Pilgrims are ... Orthodox pilgrimage

A pilgrim is a person who consciously follows the path chosen by him, unlike a usual vagabond. Before that, he sets himself a goal, which will necessarily be connected with sacred symbols. Studying the subject: "Pilgrims is who?", It should be noted that in Latin this word is translated as "palma" - palma (here we mean the palm branches with which the people met Jesus Christ in Jerusalem). Pilgrimage is a journey to the Holy Land and other holy places associated with the Christian faith.

Pilgrims are ...?

The basis of this Christian tradition is the desire of believers to worship the holy places associated with the earthly life of Jesus Christ, His Mother Mary and the Apostles, to immerse themselves in the sacred waters of the Jordan River and pray before the miraculous holy images. Other religions also have similar customs.

In Russia, the pilgrimage to the Holy Land began from the earliest times of the birth of Russian Christianity. The way was difficult and dangerous, and mainly it lay through Constantinople. By the 11th century pilgrim routes were the Holy Land, Mount Athos and its national shrines. But by the 12th century the passion for pilgrimage had reached its apogee, and the church authorities had to restrain their zealous worshipers.

By the fifteenth century, a turning point was coming, when an Orthodox pilgrim started complaining about his oppression by the evil Arabs and Turks. By that time, Constantinople fell before the Turks, and the Christian shrines of the East were in the hands of Muslims.

Orthodox pilgrim

In the second half of the 16th century the pilgrimage to the Holy Land increased again. Even a detailed pilgrimage of the merchant Vasily Yakovlevich Gagar to Jerusalem and Egypt is known. He lived in Kazan and traded with Persian merchants. Until the age of 40, according to his own words, he lived "badly and prodigal", the result of this behavior were misfortunes that fell on his head one after another. His wife died, then sank the ship with the goods, and the trade came to naught. However, after the church's repentance and the vow given to them for the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in one year he made a fortune twice as much as he lost before.

However, most often the pilgrims became official people, whom the Moscow government sent with orders and charities.

The war with Turkey in the second half of the XVIII century in the time of Catherine again complicated the Orthodox pilgrimage.

But by the middle of the XIX century, the establishment of the Russian Spiritual Mission in Jerusalem and the creation of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society played a huge role in the strengthening of the pilgrimage.

Often this kind of religious motives became a cover for aggressive trading purposes. The pilgrimage played a huge role in the preparation of the Crusades. In the Middle Ages pilgrims are both the highest nobility and warriors seeking knight initiations, which took place at the Holy Sepulcher, merchants with trading purposes, and scientists, adventurers, and mages who sought miraculous knowledge in the East.

Pilgrimage today

Modern pilgrims - who are they? And is there a tradition of pilgrimage today? It must be said that it is being reborn, only in a new form, as people's interest and faith in Christ do not disappear, but even more. This is now facilitated by a huge number of churches and monasteries that are opening, which are often the organizers of such trips around the world, but this is also done by travel companies.

You can come to any Jerusalem or Mount Athos monastery pilgrim. The Russian spiritual mission in Jerusalem keeps statistics, in which there are reports that about half of the spiritual pilgrims from all over the world are Orthodox Christians from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. In addition to Palestine, Russian pilgrims visit the Greek Athos, the city of Italy in Bari, where the relics of Nicholas the Savior are located, the capital of Montenegro, where the right hand of John the Baptist is kept, and other holy places of Christians.

However, the pilgrimage has little to do with excursion tourism, since it requires preliminary work on spirituality in terms of purifying the soul of repentance, awareness of one's sins and humility, it is necessary before visiting such great shrines to deeply and reverently penetrate into the evangelical atmosphere of the holy events of two thousand years ago.

Conclusion

Any Russian pilgrim, realizing for himself the whole importance of this event, tries to prepare himself in advance for this moment, so he fasts for some time, confesses, takes communion, prays a lot and then goes on a trip with the blessing of his spiritual mentor .

The main thing is to understand that pilgrims are not ordinary tourists, but people who are deeply religious who go not to rest and view the shrines as museum exhibits, but to see something more intimate, hidden from the ordinary eyes.