I know what you are thinking – there is no command for Christians to go on pilgrimage from either the lips of Jesus the Christ our Lord or any of His Apostles. So, why should we go on pilgrimage? Well, I think, given the apparent absence of evidence, that is a very good question, and I would like to address it directly in this article.
The first problem of this line of reasoning – is that there is little, if at all, that we can point to ‘as a command’ of our Lord to validate much of what we do as Christians. Why? Because Christianity does not work like that – that is not how Christians practice the religion – and nor should we. Obviously, we should keep the commands of our Lord where they are given and properly understood! (No ripping out your eyes – when you sin from them – despite our Lord’s apparent explicit command). However, we are not constrained to only do what He commands. For instance, where does our Lord or any of His Apostles instruct us to compile the sacred Scripture into a single volume – called a Bible? Clearly, this way of thinking about the faith is not a well-thought-out way! Therefore, I do not need to show you a command – but rather, a justification for the practice; that does not contradict the faith. Much like we can justify the Church’s creation of the book called the Bible because the action contradicts nothing of the faith, it actually helps to facilitate the practice of it!
Firstly, pilgrimages are a pattern, a foreshadowing embodied in the Old Testament, that embodies a reality revealed in the New Testament. Consider the following Old Testament passages. In the book of Deuteronomy, it says, “Three times in a year shall all your males appear before the LORD your God in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles: and they shall not appear before the LORD empty: Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God which he has given you” (Deut. 16:16-17, NET).
And in the book of Exodus, it says, “Three times you shall keep a feast unto me in the year. You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread: (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it you came out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty:) And the feast of harvest, the first fruits of your labours, which you have sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when you have gathered in your labours out of the field. Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord GOD” (Ex. 23:14-17).
The ancient Israelites were called to present themselves at the temple of Jerusalem three times a year for three festivals, showing that pilgrimage and religious activity can be connected together. Why Jerusalem? Because it was where the temple was, where the Covenant was, which had the relics of Moses and Joshua such as the golden pot that had manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant (Heb. 9:4). People went to the Temple – as part of their remembrance of the great things YHWH had accomplished amongst them! What appears in the Old Testament – as a foreshadowing of some aspect of the new covenant can, therefore, be used and repurposed in the upbuilding of the Church! Just as how the early Christians built their ‘temple’ worship on the illustrations of the Old Testament temple: with incense, vestments, bells, psalms, prayers, and Scripture reading, which you can still experience in any good liturgy in any good cathedral! So, pilgrimage is foreshadowing something; some truth yet to be revealed!
This was deeply integrated into the Jewish way of life. See the Psalms of ascent up to Jerusalem that pilgrims would chant on their way there! This is something The Christ would have sung as He also made His pilgrimages to Jerusalem multiple times in His life! In Psalm 122, David says, “A song of ascents; by David. I was glad because they said to me, ‘We will go to the Lord’s temple!’ Our feet are standing inside your gates, O Jerusalem! (Psalm 122:1-2).
And Psalm 118 says, “May the one who comes in the name of the Lord be blessed. We will pronounce blessings on you in the Lord’s temple” (Psalm 118:26). (Something Christ references in connection to His Parousia. See Mt 23: 39 – thus equating Himself – and His body to the temple of GOD!).
So, you can see, brethren, that pilgrimage flows from the patterns of the Old Testament and thus can be repurposed in the New Covenant. However, more than this, the idea of going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem – is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy! In Isaiah, it says, “In future days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will endure as the most important of mountains and will be the most prominent of hills. All the nations will stream to it; 3 many peoples will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the temple of the God of Jacob, so he can teach us his requirements, and we can follow his standards.’ For Zion will be the center for moral instruction; the Lord’s message will issue from Jerusalem” (Isa. 2:2-3).
Notice that centuries before Christ, it was prophesied that in the future days (of the Messiah), the non-Jewish nations would come to Jerusalem. Directly because of the life of Jesus Christ, that is exactly what has happened. The law of the Lord, the law of love, has gone out from Jerusalem, and now, from around the world, people flock to the holy sites of the Church to learn of the ways of Christ and His apostles and prophets! If that does not encourage you to go on pilgrimage, I do not know what will!
Eusebius of Caesarea noted, “One can take the time to learn in what manner the prophecies of the call of the Gentiles should be understood and that they were fulfilled only after the coming of our Savior. The beginning of the prophecy is consistent with the reality that the Lord descended not only for the salvation of the Jewish race but also for that of all people, in announcing to all peoples and all the inhabitants of the earth, ‘Hear, all peoples, and let the earth and all in it listen’”[1]
[1] W. J. Ferrar, trans., The Proof of the Gospel: Being the Demonstratio Evangelica of Eusebius of Cæsarea, 2 vols. (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920).
The Church, that is the mountain, has encompassed all the earth, and all the earth now goes to the small hill of Calgary as if it were the greatest peak in all the worlds! However, pilgrimage serves another role within the Christian faith. It reminds us that we are strangers in this world, that we are passing through, pressing towards another homeland! Consider Hebrews 11:13: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb. 11:13).
Our home is with our GOD, and so we journey to be with Him! The ecclesiastical writer Tertullian put it this way: ‘Are not we, too, travelers in this world?’ As George Leo Haydock noted,
All these died in the faith of God’s promises; that is, of their posterity, being to be introduced into the promised land of Chanaan [Canaan], but chiefly into the happy country of heaven. For had they only aspired and wished for the country of Chaldea, out of which Abraham came, they had time enough to have returned thither. (Witham) — A metaphor taken from sailors, who, after a long and dangerous voyage, no sooner descry their native country, but they hail it with transports of joy: this in Virgil: Italiam, Italiam, primus conclamat Achates.Thus the Patriarchs, when beholding at a distance, and through faith, their heavenly country, hailed it with joyous and repeated accents, eagerly desiring to reach the envied port.[1]
[1] George Leo Haydock, Haydock’s Catholic Bible Commentary: Hebrews 11, accessed (July 2, 2024), [https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/hcc/hebrews-11.html].
The Holy Spirit, by the hand of St. Peter, said, “Dear friends, I urge you as foreigners and exiles to keep away from fleshly desires that do battle against the soul” (1 Pet. 2:11). We should treat this world as an alien culture! Pilgrimage – helps to embody this in a very real way!
Little wonder, then, we have early accounts of Christians going ‘up to the mountain of the Lord’ from early on in the history of the Church to find the ‘traces of Jesus, the Apostles, and the Prophets’ as Origen put it in his writings. We have diaries of such journeys, such as that of the ‘Itinerarium Burdigalense,’ which talks of one pilgrim’s journey. We know, for instance, that St. Helena of Constantinople went to Jerusalem for that very reason and built churches over the Holy Sites of the faith based on the local folklore of the Christians living in the region at the time. These churches are now the very pilgrimage sites one visits in the Holy Land. Pilgrimages even became part of our resistance to the evils of Islamic Jihad! The way of Santiago de Compostela is what supplied, refreshed, and strengthened the Christian liberation of Spain and Portugal, indispensable in the early years of the struggle. The first few Crusades were just armed pilgrimages! Pilgrimages have fashioned and moved the culture, economy, society, and politics of the Christian world. Like a boar moves the earth, it roams and folds it over! Christian pilgrimage – is a form of Churchianity – for sure, but it is a good form of Churchianity (a collective expression of something Christian). It has much still to offer us.
My own father of confession advised me to walk a pilgrimage. Not wanting to chuck myself in the deep end, I found the shortest one I could, one I could do in a day, the way of St Albans to the city named after Him. Though – I confess, I forgot to do the reflective meditation he set me to do at the time, I brought some friends with me, and it turned into a prayer walk. However, there are pilgrimages all over this land of ours. The ways of St. Anthony’s well, the Holy Well, St. Chads, St. Theodore, Cyprian Tansi, St. Augustine, St. Mary, and St. Boniface, Our Lady of Walsingham. Many people speak about how we are losing our culture! Well, here is an aspect of our culture that goes back centuries. So, why not embody it yourself? Some may think this is just a Catholic thing, however, they could not be more wrong! I meet reformed Christians all the time who go on pilgrimages to historical sites of the Reformed movement, such as the Castle Church, for instance, in Wittenberg, where Luther nailed his 95 Theses, the Church in London, where Dr Martin Lloyd George preached, or where Spurgeon preached. I know a Vicar who went around the UK to pray at the sites of revivals in the UK! So, this is a Protestant thing as well, and why not, it’s a good thing! I will also point out – that all funerals are technically a pilgrimage to honour the dead, and people came from around the world to honour the great saints that were Billy Graham and William Booth!
Whilst we want to see a revival of pilgrimages across the Christian world as part of a revival of wider Christianity, we also need to press for greater care of pilgrims! Sadly, the Church of England cathedrals only want to treat Pilgrims as cash cows! If there is to be a revival of pilgrimages, then we should challenge the cathedrals and churches of England to provide some provision to the pilgrims and some care for the pilgrims. Once I and my merry band arrived at the cathedral after our pilgrimages, we were not even offered so much as a cup of tea and a biscuit by the church – who only seemed concerned that we should buy a book and a stamp from the church reception. We would have been happy just to receive a bowl of soup and a drink – the guardians of the church need to show the love of GOD to the Pilgrims and not treat them as a business opportunity. Given, however – the sorry state of the CofE – what more can you expect at this time; so, pray for better guardians of our holy sites. Should you take up this call to go on a pilgrimage, I would encourage you not to turn it into a hike; your pilgrimage should be filled with the remembrance of the Lord, full of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.
I cannot end this exhortation to pilgrimage without raising awareness of the despicable proposal currently being discussed in Israel of taxing the ancient world heritage sites of the Churches in Israel. These sites that bring people to Israel and, with them, their pilgrims’ money, are being endangered by reckless policies of extremist zealots who hope to drive out the Christians of the state of Israel. I call on all to raise their voices in unison with the Church’s guardians of these sites in protesting these moves! I have attached a link below to a news article about the matter to help raise awareness of the issue.
Bibliography
Ferrar, W. J., trans. The Proof of the Gospel: Being the Demonstratio Evangelica of Eusebius of Cæsarea. 2 vols. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London: The Macmillan Company, New York, 1920.
Haydock, George Leo. Haydock’s Catholic Bible Commentary: Hebrews 11. Accessed July 2, 2024. https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/hcc/hebrews-11.html.
