A Path of Prayer
Updated: Sep 13
Pilgrimage has long been a part of the faith journey. Christians, Jews and Muslims often travel on pilgrimage to holy sites throughout the Middle East. It has recently become popular to walk the Camino de Santiago, with multiple paths across Europe to Compostela, Spain where St. James the Great is believed to be buried.
Folks step onto the pilgrimage path for many reasons: to dedicate time to God, to pray with supplication or thanksgiving, to demonstrate repentance, to celebrate an achievement, mark a transition, or simply to live for a time as a pilgrim seeking God. Although many pilgrimages are made to holy sites across the world, it is often more about the journey itself and less about the destination.
From that perspective, you don’t have to travel great distances to make a pilgrimage. I know many who walk to their place of worship or even walk the last block as a kind of weekly pilgrimage. There are families who regularly walk the cemetery where their ancestors are buried. When I drop my kayak into the Savannah River for a morning of paddling, it is a pilgrimage of prayer for me.
During the Middle Ages, visiting Jerusalem became a popular spiritual goal, one not possible for everyone due to the cost and danger of travel. So, churches across Europe began to lay out labyrinths on their grounds and in the floors of their churches as a spiritual alternative. Labyrinths are created with a single, circuitous path into the center and out again, with the entrance also serving as the exit. Perhaps you know of the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth, now replicated in many places, or maybe you’ve walked a labyrinth of a different pattern. There are also finger labyrinths one can pray, traveling as a pilgrim in mind and heart.
As with a pilgrimage, some people walk a labyrinth with a specific intention. Others walk simply as a prayer or meditation practice. Some observe three stages in their walking such as: release, receive, and renew; or coming, being and going; or from the Christian mystical tradition – purgation, illumination and union.
During the month of September, we will build a labyrinth on the convent grounds. We intend it to be a place of prayerful, healing pilgrimage for our neighbors, friends and those who visit us. We will be blessing the labyrinth on Saturday, October 24 at 11:30 and welcome your presence and your prayers. If you can’t be with us, we urge you to make the pilgrimage God is calling you to, whether that’s along the streets of Jerusalem, the trail to Compostela, the labyrinth in your community, or the path of prayer in your heart.
–Sr. Miriam Elizabeth, OSH
What does your path of prayer look like? Where do you hear God calling you as a pilgrim?
I walked the Camino Frances in 2014; it was a turning point in making my prayer life more embodied and less an exercise of the mind. Since then, walking a labyrinth from time to time has helped me get unstuck from thinking too much about my spiritual journey, once again returning me to my body. On neighborhood walks I look for statues of Mary or Saint Francis and make an intention to walk by those homes praying the Hail Mary or the Jesus Prayer. There have been seasons when those mini-pilgrimages have been my daily sustenance. Thank you for this reminder.
I've done the Camino twice - El Norte in 2018 and Portuguese in 2023. I've also done pilgrimages to Israel and Palestine, walking were Our Lord once did, Egypt, where the Holy Family fled, followed the footsteps of St. Paul in Greece and Turkey, walked the island of Iona, and made a spiritual pilgrimage to the Deep South and walked in the steps of the Giants of Justice. As wonderful as those pilgrimages have been, I cherish each pilgrimage I make in the labyrinth in the yard of my church. I look forward to walking the OSH labyrinth on my next visit.