After dinner one night, Teresa couldn’t wait to get on the laptop and show me what she wanted for her seventh birthday, which was coming up. What she found was a $30 wearable device marketed to kids that functions as a watch and pedometer, as well as tracking the wearer’s amount of sleep and hydration. Basically, an inexpensive FitBit. Frank, in all his 16-year-old wisdom, said he didn’t see the point of paying for a device to track your steps or activity. If you want to be active, just go outside and run, he said. If that’s too strenuous, try to walk instead of driving when you can. It’s not rocket science, he said, and you shouldn’t have to buy something to keep moving. He’s right, as far as it goes, but I told him it’s not that easy. Sometimes people get a boost from setting a goal and meeting it, and something like a pedometer lets people set a simple, attainable daily target. If they meet it, then they can set the next day’s goal a little higher. Being able to measure progress makes it easier to keep going, to feel like you’re getting somewhere. Or at least moving in the right direction. And isn’t that really what we’re all trying to do: keep moving forward toward the ultimate goal? The Bible is full of people on the move, from the Israelites wandering the desert in Exodus to the holy family fleeing to Egypt in Matthew to Jesus’ final entrance into Jerusalem. Even now, we express our faith with our feet in eucharistic processions for the feast of Corpus Christi, in outdoor Ways of the Cross on Good Friday and in the procession of Polish Catholics on Epiphany. It’s in the March for Life and the journeys Hispanic Catholics make on foot from parishes in Little Village to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Des Plaines. It’s in the hundreds of people carrying crosses down Michigan Avenue to draw attention to the violence in our city. It’s even in the hundreds of people who run marathons and other races on teams sponsored by dozens of Catholic organizations. We are a people on the move. If your New Year’s resolutions this year included something about walking more or staying active, remember that you can pray while you walk, whether you use a pedometer or not. Remember too that even if you end up in the same place where you started, you have been changed by the experience. Walking reminds that we are always in motion, never static. We can count the steps we take, the miles we’ve traversed, and we can look back and see the distance we’ve covered. The journey doesn’t stop, and neither do we.