“The Pilgrim Church” is one of those mysterious, allusively beautiful phrases that moves in and out of a Catholic layperson’s consciousness. But one, I must admit, that I never dwelt on until my own brief experience of pilgrimage this summer when I walked part of the Camino de Santiago.
The idea is implicit in the Old Testament typology of nomads and pastoralists, sojourners and tent-dwellers, though less goal-oriented until the New Testament. Perhaps the clearest formulation is St Augustine’s description of the Church as peregrinato, sometimes translated as “wayfarer”, “stranger” and sometimes, tellingly, “migrant”. It also informs the Spanish word for a pilgrim, peregrino, and usually along the Camino de Santiago.
