A pilgrim is a person who consciously follows the path he has chosen, as opposed to an ordinary vagabond. Before this, he sets himself a certain goal, which will certainly be associated with sacred symbols. Studying the topic: “Who are the pilgrims?”, It should be noted that from Latin this word is translated as “palm tree” - palma (here we mean the palm branches with which the people met Jesus Christ in Jerusalem). A pilgrimage is a journey to the Holy Land and other holy places associated with the Christian faith.
Pilgrims are…?
This Christian tradition is based on the desire of believers to bow to the holy places associated with the earthly life of Jesus Christ, His Mother of the Most Holy Theotokos and the apostles, to immerse themselves in the sacred waters of the Jordan River and pray before 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 path was difficult and dangerous, and mainly it lay through Constantinople. By the 11th century, the Holy Land, Athos and their national shrines became the routes of pilgrims. But already toIn the 12th century, the passion for pilgrimage reached its climax, and church authorities were forced to restrain their zealous clergy.
By the 15th century, a turning point comes when an already Orthodox pilgrim begins to complain about the oppression of his evil Arabs and Turks. By that time, Constantinople had fallen to the Turks, and the Christian shrines of the East were in the hands of the Muslims.
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Orthodox pilgrim
In the second half of the 16th century, pilgrims to the Holy Land again intensified. Even a detailed pilgrimage of the merchant Vasily Yakovlevich Gagara to Jerusalem and Egypt is known. He lived in Kazan and traded with Persian merchants. Until the age of 40, in his own words, he lived “badly and prodigally”, the result of this behavior was the misfortunes that fell on his head one after another. His wife died, then the ship with the goods sank, and trade came to naught. However, after church repentance and his vow to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in one year he gained twice as much property as he had lost before.
However, most often the pilgrims were official people who were sent with instructions and alms by the Moscow government.
The war with Turkey in the second half of the 18th century during the time of Catherine again hampered the Orthodox pilgrimage.
But by the middle of the 19th century, the establishment of the Russian Spiritual Mission in Jerusalem and the creation of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society played a huge role in strengthening the pilgrimage.
Often this kind of religious motives became a cover for predatory trading purposes. The pilgrimage played a huge role in the preparation of the Crusades. In the Middle Ages, pilgrims were the highest nobility, and warriors who sought knighthood, which took place at the Holy Sepulcher, and merchants with trading purposes, and scientists, and adventurers, and magicians 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 revived, only in a new form, since people's interest and faith in Christ do not disappear, but increase even more. This is now facilitated by a huge number of opening temples and monasteries, which often organize such trips around the world, but travel companies are also involved in this.
You can come to any Jerusalem or Athos monastery as a pilgrim. The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem maintains statistics, in which there is information that about half of the spiritual pilgrims from all over the world are Orthodox from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. In addition to Palestine, Russian pilgrims visit Greek Athos, the city of Bari in Italy, where the relics of St. Nicholas are located, the capital of Montenegro, where the right hand of John the Baptist is kept, and other holy places of Christians.
However, pilgrimage has little in common with excursion tourism, as it requires preliminary work on spirituality in terms of cleansing the soul with repentance,awareness of one's sins and humility, this is necessary before visiting such great shrines in order to deeply and reverently penetrate the gospel atmosphere of the holy events of two thousand years ago.
Conclusion
Any Russian pilgrim, realizing for himself the importance of this event, tries to properly prepare for this moment in advance, so he fasts for a while, confesses, takes communion, prays a lot and then, with the blessing of his spiritual mentor, goes on a trip.
The main thing is to understand that pilgrims are not ordinary tourists, but deeply religious people who do not go to rest and consider shrines as museum exhibits, but to see something more intimate, hidden from ordinary eyes.
