in its seek out God.