Why We Pilgrimage

My husband and I were watching the movie “The Way” recently about an older man who lost his son to death on the Camino. In response to his grief, he walks the Camino himself for his son. Along the way, he becomes walking companions with other pilgrims who have a particular brokenness. 

I used to not understand pilgrimages and why people took them. Were they seeking to encounter God? Were they looking for spiritual experiences? Were they trying to find their calling? Were they seeking penance? It seemed like a very expensive and time consuming way to do all of these things. Why not just go to your local church, confessional, or adoration chapel? I’m not much of a traveler so pilgrimages didn’t really speak to me as much.

But the older I get, and the more helpless I realize I am in the midst of my brokenness and need for healing and miracles, the more I understand why someone would pilgrimage all that way or do something as significant as walking the Camino. God calls us out to holy places sometimes. We just feel the impetus to go and be in this holy place. To take the trip. To make the walk. To encounter the sacred in a new way.

I felt called to go to St. Anne de Beaupre recently, when it wasn’t necessarily on my list of vacation spots. Nonetheless, God called me to go there for hope of healing that I hope will bear fruit one of these days. That day, I had some beautiful prayer experiences that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. 

Why do we pilgrimage? All sorts of reasons, but I think mostly to heal some sort of brokenness in us that we can’t do without an encounter with the Holy in a new place, new setting, and new way.