Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture 12/04/2022

 

While reading this line stuck out to me as  it was something we talked about a lot in class. “Pilgrims sometimes enhance their mundane status through having made the journey.” In Profane Experience and Sacred Encounter: Journeys to Disney and the Camino de Santiago, it also talks about something similar. “It has been said that pilgrims were the first tourists. Traveling to a sacred shrine presented a dual opportunity, see the sights and seek communion with God. Yet ancient spiritual journey narratives describe travels that have little in common with tourism in the modern context. Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Aeneas, Israel’s desert sojourn, and Jesus all wander through the land or over the sea in search of meaning that transcends sight seeing and seeking a vacation experience. With the rise of mass transportation and mass communication many of the sacred destinations for traditional pilgrimage have also become sites where tourists seek to experience a diversion. This milieu increases blurring the distinction between pilgrim and tourist.” The majority of this essay relates to this single quote.