The Pilgrim Journey (eBook)

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WHAT IS PILGRIMAGE?

For thousands of years the notion of pilgrimage has been inextricably associated with both a physical journey and an expression of faith. If a religious person happened to live next door to a pilgrimage shrine, such as Knock in Ireland, and visited it every so often, he or she would probably not be thought of as a pilgrim. Equally, not everybody who embarked on a long journey to a pilgrimage shrine would necessarily be or become a pilgrim: atheists, skeptics, and agnostics might happily travel to such sites as St. Peter’s in Rome or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and not feel a spiritual dimension or want to be counted as pilgrims.

Journey and faith, then, are perhaps the starting points for a discussion about pilgrimage, especially now that journeys to shrines have never been easier to accomplish. In medieval times, an English pilgrim might have needed several months to travel from London to Rome. Today it is possible to pray in Westminster Abbey at breakfast time and gaze at Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s the same afternoon. The ease with which people can travel to sacred sites has raised one of several questions about the essence of pilgrimage: how important is the nature of the journey to a shrine? If one person goes on a bus ride of a few hours to Fátima in Portugal and another walks there, taking several days, is there a sense in which the pilgrimage experience of the first person is not as fulfilling as that of the walker?

It would be tempting to equate the arduousness of a journey with the “merit” of a pilgrimage: the harder the trek, the more spiritually improving. Yet the answer must surely be that it depends on the emotional, mental, and spiritual state of the pilgrim. The person on the bus might have had a life crisis that brought on the urgent desire to visit Fátima. The walker, on the other hand, may simply have gone for the pleasure of a long hike and, while looking forward to arriving at the shrine, may feel tepid about its spiritual significance. So while the journey itself is central to pilgrimage, it may not matter how long, difficult, or dangerous it is, or if it is accomplished on foot or with a vehicle.

Another question: is it possible to be a pilgrim without going to a specific shrine or even making a physical journey at all? The words “pilgrim” and “pilgrimage” are derived from the Latin peregrinus (from per, “through,” and ager, “field” or “land,” so “pilgrimage” literally means “through the land”), which clearly suggests the idea of a journey and implies a predetermined destination. Yet there were Irish peregrini, i.e., pilgrims, in the early Middle Ages who left their country and set out “for the love of Christ” without a destination. They would get into boats without oars and let the wind, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, blow them where it would. Were these men lesser pilgrims than those beating paths to well-known shrines?

Even if pilgrimage does not technically need a specific destination, it still implies a physical journey, as well as an accompanying state of serious inner reflection—which some would term “religious” or “spiritual”—to distinguish it from mere travel or sightseeing. Yet consider the fifteenth-century mystic Thomas à Kempis, who said that no matter where a person was, he or she would always be a “stranger and pilgrim,” unable to find peace unless united inwardly with Christ: for him, true pilgrimage was not slogging along a track to a shrine but an inner journey along the pathway of the spirit, with the living Christ as the ultimate shrine. The English Puritan John Bunyan’s great allegorical work The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) also presented pilgrimage as an inner journey, one designed to overcome moral obstacles and gain self-knowledge in order to arrive at the Celestial City. Its readers become pilgrims in the imagination, accompanying the character of Christian as he walks through the Valley of Humiliation, resists the temptations of Vanity Fair, or escapes from Doubting-Castle.

Pilgrimage, then, may refer to an inner—emotional, mental, and spiritual—journey as well as an outer, physical one: for Kempis and Bunyan it is possible for the pilgrim to remain in a cloister or a prison cell and yet go on a pilgrimage. Even so, inner pilgrimage, like its external counterpart, still implies movement—toward a new spiritual state of being. Therefore, whether pilgrimage is made physically or contemplatively, the idea of journeying remains central to it: the pilgrim must make a journey because he or she needs time—time to reflect on personal milestones or conflicts, or upon the great mysteries of life such as love, fate, suffering, and the nature of God. For the pilgrim, the journey, with all its vicissitudes, is not the wearisome preamble to truth—it is the necessary way to truth, the living, arduous, and joyful process by which truth can be attained.

Pilgrimage has inherent challenges, whether embarked on inwardly or outwardly. It is a journey not to be taken lightly: the physical challenges of heat, cold, rain, pain, and fatigue—and likewise interior hardships—can open up the mind to old memories and new possibilities as well as effect an emotional and spiritual purification.

What is essential is that the journey, by whatever means it is accomplished, gives the pilgrim enough time to expose himself or herself to the possibility of a sacred metamorphosis. If that is done, the destination—a shrine, a holy mountain, or a house of God—will signify not the end of the journey, but the start: a gateway into a new way of being, of seeing life afresh with spiritually cleansed eyes.

Apart from the likes of the medieval Irish peregrini, pilgrims have always needed a sacred destination, a shrine, for their journey, and this begs the question, what makes a shrine a pilgrimage place as opposed to any holy sanctuary?

Every religious tradition has its shrines, buildings, objects, or natural features deemed holy for one reason or another. One widespread factor that determines a place’s sacredness is its association with a holy person or mystic, or apparitions and other miracles that reportedly occurred there.

In Mexico City, for example, there are many churches, not least the imposing Metropolitan Cathedral. Yet pilgrims flock in huge numbers to one of these churches, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, because it holds what is said to be a “miraculously created” image of the Virgin Mary, an image that may work a transformation in a visitor. Perhaps that is the key to a pilgrimage place: the notion of transformation, spiritual and bodily. One of the main reasons pilgrims have journeyed to pilgrim shrines has been the hope that they will be cured of a specific illness or ailment or shifted from a mental or emotional rut. (In Christianity, the agent of transformation has traditionally been the power of a saint, as transmitted through his or her relics.) By making contact with, or getting near to and venerating, a shrine’s holy object, pilgrims believe or hope they will be transformed in a positive way. This is the reason ancient Greek “pilgrims” went to the healing shrine of Epidaurus—to find a cure for ailments ranging from rheumatism to blindness. It is also why pilgrims went to the myriad shrines of medieval Europe, and why seekers today go to modern sanctuaries associated with transformative healing.

Of course, outwardly it is often impossible nowadays to distinguish a pilgrim from a walker or tourist, and categories such as “pilgrim” and “traveler” are fluid. The membrane between the sacred and the secular is porous. Tourists might harbor “pilgrim feelings,” and pilgrims might have “tourist interests.” In the final analysis only the pilgrim knows whether he or she is on a pilgrimage as opposed to, say, a vacation. And even then, that sense of being a pilgrim might shift in terms of conviction during the journey.

In summary, the traditional spiritual pilgrimage usually involves a physical journey (which may or may not be long and arduous) to a special destination, accompanied by a particular state of mind and often with the hope of transformation. But it is not absolutely necessary to go on a pilgrimage with the single-minded aim of being transformed. Some pilgrims have gone, and still go, to shrines simply to thank God or a saint for being saved from a disaster or critical situation; theirs is a pilgrimage based on gratitude or celebration or fulfilling a vow rather than the need for transformation. Others may make pilgrimages for other reasons, such as breaking out of their daily routines; or they may go without a clearly defined intention in mind—it may be an impulse, a longing that requires no justification or reasoning at all.

This book tells the story of pilgrimage in the Western world and its rise, peak, decline, and revival. The first Christian pilgrimage journey could be said to be the journey of the Magi to the Christ child. But Christian writers have also looked back to the Hebrew Bible to find inspiration...