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14 July 2025

Pilgrimage

Being a jubilee year many have planned to make pilgrimages to different places. As pilgrimage is a journey, it is a journey relating our life to the Gospel. We pray that the promises of the Gospel may be realised in our life and in the world. It is an honest desire, a responsible commitment. In this effort, we join with the saints who have gone before us, and our brothers and sisters who walk their lives through bitter valleys. Our difficulties in adapting a gospel-way are also brought into the steps of a pilgrim journey. There is also a willingness to build a civilisation of love, and for a radical conversion in our life. It also calls for working against the structures of evil. these elements are behind the usual instruction of confession and receiving communion. These confessions and receiving communion are not as a conditional obligation, but as sign of our readiness for what is said here. merely completing a pilgrimage cannot secure salvation, free of sins, or guarantee specific blessings. Even praying for the intentions of the Holy Father adds to our journey the concerns facing humanity and the mission of the Church.

A pilgrimage and spiritual tour are different. The second does not involve the essentials that we have seen here. There are many who plan for trips to far holy places, shrines. just making a trip, and paying a visit and offering those particular offerings of the shrine do not make a pilgrimage. Though there may be an intention of conversion of heart, the element of justice would be missing. With a pure intention and devotion a visit to a nearby place declared by our own local authorities is worth a pilgrimage. if our cojourneying with Christ and the suffering humanity is really seen in our pilgrimages, it would not remain a blind individual pious practice. it would surely realise the promise of the gospel i action through our reaching out to the needy.

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