A path with pain
Croagh Patrick in Co Mayo receives ample press coverage each July – the last Sunday of the month, ‘Reek Sunday’ marks the call to ascend the holy mountain for tens of thousands of people. Even on any given weekend, hundreds of pairs of feet, booted and bare, make their way to the summit.
Similarly, pilgrimages to Lough Derg and along the Camino de Santiago receive plenty of positive focus in the media. In a time where religion and all that goes with it are lambasted as faded relics of the past, are pilgrimages carving their way into popular culture?
Having walked the Camino de Santiago last year, and fallen most of the way down the side of Croagh Patrick this weekend, I can safely say that the majority of people I spoke to on both pilgrimages did not consider themselves religious.
It seems, as always, that there are a small number of people on each fringe - the devout who may regularly perform the journeys to bring themselves closer to God or atone for sins; and strictly secular people who walk or climb simply for the sense of achievement. In the middle there lies the majority, from what I experienced these were people of all ages, with very varied beliefs, who set out to in some way better themselves – to try to understand more about life’s mysteries. Thus, the pilgrimage becomes less religious and more ’spiritual’.
Both Croagh Patrick and the Camino de Santiago have a history of pilgrimage that predates Christianity – spanning back some 5000 years. Obviously the sense of wonderment is a timeless and universal thing. As is the sense of comradery that pervades a group after trauma or exersion. I wonder, just as Christianity spread, assimilating and creating pilgrimages throughout the centuries; whether with the increasing secularisation of society, could it one day happen that these ancient sites become purely spiritual, as opposed to religious, places of reverence?
Regardless of their future, I believe it is an unquestionably beautiful and positive thing that these places exist and offer, through hardship, a unique, uplifting and rewarding experience. Human suffering has always been a great unifier of people, and pilgrimages, in a secular world, offer a path that bridges gaps between faiths, and indeed between the faithful and the faithless.
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 and is filed under Pain and suffering, Prayer & the Christian life, Thoughts & Questions.
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