Christian Pilgrims

Fr. Joachim Trytania

From the early centuries of the Church Christian pilgrims traveled to Jerusalem to touch the places where Jesus lived, died, and rose from the dead. They wanted to touch the places they had read about in the Scripture. St. Jerome, a fourth-century biblical scholar, wrote this: "We will have a clearer grasp of Scripture after we have gazed with our own eyes on the sites where the events of our salvation unfolded." From the early pilgrims we realize that the holy places marking events in the life of Jesus are preserved not just for people to view. Many of them have been made into shrines or churches for liturgical worship. Through worship, the saving event is evoked and becomes sacramentally present for the worshipper.

In liturgy the past becomes present; God acts in the lives of the pilgrims just as surely as God acted in the lives of those first followers of Jesus. Christians often debated the value of pilgrimage to sacred places, in the same way as venerating sacred images has been controversial. Religious images were destroyed during the eight- and ninth- century iconoclast (destroying religious images) controversy because it was thought that divinity should not be expressed in material forms. Similarly, pilgrimage was sometimes discouraged because it was thought that earthly places and human structures could get in the way of spiritual encounters with God. Did not Jesus say to the Samaritan woman that true worship had nothing to do with Jerusalem or Samaria, but was all about worshipping God in spirit and in truth (John 4:20-24)? We are too easily tempted to believe that going to a particular place or going through a particular ritual or repeating a particular prayer, earns us God's favor. Yet images, places, rituals or prayers, can indeed be powerful means to experience God. God is at work in creation. Because God has become incarnate in the world, we can discover the presence of God through the world, especially through those created people, places, things and prayers that remind us of God. The entire world is holy and has a sacramental quality, speaking to us of the goodness of God. Particularly the places where Jesus spent his earthly life can be effective signs of his presence and love, effective means of grace.

When controversies arise in our hearts about the value of pilgrimage, let me quote St. Jerome again who said that an external pilgrimage must always be accompanied by interior conversion: "It is not sufficient merely to go on pilgrimage. Its success depends upon the pilgrim's ability to journey in faith, with a new heart and with a will to conversion.
Otherwise the journey might be the same as any other." Pilgrimage is the simultaneous movement of the feet and the soul. The value of a pilgrimage is determined by the persons we have become when we come back home. Pilgrimage to holy places can be for many an experience of real growth in discipleship, but the deepest value is found in returning home and realizing that God was waiting for us there all the while. Sometimes it is necessary to go halfway across the world to discover that all the answers are within us. Ultimately it is not we who travel looking for God. It is really God who is looking for us. When we go on pilgrimage humbly, listening for God to speak in the silence of our hearts, waiting for God to show us his presence, there is no telling in what ways we may be changed.

Is this not the truth of our Sunday worship as God's Church? Through the Scripture and Sacraments we can make an internal pilgrimage to the Holy City, Eternal Jerusalem. We can experience the Risen Lord and unite our hearts with the believers through the ages. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the Risen Lord is present with us, walking along our pilgrim way, opening our hearts to the Scriptures, and helping us come to know him more fully at the table where he breaks the Bread for us.