St. Cuthbert’s Way: An Epic Pilgrimage Becomes an Iconic Film

This January, The Way of St. Cuthbert — a short film about a Benedictine College student pilgrimage—brings a vibrant, beautiful story to Catholic audiences everywhere (see the trailer below in this post or click here to watch the 30 minute film).

The film will premiere on EWTN on Saturday, January 17 at 9 pm CT, with Dr. Baxter appearing on EWTN Live with Fr. Mitch Pacwa on Wednesday, January 14 at 7 pm CT to discuss the experience.

The film follows the footsteps of Benedictine College’s Dr. Jason Baxter and a cadre of Angelico Fellows, students involved with the College’s Center for Beauty and Culture, as they walk St. Cuthbert’s Way, a centuries-old pilgrimage route following the steps of St. Cuthbert along the border between Scotland and England.

At its core, The Way of St. Cuthbert is not just a travelogue of hills and coastlines—it’s a testimony of interior transformation rooted in ancient faith and landscape. The trailer offers audiences their first glimpse of this journey, from the lush river valleys of the Scottish Borders to the windswept sands of Holy Island (Lindisfarne) and the sacred silence of monastic ruins. It invites us to consider pilgrimage as both physical exertion and spiritual encounter.

What Is St. Cuthbert’s Way?

St. Cuthbert’s Way is a well-known pilgrimage route in the British Isles that runs 62 miles (100 km) from Melrose Abbey in Scotland—where St. Cuthbert’s religious life began—to Holy Island, a tidal island off the coast of Northumberland, England, associated with Cuthbert’s later life and ministry.

The route connects many sites deeply associated with Cuthbert’s story: abbeys, ancient hills, river valleys, wooded paths, and the stretch of sand that pilgrims cross at low tide to reach Lindisfarne. In walking this path, pilgrims engage both with the physical challenge of miles underfoot and the contemplative space that the walk opens.

From Kansas to the Northumbrian Coast

For Dr. Jason Baxter, Director of Benedictine College’s Center for Beauty and Culture, the pilgrimage was intended to be more than an academic excursion. In his own words, he hoped to create what he called a “cinematic illuminated manuscript”—a film that captures the sacred reality of particular places in a world of “non-places” where many live without deep ties to meaning or memory.

“We’re going to make a film about it…and hopefully…a visual icon,” Baxter wrote in a preview of the project. His desire was not merely to document scenery or narration, but to frame the pilgrimage in a way that evokes the transcendence and depth that shaped early monastic Christianity.

This intentionality echoes throughout The Way of St. Cuthbert, where the landscape becomes a character alongside the pilgrims, revealing in wind and rain, hills and ancient ruins a way of life that transcends modern restlessness.

Trials on the Trail

The pilgrimage did not unfold without challenge. In a reflective essay featured on First Things titled “St. Cuthbert and the Cave That Couldn’t Be Filmed,” Dr. Baxter recounts how, on a scouting trip prior to the group’s journey, he nearly succumbed to stormy weather while seeking out St. Cuthbert’s Cave—a place traditionally tied to the monks carrying the saint’s relics during Viking raids. He wrote:

“I wandered up into the hills . . . wearing a defective raincoat and ugly sweater . . .. In a blinding rain, I found and took shelter within St. Cuthbert’s Cave . . . and there I sang an Akathist hymn. As soon as I had finished . . . the storm cleared, and all turned sunny.”

Though this particular cave could not ultimately be filmed—permission to shoot there was denied by the National Trust due to concerns over “religious affiliation”—the story Baxter told became part of the narrative and atmosphere surrounding the pilgrimage, highlighting the unpredictability and deep spiritual symbolism of such a walk.

The Pilgrimage Experience

For the Angelico Fellows and Dr. Baxter, the pilgrimage was a practice of deliberate presence. Each day’s walk offered communal prayer, reflection, and the embodied experience of walking through physical history. The route’s varied scenery—from the forests and river valleys to the stark tidal flats—mirrors the interior pilgrim’s passage from distraction toward simplicity and attention.

On reaching Holy Island, pilgrims encounter not just the physical endpoint of the path, exposed at low tide, but also the historical rootedness of centuries of prayer, worship, and Christian life. The tidal crossing itself symbolizes the liminal space between the everyday and the sacred, ultimately leading to the experience of beauty, which includes something of a suspension of time, or perhaps, as Baxter suggests, “the saturation of time with eternity.”

The film embraces not only scenic beauty but also the deep interplay between history, spirituality, and cultural memory. The pilgrimage, then, becomes more than a hike—it becomes an invitation to partake in a living tradition of faith.

Dr. Baxter’s own reflections underscore this beautifully. He has said that during the pilgrimage to Holy Island, “the world did the praying for you, and all you had to do was consent to it, affirm it, to say, as it were, ‘amen.'” If the film helps viewers catch the spirit of the St. Cuthbert’s Way, then the project will have been transformative.

Looking Ahead to the Premiere

The Way of St. Cuthbert will make its debut on EWTN on January 17 at 9 pm CT, offering a broad audience the chance to witness not just a journey on a map, but an inward walk toward depth, history, and encounter with the sacred. And on January 14, Dr. Baxter’s conversation with Fr. Mitch Pacwa on EWTN Live at 7 pm CT offers viewers an opportunity to hear directly from the pilgrim-scholar about the process, the beauty, and the unexpected moments that shaped the film.

In a world that often forgets the sacred threads woven through history, landscape, and movement, The Way of St. Cuthbert beckons us back to them — step by step, sunrise after sunrise, trail toward tide.

By Paul Burghart