Brendan the Navigator spent much of his childhood in the care of Ita of Killeedy, who came to be known as the "foster-mother of saints" for all the Celtic spiritual luminaries she nurtured as children. Many times during his adulthood, especially between his voyages, Brendan would return to Ita's small monastery for spiritual counsel. On one of these visits, he asked her what were the three things most pleasing and displeasing to God. She answered, simply and directly, "Three things that please God most are true faith in God with a pure heart, a simple life with a grateful spirit, and generosity inspired by charity. The three things that most displease God are a mouth that hates people, a heart harboring resentments, and confidence in wealth." This advice nurtured the courage of one of the great pilgrims of the Celtic era and continues to offer the same encouragement to anyone embarking on their own pilgrimages.

So, to offer spiritual nourishment after the journey with Brendan in A Pilgrimage to the Land of the Saints, Timothy J. Ray offers an opportunity to spend prayerful time becoming acquainted with Ita as well as her simple but profound spiritual vision through this collection of reflective and spiritual exercises. It includes readings and reflections about Ita and her spiritual tenets, suggestions for scriptural prayer related to her observations, and short prayer services for individuals and groups using ancient Celtic prayers. It also offers spiritual exercises designed to strengthen your spiritual resilience as you into the world around you through acts of social generosity as "citizens of heaven" and as articulate witnesses to God's kingdom. Finally, this collection includes instructions on developing and using a personal "penitential" - a spiritual tool developed by the ancient Celtic saints to address their sinfulness and to amend their lives so they could build "colonies of heaven" here on earth.

While this book is intended to provide follow-up exercises for the retreat in A Pilgrimage to the Land of the Saints, its reflective and spiritual exercises offer a distinct and self-contained spiritual experience. However, this collection does suggest methods of imaginative prayer used during the retreat. So, with this in mind, Nurturing the Courage of Pilgrims also offers instructional resources for anyone unfamiliar with these techniques.