“I was in a holy place, a place for pilgrimage only a few miles from my home, and I had no idea that this church still existed.”

My friend Kevin Considine is a Catholic theologian whose work I always look forward to. I was especially interested in his most recent article because it engages with the theme of pilgrimage as an important, and thoroughly Christian, way of engaging the work for racial justice and reconciliation. He writes about an experience in the church that held Emmett Till’s funeral.

Like a modern Pietà, Till Mobley displayed the corpse of her son for the world to view and to expose the deep evil pulsing through the veins in the United States. The funeral was attended by thousands; pictures of Emmett Till’s body appeared in Jet, Ebony, and other magazines; and his story was told and retold in newspapers and conversations around the nation and the world.

“I was in a holy place, a place for pilgrimage only a few miles from my home, and I had no idea that this church still existed.”This was the spark that lit the fire for the modern civil rights movement: In the depths of tragedy, sorrow, and injustice, God “happened” through the actions of Ms. Till Mobley. 

He goes on,

This pilgrimage problem is larger than my own ignorance, because the vast majority of Catholics and other Christians are also ignorant of this period of time during which God again became tactile in our midst. As in many other times and places, the God of Jesus Christ “happened” and few of the powerful, healthy, and privileged paid attention.

Too few of us make a pilgrimage to seek out the “hush harbors” where ekklesias of slaves gathered, journey along the path of the Underground Railroad, shed tears at the sites where white “Christians” lynched black men on Sundays after church, or pray with and for the martyrs at any of the numerous black churches bombed and attacked by white “Christians.”

Please read the entire article. Kevin is on to something very important for American Christians. We don’t need to travel across the world to visit holy sites. Pilgrimages to the sites of faithful saints are all around for those of us with eyes to see beyond our racial blinders.