TO BE A PILGRIM TODAY

Here begins the Book of the Tales of Canterbury

When April with his showers sweet with fruit The drought of March has pierced unto the root And bathed each vein with liquor that has power To generate therein and sire the flower; (So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)- Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage, And palmers to go seeking out strange strands, To distant shrines well known in sundry lands. And specially from every shire's end Of England they to Canterbury wend, The holy blessed martyr there to seek

PILGRIMAGE IS UNIVERSAL

• Prehistoric people sought contact with the gods by traveling to high mountains or caverns or springs
• Within a generation after Christ’s death Christians began to visit his Cross and his Tomb
• Before the Crusaders reclaimed Jerusalem, pilgrims visited the tombs of Peter&Paul in Rome, James in Compostella, etc.

PILGRIM’S IDENTITY

• Before leaving a pilgrim must settle all earthly affairs, receive absolution and a blessing
• Pilgrim’s wore clothes which identified their status and intent—wide-brimmed hat, woolen cloak, staff, clamshell as ID, water gourd, satchel

NEXT TO ROME, SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELLA WAS THE GOAL

ENGLISH PILGRIMAGES

• Alban was the 1^st known martyr [but he was a Roman soldier]
• Cuthbert was the patron of the North of England, David for Wales, Patrick for Ireland and Mungo for the Scots, but…..
• Our Lady at Walsingham [1090] and Becket of Canterbury [1170] out shown them all

DIDN’T PILGRIMS DIE OUT WITH THE ENGLISH REFORMATION?

• Pilgrims continued to visit holy places—even if in secret
• Contact with one’s past is always going to be a need

PILGRIMAGE IS IRRELEVANT TO THE PEOPLE OF TODAY? NO!!!

• To be human is to seek purpose

“I have learned that the most important difference between people is between those for whom life is a QUEST and those for whom it is not.”

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time”

• A tourist wants to see
• A tourist wants souvenirs
• A tourist demands

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• The people on the Mayflower did not call themselves pilgrims, they were called Separatists!

• A pilgrim wants to seek
• A pilgrim wants to experience the holy
• A pilgrim offers

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF BEING A PILGRIM?

ORIENTATION

To find one’s focus

SEPARATION

Objective view of oneself

LIMINALITY FROM OLD ROLES intentional removal from convention. Freedom from one’s obligations, a sense of living “in between” 2 worlds

INTENTIONAL NEW COMMUNITY shorn of social barriers or expectations, enabled to establish new relationships

Re-integration

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• Returning to one’s former life as a “new” or renewed person
• Self-acceptance and resolve
• Acceptance of one’s former status within one’s former community/or the self-awareness to establish new identities or roles with one’s former life
• Reconciliation with God—and hopefully with others with whom one had difficulties or prejudices

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AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE

• Clarity of vision, timelessness
• Inner serenity & outer focus

OVER-STIMULATED&KITSCH

• Competing assaults of one’s spirit/disorientation/confusion

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BUT WHEN AND HOW WILL KNOW THAT WE HAVE ARRIVED?

WHEN HAVE YOU BEEN A PILGRIM RATHER THAN A TOURIST? WHAT HAPPENED

ARE YOU NOW A PILGRIM?

WHAT DO YOU SEEK? WHY? +

JERUSALEM THE PROTOTYPE FOR ALL CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE

• All other Christian pilgrimage sites are mere shadows of the Holy City
• Sacred to Jews as place of Abraham’s encounter with God, site of the Holy of Holies where the Name of God was made known
• Sacred to Muslims as the Prophets place of ascent to God
• Sacred to Christians as the place of Jesus’ death and resurrection

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TEMPLE WAS THE WORLD’S CENTER [AXIS MUNDI] LINKING 3 WORLDS—HEAVEN, US, HADES AS THE PLACE FOR ENCOUNTER

IN THE ‘HOLY OF HOLIES’ THE PRESENCE OF GOD EMINATED OUTWARDS [AS IF RADIOACTIVE] AND SACRIFICE WAS ACCEPTED

FOR THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL, THE TEMPLE WAS THE ONE PLACE THAT THEIR GOD WAS PLEASED TO DWELL

Every pious Jew was expected to make a pilgrimage to the Temple three times each year

Especially on the Day of Atonement their Covenant with God was renewed and their sins were covered

The Temple’s destruction was seen as inevitable, since now atonement was in Jesus’ death

The empty tomb not only proved Jesus’ divinity, but also eternal life for who believed in Him

CHRISTIAN PILGRIMS SOUGHT GOLGATHA AND THE TOMB

Helena, Constantine’s mother, spends 3 years in the Holy Land to find sites of Jesus’ birth, ministry, and resurrection

Assured by local Christians of both Cross and Tomb, she directs the building of a complex to assist pilgrims in their search for His grace

HELENA, CONSTANTINE’S MOTHER, FINDS CROSS & TOMB

The tomb-shrine now sits in the center of a large rotunda built by the Crusaders, where thousands of pilgrims enter the tomb to pray; at Pascha the tomb is the center of an all-night vigil where the mystery of the blue paschal fire continues to take place

PILGRIMAGE IS’NT ESCAPISM

• As Americans we are used to the ‘Disneyfication’ of reality, where things are as they should be in an ideal world—and diverse sites are brought together for our convenience
• The VIA DELOROSA takes place on real streets, where locals ignore pilgrims carrying crosses—just as Jesus must have experienced—”Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?”
• A holy site shares in the ‘scandal of divine particularity’ in that the Lord of all creation was in one place at one time in history—the pilgrim cannot recreate the event but he/she can participate in it

WHAT OF YOUR OWN PERSONAL PILGRIMAGE(S)? WHEN AND WHERE?

WHERE WOULD YOU WANT TO GO AS A PILGRIM?

WHAT WOULD YOUR INTENTIONS BE AS A PILGRIM?

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YOU CAN DO LECTIO DIVINA WITH AN IMAGE AS EASILY AS READING A PAGE: “READ, MARK, LEARN, AND INWARDLY DIGEST” IT

Chris Cook, in his book Finding God in a Holy Place, suggests:

“Holy places are SIGNPOSTS TO GOD, we can ignore them if we wish, but they are meant to point us in directions we never anticipated….a recurring theme is that the way in which inner and outer places point to one another, and together they can help us in our praying—be aware of the way in which outer places [an icon, a worship service, the words of a sermon] will point to an inner [emotional, thoughtful, spiritual] place in our own lives.”

ALOOF TOURIST TO AWED PILGRIM

• WE CAN’T HAVE GOD ON DEMAND, BUT GOD NEVER FAILS TO SEEK US
• PRAYER IS BETTER CAUGHT THAN TAUGHT

EAGER PILGRIM TO DISTURBED PILGRIM

• SANCTITY COMES FROM GOD’S ACTION WITHIN US RATHER THAN THE EXTERNALS OF PIETY ON US

WHAT AM I TO LEARN FROM THESE DIVERSE PILGRIM EXPERIENCES?

TO BE A PILGRIM DOES NOT REQUIRE HARDSHIP OR DISTANCE, RATHER A PILGRIM MUST HAVE AN INNER DESTINATION AND A DEEP LONGING TO REACH IT. WHAT THE PILGRIMS OF OLD SOUGHT IS WHAT WE ALSO SEEK-TO BE IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD

NOT FAR FROM THE RUINS OF CLUNY WAS A DESOLATED VILLAGE, DEVASTED BY WORLD WARS AND ECONOMIC DECLINE

ROGER SCHUTZ, A SWISS REFORMED SEMINARIAN FELT A CALL TO BRING RECONCILIATION AND COMMON LIFE TO THIS PLACE

TAIZE AND 21^ST CENTURY PILGRIMS

DURING WW2 ROGER WELCOMED ALL TO HIS FARMHOUSE—ESPECIALLY REFUGEES WHOM HE HELPED TO ESCAPE TO SWIZERLAND, AND MANY JEWS—UNTIL GESTAPO STOPPED IT

IN 1949 HE AND 7 BROTHERS BEGAN A COMMUNITY DEDICATED TO RECONCILIATION AND CHARITY. BY 1960 THERE WERE 90 BROTHERS AROUND THE WORLD

THE BEGINNINGS OF A PILGRIMAGE MOVEMENT

I FIRST READ ABOUT TAIZE IN 1962 [I WAS IN 9^TH GRADE] AND WANTED TO VISIT AS SOON AS I COULD, I BACKPACKED THERE IN 1972 AND I WASN’T ALONE! THAT YEAR THERE WERE 3 TO 5,000 YOUNG PEOPLE THERE EVERY WEEK! HUGE WW2 ARMY TENTS WERE THE DORMS AND DINIG HALLS. ANOTHER TENT WAS TACKED ON TO THE FRONT OF THE ‘AIRPLANE HANGER’ CHAPEL TO EXPAND THE SPACE.

The chapel was in use 24/7, and the 3 daily services with lots of silence as well as thousands of voices chanting at once was a foretaste of heaven

Prayer and discussion groups met everywhere in the village; topics of war, poverty, and justice were discussed with reconciliation themes

EVEN THOUGH THE PHYSICAL COMFORTS WERE BARELY MINIMAL, THE SENSE OF OPENNESS AND COMMUNITY WAS A SPIRITUAL HIGH

CELESTIAL JERUSALEM IS OFTEN DESCRIBED IN TERMS OF BRILLIANT COLORED GEMS AND TRANSPARENT SURFACES AS IN THE STE,-CHAPELLE IN PARIS

REVELATION DESCRIBES IT AS A 12-GATED CIRCLE OF BRILLIANT REFLECTIVE SURFACES AND BRILLIANT LIGHT

CHRISTIAN ARTISTS HAVE TRIED MANY MEDIA TO ATTEMPT TO DESCRIBE WHAT IS ULTIMATELY INDESCRIBABLE

HEAVEN ISN’T ABOUT A PLACE, BUT A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

HEAVEN IS ABOUT OUR RELATIONSHIP IN COMMUNITY & INTIMACY

HEAVEN IS BEING CONSTANTLY IN RELATIONSHIP WITH OUR LORD—FOUNTAIN OF LIFE