The pilgrimage as a picture of human life
Life is a way. Each of us walks it step by step, carrying our own burden. We make detours, wandering off the way, we go through difficult moments, finding easy and winding ways. We walk together with other people and towards other people. We walk ways that others have already walked before. There, we find the symbols left behind by the others and that allow us to find our own way. The way as a metaphor for our life takes in everything, the things we come across and those that happen to us, the things that we explore and those that we suffer from, the things that we build up and those that we succeed in. Something moves us. We set off, we have reasons for setting off and we venture to do it. By walking we make a journey by ourselves. Some of our fellow travellers join us. We need provisions and signals for the journey. That part of the way that we’ve already walked is useful as experience. All along the History, philosophies and religions have discussed the itinerant condition of human beings in one way or another. Human’s moral life is equal to a pilgrimage and what we have to do is to specify the journey and lay down the rules, especially its goal and its access roads. At first, the word pilgrim denotes traveller, it is equal to foreign. The perpetual pilgrimage is called the perpetual exile. Applied to a Christian person, pilgrim then means that their earthly life is seen as an exile out of the native land, which is Heaven.
According to Filón, “Life is a journey from down here to Heaven.”
Vórtice: “virtuous people are aware of being foreigners in this land and they know perfectly that they go through it as it was a pilgrimage.”
“We are just pilgrims on a journey; our native land is Heaven.” Caetan of Thiene