Blessed are those . . . who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. • Psalm 84:5 (NIV)
Late one spring, writes Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales, 29 pilgrims set out from London to Canterbury, a holy site. These “sundry folk”—the elite and the working class, holy folk and scoundrels, wealthy and poor, men and women—are joined “in fellowship,” Chaucer says, despite their many differences.
Chaucer’s pilgrims are seeking healing and the absolution of sins, while some also bring prayers of thanksgiving for past blessings. More selfish, materialistic goals motivate a few, and yet the hardships and pleasures of the journey still bring them together. Like all pilgrims, they are on their way to a specific geographical place—in their case, the Shrine of Thomas Becket—a particular location made holy by people who, during their time on Earth, struggled and persevered to make God tangible in our world. Every pilgrimage shrine is a sacred center, a place where heaven and Earth intersect, where human beings directly interact with divinity.
Chaucer’s famous 14th-century poem describes a compelling component of real-life pilgrimages: A variety of people travel together, forming a community animated by a transforming force far greater than any social category. Today, as in Chaucer’s day, pilgrimage fosters a unique social dynamic. It gives us a glimpse of a society united by a common purpose; it’s a journey that lifts pilgrims higher than the worn-out status quo of prejudice and discrimination. While today’s pilgrimages might look a little different than they did for Chaucer’s motley crew, modern-day pilgrims are driven by the same motivations and spiritual desires.
The journey
Pilgrimage has existed across religions for millennia. Christian pilgrimage gained popularity in the fourth century after St. Helena, mother of Constantine, traveled to Palestine and built churches at biblical sites. By the Middle Ages, pilgrimage was usually a voluntary religious journey but sometimes also a legal punishment for crimes. People traveled for healing, redemption, or thanksgiving.
Today, pilgrimage is still a spiritual practice that draws millions of people. The Alliance of Religions and Conservation estimates that more than 200 million people around the world go on pilgrimage annually; about 55 million are Christian pilgrims. These holy journeys still have powerful meaning, just as they did in the Middle Ages.
We often think of journeys in terms of beginnings and endings—the middle is just the way we get from point A to point B—but in pilgrimage, the “middle” is the transcendent part, the part where inner renewal occurs. Without a destination there’d be no pilgrimage, and yet at the same time, the destination is not the transformational force.
During pilgrimage, physical movement and connection—with other pilgrims and with the Earth itself—create an interior journey that parallels the exterior trek. Laura Savu, a scholar who has studied and written about pilgrimage, says it has a “spiritual effect that registers on the body and grounds the person to the Earth,” and Roger Housden, in his book Sacred Journeys in a Modern World (Simon & Schuster), calls pilgrimage a “prayer of the body as well as the mind.”
Victor Turner, one of the first scholars to make an academic study of pilgrimage, describes it as a “liminal experience,” meaning pilgrims temporarily leave their ordinary lives, experiencing an in-between reality where the old boundary lines and structures break down. Carl Jung, the 20th-century psychologist, believed that both death and birth happen within liminal experiences like these. False and ineffectual thoughts and behaviors release their hold and die, while a new sense of truer identity emerges in their place.
Sometimes, Jung noted, not only the individual’s masks and pretensions need to die; sometimes, these in-between experiences challenge even the pilgrim’s understanding of God. The lily-white Christ of Western Christianity, for example, may need to be replaced with a larger, more inclusive sense of Jesus. A God of vast and unconditional love may need to push aside the small, angry deity created in the image of patriarchy. Death, Jung affirmed, is always followed by the birth of something new, and the journey may take the pilgrim somewhere far more astonishing than the mere geographical goal.
The experience of a simpler life contributes to this process. Pilgrims discover a reality more connected to the natural cycles of light and dark, hunger and meals, weariness and rest. This too creates a liminal space; in this case, it’s a space where greater freedom combines with unfamiliar restriction, allowing new realities to emerge.
Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of A Sense of Direction (Penguin), writes that while he is on pilgrimage, “privation is endured, shared, and collectively encouraged. . . . The experiences of wanting less, needing less, and giving more allow us to withdraw from the psychic conflicts that cause so much pain to ourselves and those around us.”
Communities of trust and empowerment
George Greenia, founder of the William & Mary Institute for Pilgrimage Studies, explains that pilgrimage fosters mutual care: “Pilgrims buffer each other against the exertions of the trip.” This environment, he notes, allows women and marginalized people to travel safely.
Even where differences exist—such as different beliefs about faith, gender, or other social issues—pilgrims tend to be far more accepting, Greenia says, than they might be in their “at-home” lives. “Trekking to sacred sites confers automatic validation as a person of merit, someone unthreatening, likely helpful,” he says. “It’s a caravan of strangers and yet a community of trust.” Crime, he notes, is extremely rare along pilgrim routes.
According to Greenia, these pilgrimages are also accessible to a wide range of people. For people who already live in Europe, “traveling pilgrimages for the poor are supremely common on the Camino and include the unemployed, immigrant guest workers, and students with few resources. You can travel on about $25 a day if your lifestyle is modest or minimal,” he says. “Pilgrims from further away have to get themselves there, of course, but once travel expenses are taken care of, one can live simply and make their way.”
While the Camino and other European pilgrimages might be accessible to people of a variety of economic situations, there may be other ways in which they aren’t quite as equitable. Greenia admits that racial disparities are visible on some of the more famous European pilgrimages, such as the Camino de Santiago, where very few people of color can be seen.
Other experts, however, point out that pilgrimage is a vital part of the faith lives of many people of color—even if they’re not going on the Camino. Willy Jansen, an anthropologist from the Netherlands, describes her research with African and Middle Eastern women, many of them poor, who travel to various Marian sites in Europe and the Holy Land. These women, she says, are empowered by their connection to Mary, a connection not mediated through any traditional religious doctrine.
Their Mary is first and foremost a mother, Jansen says, a woman like themselves who understands the challenges they face. Through pilgrimage, these women connect to Mary in ways that may seem unorthodox.
For example, when Jansen encountered a woman walking on her knees to a Marian shrine, she asked why the woman was making her pilgrimage in such an arduous way. “I am thanking Mary for a successful abortion,” the woman answered. Women like this, says Jansen, join in solidarity as they seek Mary’s strength, resilience, and nonjudgmental love.
When Maddaline Norfleet traveled to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage for Black Americans, she too experienced a deep sense of community, one that stretched across time. “Many of us were seeing [the Holy Land] and crying, not because we were seeing it, but we felt that everybody in us was seeing it,” she says. As she walked where Jesus walked, she said, she felt the memories and dreams of her ancestors giving her a new sense of her own strength and identity.
Pilgrimages to places such as lynching sites or the Trail of Tears—places made holy by the death and suffering of innocent people—allow pilgrims to experience a wider sense of community as they immerse themselves in the stories that took place along their routes. The stories may be their own ancestors’, giving pilgrims like Norfleet a renewed sense of identity. The history of these places, when experienced through the pilgrim’s connection between body, place, and soul, may also build compassion and a deeper understanding of oppression. Both experiences can be transformational.
Lauren Lopez, half Navajo, half Mexican, describes visiting the Mission of San Miguel with a church group’s pilgrimage along El Camino Real in California. “For me, those bells represented nothing but pain,” Lopez says. “They weren’t symbols of my faith. To me, they represented the white man’s attempts to erase my culture and people.” But sharing her perspective with her fellow pilgrims led to mutual tears and deeper understanding. “We all ended up crying,” she says. “And it’s always better to cry together than alone.”
The sense of community extends beyond the individuals who happen to be traveling together; it also reaches across time, generating a feeling of oneness with everyone who has traveled that path over the centuries. “The sense of invisible presences, the countless other humans who also were hurting, in need of healing, all gathered around me, it gave me goosebumps,” says Denise Johnson, a pilgrim who went to Lourdes.
Some holy shrines, far from being quiet places for silent contemplation, are filled with the noise of hundreds, possibly thousands, of people praying, weeping, singing. In medieval times, minstrels often sang at holy sites, and the pilgrims gathered there would be united in song.
Susan Scott, a pilgrim to lynching sites in Memphis, Tennessee, recalls singing “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” while she stood where her ancestors had died. “Singing made that place holy,” she says. “The tears rolled down my face, but I knew I was blessing those folks in their last moments—and they were blessing me.”
One of the Camino de Santiago’s traditions also helps to build pilgrims’ sense of spiritual community. As they walk, pilgrims carry stones that represent the burdens they bear. When they are ready, as an act of trust, they let these stones drop by waymarks along the path, knowing that other pilgrims will prayerfully pick up the stones and carry them. This creates a physical experience of carrying one another’s burdens.
Pilgrimage adaptations
For various reasons, many Americans cannot travel to sacred sites in Europe or the Holy Land. Even if they can afford the airfare, they may not have the physical ability to walk a path. When asked if pilgrimage is an option for people in these circumstances, Greenia answers, “Goodness, yes!” He mentions DisCamino, an organization, its website states, that “was born to unite Discapacity and Camino de Santiago.” Greenia also describes pilgrim refuges for people with physical disabilities, as well as organized expeditions for people in wheelchairs.
Still, as valuable as the pilgrimage experience is, not everyone can handle physical travel, even if they want to. This was as true in the Middle Ages as it is for modern pilgrims. In the 15th century, for example, Felix Fabri, a Dominican friar, recorded his pilgrimages in written form, allowing his stay-at-home brothers to vicariously learn from his experiences.
Then, when a group of nuns asked Fabri how they might also participate in pilgrimage’s spiritual lessons despite being cloistered, Fabri came up with a new idea. He created a form of “pilgrimage by proxy,” a day-by-day description of the pilgrim paths to Santiago de Compostela, Rome, and Jerusalem, accompanied by maps. His book allowed the nuns—and others—to go on a pilgrimage of the imagination.
“Pilgrimage has shown itself to be very adaptable,” says Susan Dunn-Hensley, a professor at Wheaton College who writes and teaches about pilgrimage, “and its adaptability has led to innovations.”
Virtual pilgrimages are one adaptation that’s proven to be meaningful for many people. In 2020, when the pandemic ruled out long-distance travel, Dunn-Hensley says, “My research partner and I used a computer app with maps and pictures to replicate the Camino. We invited other friends and colleagues to walk and pray with us.”
Each day, they walked neighborhood streets and paths the same distance they would have covered had they actually been on the Camino. “The walk ended up being a powerful experience,” she says.
Pilgrimage is a metaphorical reminder of the Christian journey to heaven, Dunn-Hensley notes, so having a virtual experience of a sacred site is completely congruent with Christian tradition.
John Eade, a professor at Roehampton University, describes similar ways the internet has helped people experience Lourdes. A live camera installed in Bernadette’s grotto allows viewers to watch the daily ceremonies being performed. He also mentions a social media group, Pilgrimage in Place, that supports this kind of virtual spirituality.
There are other ways to create alternative pilgrimages. Dunn-Hensley says that many European holy sites emerged from medieval pilgrims’ need to adapt. Not everyone had the means to travel to Jerusalem—but, she says, “Europeans increasingly brought the Holy Land to Western Europe.” Walsingham Shrine in England, said to be the site of a Marian apparition in 1061 to a Catholic English noblewoman, is one such example. In the United States, Dunn-Hensley says, “pilgrim routes with connections to medieval shrines have sprung up, bringing the memory of historical Christianity to the Americas.”
The United States has around 126 holy sites, about half of them dedicated to Marian devotion, such as the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Missouri, which features a replica of the Lourdes grotto.
Not all these holy sites are “officially” recognized. Early in the 21st century, for example, Phil Volker, a man with stage 4 cancer, longed to go on pilgrimage but couldn’t because of his ongoing chemo treatments—so he built a Camino replica on his land in Washington State. He then walked it more than 900 times, plotting on a Camino map his progress after each lap.
This adapted pilgrimage experience, he said, transformed him. He no longer “battled” cancer; instead, he learned to “dance” with it. Volker died in 2021, but his “Camino” remains open to pilgrims unable to travel overseas, offering riding options as well as walking.
Labyrinths, another medieval form of substitute pilgrimage, are gaining popularity today. The great European cathedral labyrinths were imagined as scaled-down pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and now, the practice of negotiating a labyrinth has become a form of meditative journey.
Even the practice of praying the stations of the cross can be described as a form of pilgrim experience that’s accessible to most people. The 14 stations, first popularized by medieval Franciscans, are a symbolic substitute for traveling to the holy city of Jerusalem.
Kathryn Barush, author of Imaging Pilgrimage (Bloomsbury), describes artwork as yet another way people can “pilgrimage in place.” She says that looking at visual art “can make us see and touch the world again,” if only in our imaginations, “dispelling our feelings of loss and loneliness.” These artworks can connect us to the larger spiritual community that extends through space and time.
Creating original artwork can also serve as a pilgrimage variation. “For those who are bedridden or have little mobility,” says Dunn-Hensley, “I can see that some type of artistic form—a painting, needlework, knitting a prayer shawl—could replicate the spiritual benefits of pilgrimage, especially if the pilgrim practiced prayer and spiritual disciplines.” When done consciously and purposefully, these activities can combine physical movement with spiritual meaning, ultimately leading to inner transformation.
The never-ending pilgrimage
Jesus told his disciples, “Do this in memory of me,” and in the experience of Eucharist, memory creates connection. In a similar way, memory allows the pilgrim to reexperience the spiritual lessons of pilgrimage. Even if someone goes on pilgrimage only once, the experience continues to unfold throughout their lifetime. The journey never truly ends.
Medieval pilgrims came home with souvenirs and tattoos—and so do modern pilgrims. Souvenirs can make pilgrimage memories tangible, and tattoos mark the memory on the pilgrim’s body. They are both ways pilgrims “hold on” to the experience and carry it with them.
Eade says social media and email can also help to preserve pilgrimage memories. He belongs to a Facebook group formed from pilgrimage participants, and members continue to communicate, share photos and memories, and encourage one another. The community they created together still exists in virtual form.
Author Kenneth McIntosh, after walking the St. Cuthbert Way in 2019, the Camino Frances in 2023, and the Camino Portuguese in 2024, says pilgrimage has become central to his identity. “I’m many other things,” he says, “husband, father, grandfather, priest, teacher—but when I need inward encouragement, pilgrim is my most powerful self-label.”
Pilgrimage, says McIntosh, has brought him enduring benefits: the ability to set long-term goals—and be resilient even when the goal is never achieved; the willingness to accept surprises, course corrections, and unexpected challenges; an increased sense of being both physically and spiritually present to each moment; and finally, a tangible experience of divine grace and protection along the way. His pilgrimage memories, he says, “mean more to me than any of my academic or professional degrees, because they have been more formative of my character, mental health, and spirituality.”
Now, whenever our current polarization and injustice discourage him, he turns to ultreia, the medieval pilgrim’s cry meaning “onward!” “On those moments when I am ready to berate myself, or my courage falters,” he says, “I find renewed strength reminding myself: I am a pilgrim. So I keep going, one foot in front of the other.”
Simon Coleman and John Elsner, in their book Pilgrimage: Past and Present (Harvard University Press), describe the way pilgrimage memories can also touch the lives of others: “The sacred landscape becomes diffused, permeating even the everyday lives of those who have never been to the site itself.” Pilgrimage creates individual transformation—and that transformation can then spread through the larger community.
Spiritual journeys to heal our world
Not everyone feels called to go on a physical pilgrimage—but we can all learn from pilgrims’ stories. They offer us a way to travel beyond our current society, beyond our worn-out ideas, and beyond the small, stale roles that hold us captive. They help us to create a new vision for the future. And they remind us that even if we never leave home, we are all on spiritual journeys.
This interior pilgrimage can have many of the same elements as a physical journey. First, we let go of our old sources of comfort—this might mean eating less or spending less time in front of screens—in order to create a space that lies between the past and future. We enclose this space within some kind of framework: a daily walk, a prayer and reading schedule, or some other intentional practice.
Then, within this holy space, we dare to ask questions and seek new answers. We let go of stereotypes and old assumptions about ourselves and the people around us. We seek out and participate in new communities, affirming our solidarity with what bell hooks calls a “shared belief in a spirit of intellectual openness that celebrates diversity, welcomes dissent, and rejoices in collective dedication to truth.” We allow ourselves to be changed so that we can help change the world.
Whether our journeys are both physical and spiritual or only spiritual, the purpose of pilgrimage is never to escape our lives. A pilgrimage can offer us the time and space to remake our hearts and minds—but ultimately, we return home, where the same problems will be waiting for us. Now, however, we can face them with new strength. Spiritually refreshed, stronger than before, we’re ready to recommit ourselves to God’s ongoing work of love.
“Pilgrimage,” writes Andy Ott, “should be a daily undertaking, a desire to encounter the living God in every person we meet, in every place.”
This article also appears in the August 2025 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 90, No. 8, pages 26-30). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Marsha McIntosh
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