A Trail of Bloody Footprints

At dawn last Sunday, on my way down from a hill above Bogotá called Monserrate where I had been doing my daily meditation, I was surprised to see recent bloody footprints mixing with the dew on the grass. The flame-red marks grabbed my attention, and contrasted with the pure, transparent dewdrops. I immediately thought that someone had been violently robbed and decided to follow the footprints, which led me back up the hill.

My eyes couldn’t believe what they were seeing when I found myself face-to-face with a woman who had flagellated and tortured herself and walked dragging her bare feet, a rosary in her bloody hands. She was trying to complete a promise she had made with God because He had cured her daughter of a serious illness.

I stayed and shared a while with her, listening and trying to understand the practice that thousands of human beings have taken as a dogma of faith and believe a true expression of dedication to God. After listening to me for a good while, the woman woke up from her delusion and for the first time understood that suffering and auto-flagellation didn’t bring her closer to God, and that we can only to get closer to Him through sharing the love we have in our hearts with those around us.