Pilgrimage of the Heart

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 137

From the earliest times pilgrimage has provided an image of the inner life of Christians. In its external aspect it became an ever more popular form of devotion throughout the Middle Ages. The two concepts were not simple alternatives, for the several strands within each were constantly interwoven. With a wealth of illustration, Sister Benedicta demonstrates that while countless Christians sought to improve their material lot by undertaking pilgrimages to the shrines of the saints, they could also find in the monastic ideal the pattern for their own inner journey to the heavenly Jerusalem. She shows, finally, how the two major conceptions of pilgrimage were given a new direction in the sixteenth century when, in the wake of the Reformation which abolished the custom, Lancelot Andrewes and John Bunyan would portray the Christian pilgrimage as ‘life itself, the end indeed death and the way the way of the cross’. This remains true for all of us who today go on pilgrimage in whatever guise … but ‘however severe and demanding the life of pilgrimage might be’, arrival at the goal is ‘delight, pleasure, wonder and love’. Sister Benedicta Ward SLG entered the Community of the Sisters of the Love of God in 1955. She teaches spirituality in the University of Oxford and is an Emeritus Fellow of Harris Manchester College. She has written a number of books on early monasticism and on the Middle Ages, and is one of the world’s leading writers on the legacy of the Desert Fathers. Her published works include books on the Desert Fathers, the Venerable Bede and St Anselm, and on miracles and relics in the Christian tradition.