Pilgrimage in World Religions

Ekkart Sauser 

(from Sacramentum Mundi, a theological encyclopedia)

1. Definition.

The idea of pilgrimage has three aspects. a) Under certain circumstances God responds to prayer in a special way. b) This special activity of God or a divinity is particularly manifest in certain places which on that account become centres of pilgrimage. c) In order to benefit by this special responsiveness of God, of the divinity or of certain heroes and holy persons, one must make a pilgrimage to this place of favour or deliverance, undertake a journey which forms a unity with the visit to or stay in the sacred place. K Nitzschke accordingly gives the following definition: Pilgrimage is a "journey to (and from) a holy place, of such a kind that the visit to the shrine in conjunction with the journey forms one cultic action". The saving power of God or of the divinity, which in Christianity is regarded as especially operative through the intercession of certain saints, especially of the Blessed Virgin Mary, takes effect as tangible help in sickness. Or it may be that people want blessing and assurance in important decisions, and pray for this at a place of pilgrimage. Sometimes man is tormented by the uncertainty of his lot after death and is impelled to seek out particular holy places in order to gain certainty about his after-life. Or he may undertake a pilgrimage in gratitude for benefits already received or in order to preserve divine good will by regular visits to the holy places. (B. Kotting, p. 12).

2. Non-Christian pilgrimages.

a) Graeco-Roman antiquity

The chief places of pilgrimage were indubitably those of the gods of healing, for belief in miracles largely concerned miraculous cures. Healings were not expected from all the gods but only from certain divinities, the best known being Asclepius with his sanctuaries in Cos, Epidaurus, Pergamon, Tricca, Athens and Rome. In the time of Christ, pilgrimages to shrines of Asclepius were very popular. B. Kotting traces this to a general decline in health. The intense interest in oracles suggests a wide drop in vitality and psychic energy, with the majority affected by neurasthenia and psychosomatic illnesses. The seeking of divine oracles for the merest trifles indicates a general passivity (ibid., pp. 430 f.). At least at this stage, therefore, pilgrimages were a sign of religious weakness and dispiritedness, and were thus distinguished from the Christian pilgrimages which soon started and which, at least at the beginning, were a sign of religious energy. As a result the early Christians very soon drew the contrast between Asclepius and their true Asclepius, Christ, the Saviour. Apologists led the way, Justin in particular: "If we say that (Christ) healed the lame and the halt and people ill since birth, and raised the dead to life, that may be considered similar and equal to what are related as the deeds of Asclepius." (Apology, I, 22, 6.) Those afraid of the future consulted the god Apollo at the ancient Greek oracles of Dodona and Delphi, or visited the sibyls, augurs, soothsayers and representatives of Roman divination or supposed prophecy in their special centres. Others journeyed to obtain earthly blessings and hopes for a better lot after death (Eleusis), or went as pilgrims to Ephesus to Artemis "from whom all good comes" or visited places where the graves of heroes, relics and statues of "divine men" were honoured.
 

b) Jewish centres of pilgrimage.
 

There were certain sanctuaries of Yahweh (Silon, Bethel, Gilgal, Beersheba) which were opposed by prophets because of inadmissible practices (cf. Amos 5 :5), certain places of healing (in Jerusalem, the pool by the Sheep Gate [the efficacy of the water connected with an angel], the pool of Siloam (John 9:7), springs near Tiberias, and tombs of holy people. But the temple of Jerusalem was preeminent. In the eyes of the Jews, who had to go on pilgrimage to it from the age of 12 onwards, it was the centre of the whole world, to which in the last days the Gentiles too would go on pilgrimage (Isaiah 2:2ff.). At the same time this pilgrimage was a profession of faith in the one God and had great social importance (cf. Kotting, p. 62).

c) Other pilgrimage.

We may also note the pre-Islamic, Arabian centres with pilgrimages to the gods and cult of burial-places, the trust in God.

4. Theological assessment of pilgrimages today.

Some are inclined to assign pilgrimages to the peripheral zone of piety (B. Kotting in LTK,X, cols. 945-6). A pointer in the same direction is the absence of any reference to pilgrimages in the new German catechism. Nevertheless it seems that this practice which is found in nearly all religions should maintain its central place even in Christianity at the present day. Stronger emphasis should of course be laid on aspects that have been largely lost sight of, which is why this form of religious expression has come to seem peripheral.
 

A new impulse to pilgrimage might be given by the idea of the pilgrim Church, in the midst of distress, imperfection, uncertainty and perplexity, yet not wandering aimlessly, but as a community whose aim is perfect salvation and redemption in Christ. That goal, however, is still distant, for the Church as a whole and for each of its members. The remoteness of the still unattained goal leaves the Church without rest, and sometimes even weakens the hopes of what is securely promised, and the faith that the promise has already been attained by the saints in the vision of God. If the Church's great journey is given symbolic expression in a pilgrimage, the Church's wayfaring is experienced on a small scale as a living process, and not merely as a sad distance from the goal: fulfillment in God. Pilgrims also feel in this way that the goal, Christ and the saints, comes closer. The saints, who are specially honoured, with Christ at their head, strengthen faith in the active presence of the Redeemer and the efficacious intercession of his saints with him. The pilgrim congregation at the shrine is more intensely conscious of itself as a community united to the Lord and the Church triumphant. It has a better understanding of the redemption and of the presence of Christ and his saints, realizing that Christ and the saints do not stand aloof from the pilgrim Church on earth, but form with it a communion of saints, offering intercession and aid. In the unity thus experienced between "above" and "below", the pilgrim group also realizes that the saints have arrived with Christ at the end of a journey on which they themselves are already engaged. Obscurely perceiving that perfect redemption is already at work within them, they can rejoice that the goal which in anticipation is already visibly reached in the pilgrimage, is their own goal, though still to be attained, namely to be wholly in and with Christ.

"Pilgrimage instructs you fresh about the meaning of life: to turn away from the present, from everyday joys and sorrows, and to turn towards the goal whose radiance shines on you" (Pius XII, 1952).

By courtesy of  Holy Land Magazine