The faithful always go to Mother Mary, seeking her consolation and intercession. 

And Marian pilgrimages can be powerful spiritual experiences. 

Certain days particularly attract pilgrims to celebrate. Do more people come on the Blessed Mother’s birthday on Sept. 8? “Oh absolutely!” answered Chelsey Hare, director of communications at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in Champion, Wisconsin. “The shrine usually sees an increased amount of pilgrims on Marian feast days — her nativity, the Assumption, Immaculate Conception. They come to celebrate and honor the beautiful moments of her life and feel close to her at these sacred sites devoted to her.” 

At the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Pauline Father Maksymilian Ogar has found that is also the case.  

The same holds true at the National Blue Army Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Washington, New, Jersey. 

 

Renewal of Faith 

Father Ogar reported that people will leave a votive for answered prayers, such as a man who left his crutches after experiencing healing. “That is a testament of the miracles that the Our Lady has interceded on their behalf,” explained Father Ogar.  

At the original shrine in Poland, 4,300 miles away, there are also many records of seeming miracles through Our Lady’s intercession.  

“Pilgrimages to shrines help renew our faith,” explained Father Donald Calloway of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception. His own religious community operates The National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, a popular spiritual destination for pilgrims. 

Dominican Father Lawrence Lew, promoter general of the Holy Rosary worldwide, is also the former rector of the Diocesan Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary in London, which welcomes the faithful as pilgrims on a daily basis.  

The Rosary Shrine in London “has offered refuge in a hectic and stressful city to many who come in search of God, or Our Lady’s motherly care, or who simply thirst for beauty,” he told the Register. Because the shrine is also a parish church, daily visitors are “nourished by the beauty of the architecture, the liturgy, and the life of prayer offered by the Dominican friars.” He knows “many who have been struck by this beauty and who have subsequently either become Catholic or returned to the faith.” 

“We go on pilgrimage to shrines and holy places in order to give due honor and reverence to God, or Our Lady, or one of the saints, or even to give thanks for those sacred objects that are related to them and which are potential instruments of saving grace, such as the Holy Rosary,” he also told the Register. “We do so as an act of personal love and devotion, an act of piety or thanksgiving, or sometimes as an act of reparation and penance. Many people also go on pilgrimage to shrines in order to seek a divine favor, or to fulfill a sacred promise, or simply to deepen their knowledge of the faith and of the life and vocation of a particular saint.” 

Places of pilgrimage can and do make a difference in the faithful’s spiritual journeys. “”[M]any people and many saints have experienced moments of conversion through going on pilgrimage and visiting shrines,” the Dominican explained. 

Father Lew shared how, on his last pilgrimage, a devout southern Baptist gentleman, married for decades to a Catholic wife, “announced on the last night that he was now finally convinced that he should become a Catholic, and he resolved to do so when he returned home.” His wife had been praying for his conversion for many years, and he had accompanied her to Mass many Sundays. 

Father Lew described what then happened: “On this pilgrimage, we had visited the holy places where several English Martyrs of the Reformation had been executed for professing the fullness of the Catholic faith and had suffered and died for the Eucharist and the sacraments. Moved by their brave witness and by the conversations and sermons he heard on this pilgrimage, he was able to at last say, ‘Yes’ to God’s call to go up higher. God calls all of us to share in his eternal banquet, and, sometimes, visiting a shrine just helps us to hear that call more clearly.” 

 

Pilgrim’s Progress 

Rosemary Vander Kelen of Luxembourg, Wisconsin, has been on pilgrimages to Marian shrines including Knock and Lourdes and has a special devotion to Our Lady of Champion in Wisconsin. She grew up within a 10-mile range of the shrine first known as Our Lady of Good Help. She told the Register that she “always felt drawn there, even as a child going with family members to pray for uncles in the service.” She felt “drawn by the Holy Spirit and by our Blessed Mother.”  

Also in Wisconsin, pastor and author Father Edward Looney not only encourages people to go on pilgrimage to Marian shrines but is a frequent pilgrim himself as a Marian devotee. His latest book is Places of Grace about various shrines. “You hear stories of so many people who have gone to a Marian shrine, they’ve prayed, and they’ve received a grace,” he told the Register.  “A lot of these shrines exist for that very purpose, for that reason. Historically and through testimony, we just know that these are powerful places.”  

There are some shrines he visits regularly. Champion is one, and Lourdes is another. Once a year, he travels to Our Lady of La Leche in St. Augustine, Florida. “I’m drawn there. The fact that people have prayed there before you, people are going to pray there after you, and you’re a part of this rich history and heritage and tradition, and the fact that God has heard prayers there through the intercession of Mary … there’s something a little extra special when you go to one of these places.” 

Father Looney noted that some shrines have a particular grace associated with them. “If you go to Champion, maybe you’re a catechist. Adele [Brise who received Marian apparitions in 1859] taught the faith, and that was the message. Or you’re praying for the conversion of someone. If you go to Our Lady of La Leche, there’s that particular grace for those who are struggling with conception, with fertility. A lot of people have given birth after they’ve prayed there.” 

 

Marian Devotions 

And take advantage of devotions. 

There is a daily Rosary and adoration at the Czestochowa shrine, the National Shrine of Divine Mercy, and the Blue Army Shrine, where people come “to participate in our events or for quiet time in the chapels, the Rosary garden, the Stations of the Cross and just the grounds covering 150 acres,” David Carollo, executive director of the World Apostolate of Fatima USA, told the Register. “People have a sense of serenity while here. We offer a place away from the difficulties of daily life. We hear this often from visitors.” 

The Chaplet of Divine Mercy, followed by Benediction, is prayed daily at the national shrine in Stockbridge. 

The key is to be set apart from daily demands. 

“Take time to pray; to find silence to reflect on the life of the saints, and of our Christian vocation given to us when we were baptized; to contemplate the beauty of the holy place we’re visiting — its location and the holy events that have taken place here, and the church building and sacred art,” recommended Father Lew. “Hopefully, we will see that God is at work in this holy place and always in order to draw us closer to himself, in order to befriend us. In these holy places, we can hear the Lord saying to us: ‘Friend, go up higher!’ (Luke 14:10).” 

 

‘She Always Leads Us to Jesus’ 

Of course, at Marian shrines — at any shrine, of course — “Mary is the best intercessor,” emphasized Father Ogar, “because Jesus cannot say ‘No’ to his mother.” 

Thus the best thing a pilgrim can do is “come with an intent to pray and to go to Mass, which is the source and the summit of our faith, and to pray the Rosary. The Rosary is the most powerful weapon that the Lord left us other than the Eucharist and the sacraments.” Through the Rosary and any prayers “in front of her icon or her image, she can teach us to unite our heart with the heart of Jesus, because her heart is always united to the heart of Jesus. In every icon, especially in the icon of Czestochowa, her hand is pointed to Jesus. She always leads us to Jesus. It is to Jesus through Mary. And by coming to Mary, we learn to unite our hearts to the heart of Jesus and put all our trust in that Sacred Heart of Jesus that was poured out of love for us.” 

 

Best of Outcomes 

The results of coming to a shrine are unmistakable.  

“One thing in particular that I hear all the time as a priest is that when people make a pilgrimage they often find themselves being inspired to be reconciled with someone,” Father Calloway shared. “I think a major fruit of pilgrimages is helping us to be more merciful because you can’t help but experience the mercy of God yourself when you visit or go on pilgrimage to a shrine.” 

Similarly, Father Ogar said there is something about a Marian shrine specifically. “If you come with an open heart and you really pray and are sincere about it, your life changes. You’re never the same when you have an encounter with the Lord, whenever you come to Our Lady.”