WHY PILGRIMAGES

A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken to a sacred or holy place with the intention of asking for the Lord’s blessing in your life, to ask for forgiveness, in supplication for a particular petition, or even to ask for physical or psychological healing. The pilgrimage could be as immense as taking a trip to the Holy Land to walk in Christ’s footsteps, as simple as visiting a nearby shrine or grotto and anything in between. Pilgrims make these trips not as a holiday or sightseeing tour, but as a prayer and as a quest to encounter the Lord. Pilgrimages have been taking place since the earliest days of the Church, and as the history of the Church continued, pilgrims journeyed to venerate the relics of great saints and the sites of Marian apparitions around the world.