Magi, the ‘three wise men’ who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, journeyed from the east to Bethlehem, guided by a star, to pay homage to ‘the one who has been born of the Jews’. Their story contains some of the classic elements of pilgrimage. First and foremost, there was a journey. In their case, this would have been a long one from Iran, since according to the fifth century Greek historian Herodotus the Magi were in fact a Median tribe who lived within the Persian Empire and who were renowned as soothsayers and astrologers. Like pilgrimage before and after them, the men were anxious to experience a source - for Christians the source - of sacred awe. “What distinguishes the Magi’s journey from most other later pilgrimages was that they came to see a living being, not the relics of someone who had died. But their instinct was still the same; the desire for contact with a source of holiness.” Following the Magi, Christian pilgrims from all over the world have been journeying to the Land of Israel, the source of their spiritual heritage, for nearly 2000 years. Bible in hand, they’ve walked in the places where Jesus walked and prayed where He preached and prayed, and many experience a feeling of divine grace, or salvation, along with inner peace and a strengthened belief in their faith. There is no better place on earth than the Holy Land for Christians to feel the events of Jesus’ life coming alive before their eyes and in their hearts. Nowhere is His life better documented than in the Holy Bible and now, more than ever, the call to follow in Jesus’ Holyland footsteps is reverberating around the Christian world. The Pilgrimage Experience The recorded history of the Holy Land, going back more than 5000 years, attests to the fact that this was rarely a quiet, peaceful region. Straddling the divide between Africa and Asia, the area was almost always a battleground. Wave after wave of conquerors poured into the region, anxious to control the strategic trade routes linking the centers of the ancient world. With almost monotonous regularity, control swung from one victorious group to the next. Through it all, the peoples of the region remained, or returned, and rebuilt, again and again. From within this litany of turmoil and strife, an event took place under Roman rule more than 2000 years ago that was to shape human history from that time on. This momentous milestone was the birth of Jesus. Jesus, the son of the carpenter Joseph and Mary his wife, was born in Bethlehem, in a manger, the Gospels teach us, because “there was no room in the inn.” He grew to manhood in Nazareth, moved among the people
of Galilee and Jerusalem and gained recognition as a preacher and performer of miracles. He died on the cross in Golgotha and bequeathed Christianity to the world. His life and teachings have affected hundreds of millions of people all over the world. Nowhere is Jesus’ life better documented than in the Holy Bible. Nowhere else on earth do the events of the Bible come alive as they do here, in Israel, the Holy Land. Pilgrim & Pilgrimage The term “pilgrim” denotes a traveler - one who journeys to holy places and sojourns among the local inhabitants, in a focused activity of faith that attributes significance to the journey and to the place, usually a site lifted to prominence by what happened there. Pilgrimage is a rite of passage for some; for others, it may be a way of freeing one’s soul for spiritual explorations, or even a process to encounter Deity. Pilgrimage is also about remembrance. In both the Old and New Testament, the Bible focuses on the centrality of acts of remembrance on the part of both mankind and the Almighty, starting with events after the Flood, (Genesis 9, 8-17), when God points to the rainbow as a perpetual reminder of His everlasting covenant. This is but the first in a host of biblical correlatives between a physical act and the divine command not to forget. So important is this dictate, that when the prophets judge the People of Israel, one of the most serious charges against them is that they have forgotten the Lord their Maker (Isaiah 51, 13; Jeremiah 23, 27). Pilgrimage & its Significance Christian interest in the Land of Israel is closely associated with the birth, demise and subsequent resurgence of the pilgrimage movement. In both Islamic and Hebrew tradition, pilgrimage is regarded as a religious obligation imposed on the entire community of the faithful and taught in its sacred scriptures, hence the importance of the Land of Israel, and in particular the shrines associated with Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael, to both Jews and Muslims. For Christians, however, there is no such emphasis or requirement. Jesus taught that the sacred is located not in a place, but in the body of the believer, and worship is something to be offered to God anywhere and everywhere (John 4:21-23). Therefore, in the earliest days of the Christian Church, there does not appear to have been any perceived benefit from undertaking
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