If a person types in the word 'pilgrimage' into a library catalogue they will usually get one of three things. At the local university the word pilgrimage brings up scores of information about how pilgrimage was done in the past, whether in the Christian tradition, the Muslim tradition, in India or Japan, etc., or it will bring up comparative studies of how pilgrimage affects tourism. Either way, the results are largely factual, based off of research, and have very little to say about what pilgrimage means for the average person today, other than how it fuels the tourism industry. At my Bible College the word brings up an entirely different set of results: pilgrimage is addressed as a primarily spiritual journey. Grand phrases appear like "the pilgrimage of life," treating all of life or the stages of life as a sacred journey. These books are largely reflective, based off of experience and while they may impact how one lives today, they do not really address how one might go on an actual physical pilgrimage.
The thing with pilgrimage is that there are both physical and spiritual aspects to it. Books tend to address one or the other, but when a person actually goes on a pilgrimage that involves travel, the idea is that this physical travel will reflect a spiritual journey. Alistair McGrath writes, "traveling does more than lead us to the goal of our journeying. A journey is itself a process that enables us to grow and develop as we press on to our goal" (8).
Within Christianity this process of growth is called spiritual formation. My professor says spiritual formation is "the ongoing process of the Holy Spirit forming the believer's life in Christ for the purpose of living individually and corporately to the glory of God" (Peasgood). That's pretty heavy stuff. I prefer to put it more simply: spiritual formation is a flowering from who you are now into who you were meant to be - who God created you to be. It is soul growth from the inside out, and it happens because God is there directing you along the way. Sometimes we resist spiritual formation. We do not want to grow or change from who we already are. We don't like the idea of abandoning the concrete "self" that each of us have individually fashioned for something unknown. We fear giving up control. On a physical pilgrimage we can go with good or even "holy" intentions. If we are not willing to abandon the familiar, however, then we can reach the physical goal without ever even having taken the requisite inward journey. If we aren't willing to give up control during the journey to let God change and affect our carefully crafted selves, we may never experience the wonderful otherness that the mysterious God has to offer us in this world. We were not created to be stagnant creatures. We were designed to grow.
The ultimate goal of spiritual formation is union with God. Union is "complete oneness with God in which we find ourselves caught up in rapturous joy, adoration, praise and a deep peace that passes all understanding" (Mullholland, 97). It is when soul draws so close to God it can taste Him, and that taste is so incredibly amazing that it can't help but leave a person changed for eternity. Christians long for this union because we realize that there is something incredibly wrong about a life that is lived separately from God. There is an inherent selfishness and sense of incompleteness that governs our lives and leaves us empty. For all of our attempts at self-gratification, we are never completely satisfied. Our life is not all that it could - or should - be. We have realized that we are lost on our own. Other broken people cannot fix the rift inside of us, and we are helpless to fix ourselves. Our only hope is seeking an encounter with the one whom we call Creator, the one whom we have come to call Saviour.
The journey towards union is not without its own demands and sacrifices. Union, itself, is recognized as the third part of the three stage journey within classical spiritual formation. Along the path towards union, we must also pass through purgation: the cleansing of the soul. As time goes on God begins to show us parts of our lives that are holding us back from drawing closer to Him. These may be blatant sins, little white lies, or deep-seated attitudes and behaviours, but regardless of the severity, all of these things can clutter our soul to the point that there is no more room for God. It is during the period of purgation that we learn to let those things go.
After purgation comes illumination, a time when we begin to understand really what is happening within the process of spiritual formation. "The basic shift in illumination is from seeing God as 'out there' to an experience of God present deep within our being" (Mulholland, 95). It is when the veil from our eyes slowly lifts so that we can see even more clearly how we relate to God and how God relates to us. The revelation is often that God is much closer, and we need Him much more, than we initially thought.
All three stages of spiritual formation - purgation, illumination and union - all happen simultaneously at various stages within the Christian life. One experience of illumination or union could show us yet another flaw within our beings that demands purgation. Our life becomes a constant journey of walking steadily towards Christ, towards the hope of our salvation.
Since pilgrimage is an outward expression of an inward journey, physical travel can mirror the process of spiritual formation. First, we go through a process of purgation. We leave everything behind that previously defined us before: our jobs, maybe our family, our t.v., our gaming systems. This outward purgation of departure is accompanied by an inward purgation: when we leave everything behind that previously defined us, what are we left with? What inward demons will we have to fight and wrestle with? What sides of ourselves will we be forced to see and reckon with? As we face and answer these questions, we walk into the realm of illumination. The landscape of our journey draws us in; we meet and talk to other people along the path, and suddenly we begin to realize the value in our physical journey. There is a world out there greater than the one we left behind. Inwardly we come to the same spiritual conclusion: there is a depth to the inward realm of our spirit that we previously could not see or fathom. As we begin to live out this conclusion we experience union: those moments where the journey takes on a transcendent quality to provide a mental snapshot that will forever remain ingrained within our minds as a definitive moment in our lives. Inwardly we experience that moment of transcendence. We sense God is in this place, and the place that we are standing is indeed holy ground. In the process of all of this - this process of separation, discovery and wonder - we are transformed, and we return from our journey as different people than when we had left.
