Pilgrimage

What is a Christian pilgrimage?

By definition, a Christian pilgrimage is traveling with a spiritual purpose:  to visit holy places connected to the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Our Most Pure Lady (in Palestine ie the Holy Land), the holy apostles, martyrs, saints, visiting their holy relics, graves, objects, miraculous icons, and so forth.

One goes on such a journey in order to honor holy things by venerating them, praying sincerely before them for the strengthening of the faith, spiritual revival and/or the healing of illness. All of this is done with a firm faith that a miracle will happen.  Pilgrimages are also taken as an expression of repentance for our sins and with a wish to be purified.

The goal of the Orthodox mission in Ephesus is to revive the memory of one of the greatest Christian pilgrimage sites, which back in the day was no less of a great site of pilgrimage than the very greatest – Jerusalem, Rome, or Constantinople. The central relic here which we venerate and pray at is the holy, miraculous grave of the eternal bishop and eparch of Ephesus, the immortal pillar of the catholic Church, one of the greatest and most powerful intercessors of Christians to Our Lord Jesus Christ:  St. John the Theologian.