pilgrimage has a certain romance, but it actually emerges from a robust and demanding source – the intentional, and often challenging, journeys made by people of faith to significant places. Pilgrim, beware! The habit of pilgrimage has been well known for as long as faithful people have looked for a deeper encounter with God, whether travelling to the Promised Land, to Jerusalem, to the places of medieval pilgrimage or to a nearby cathedral in the present day. There is a deep and liberating compulsion in huge numbers of people ‘to be a pilgrim’.
I was glad when they said to me,
‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’
Our feet are standing, within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem – built as a city
that is bound firmly together.
To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
For there the thrones for judgement were set up,
the thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
‘May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls,
and security within your towers.’
For the sake of my relatives and friends
I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your good.
Psalm 122
Then [Jesus] took the twelve aside and said to them,
‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem.’
Luke 18.31
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them.
Luke 24.13–15
May the God who called our father Abraham
to journey into the unknown,
and guarded him and blessed him,
protect me too and bless my journey.
May his confidence support me as I set out,
may his Spirit be with me on the way,
and may he lead me back to my home in peace.
Those I love I commend to his care.
He is with them, I shall not fear.
As for myself,
may his presence be my companion,
so that blessing may come to me
and to everyone I meet.
Blessed are you, Lord,
whose presence travels with his people.
Jewish Prayer Book
Who would true valour see,
let him come hither;
one here will constant be,
come wind, come weather;
there’s no discouragement
shall make him once relent
his first avowed intent
to be a pilgrim.
Whoso beset him round
with dismal stories,
do but themselves confound;
his strength the more is.
No lion can him fright;
he’ll with a lion fight,
but he will have the right
to be a pilgrim.
No goblin nor foul fiend
can daunt his spirit;
he knows he at the end
shall life inherit.
Then, fancies fly away;
he’ll not fear what men say;
he’ll labour night and day
to be a pilgrim.
John Bunyan, 1628–8
Pilgrim God,
you are our origin and destination.
Travel with us, we pray, in every pilgrimage of faith,
and every journey of the heart.
Give us the courage to set off,
the nourishment we need to travel well,
and the welcome we long for at journey’s end.
So may we grow in grace and love of you
and in the service of others,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
May God,
who has received you by baptism into his Church,
Pour upon you the riches of his grace,
That within the company of Christ’s pilgrim people
You may daily be renewed by his anointing Spirit,
And come to the inheritance of the saints in glory.
Common Worship
LIFE AS A PILGRIM
One of the most easily recognized metaphors for life is that it is a journey or pilgrimage full of incident, joys and crises, periods when we are toiling uphill and times when the sun is always shining on our back. Life is a journey with God, with ourselves and with others – a community of pilgrims, learning as we go. Viewed as a pilgrimage, life clearly
