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Pilgrimage In Christianity
Pilgrimage Today
From the earliest days, pilgrimages have never ceased. Sometimes it was difficult to go on pilgrimage to shrines, for example in Protestant countries during the Reformation, and there was a decline in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sometimes, as in the case of Ireland, pilgrimages seem to have flourished as an act of defiance against Protestantism.
During the nineteenth and twentieth century new pilgrimage sites developed, often as a result of visions of the Virgin Mary. People often go there to pray for help in times of difficulty, or to give thanks. In Roman Catholic tradition, many believe that saints can intercede for them, helping them to communicate with God and giving guidance about how to live. Some famous examples of shrines to the Virgin Mary (‘Marian’ shrines) include:
- Lourdes (France)
- Fatima (Portugal)
- Guadalupe (Spain)
- Medijigore / Medjugorje (in the former Yugoslavia – A much more recent shrine)
Protestants churches often want to remember their special people too:
- Wesley’s Chapel: Methodists, for example, might visit Wesley’s Chapel in London as a way of recognising and consolidating their sense of who they are and what their tradition is. Wesley was the ‘founder’ of Methodism, although he himself always remained an Anglican. Methodists and other Protests can honour their spiritual heroes without thinking that those great men and women intercede directly with God for them.
- Walsingham: Anglo-Catholics (a nineteenth century movement within the Anglican Church) revived the medieval Marian shrine at Walsingham and it became a centre for their movement.
- Taize: The famous Taize community near Lyon is the scene of many modern pilgrimages by young people. It was founded by the son of the Protestant pastor and is, in effect, a Protestant monastery.
- Iona: In Scotland, the Church of Scotland has rebuilt the famous monastery at Iona as a retreat centre where Christians can go to meditate and pray.
- ‘The Sojourners’: In America, social Gospel advocate Jim Wallace has founded ‘The Sojourner’ community. This is not so much a place for retreat, as a return to the early Church’s understanding that renunciation gives people the freedom for radical social action. A ‘sojourner’ is a resident-alien, a foreigner passing through a strange land, but free to live out the life of the Kingdom of God.
Which brings us back to the place where we began!