The practice of pilgrimage for Holy Week is ancient; in the early days of Christianity, people would walk around the city and area of Jerusalem to remember the events of the Passion of Christ, and today’s Stations of the Cross hearken back to that practice. Walking is a way of remembering, a way of offering one’s body to the story, of praying with the whole self.

For the chaplaincy, it also has roots in our common life; this year we have been leading neighborhood pilgrimages that witness and accompany the Harvard & Legacy of Slavery Report.

We have been walking our familiar streets and common spaces with ears tuned to the stories of our common past. We have been celebrating church outside, and wondering how we can better be connected to the land which supports us, holds our past, sustains our present, and perhaps reaches into our future. So to employ the practice of pilgrimage for us this year is an extension of our desire to deeply embody our history, reconnect to our land, and find the way of the gospel in the simple fact of being ‘on the road.’