Why do We… Visit Shrines?

Every year millions of Catholics, as well as believers from other denominations and faiths, go on pilgrimage to a shrine. While they visit shrines for many different reasons, all pilgrims share something in common – a desire to come into closer union with God.

Many Catholic shrines have evolved either because of some significant religious event or because they house a highly revered relic or image. The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe near Mexico City, for example, recalls the apparitions of the Blessed Mother to St. Juan Diego in 1531. The Sacred Grotto in Lourdes, France was built on the site where Our Lady appeared to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. The shrine at Fatima in Portugal commemorates Mary’s message of peace to the children Jacinta, Lucia and Francisco in 1917.

Shrines usually have a primary focus. Lourdes has become renowned as a place where pilgrims come to pray for healing for themselves or for a loved one. At Fatima pilgrims pray for peace – peace in the world and peace within their own hearts. The Oblates at the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows invite pilgrims to pray for healing and hope – healing from the physical, emotional and spiritual pain that afflicts us all, and hope for a peaceful and more fulfilling life.

But shrines don’t have to be places of apparition, miracles or devotion to a particular saint. They can simply provide the physical and spiritual space for believers to come into the presence of God.

And once they do find God, shrine pilgrims are sent back on mission to the world.Believers understand that union with God; does not remove them from the world – rather it propels them into the very middle of it, where God’s people experience hunger, thirst, homelessness and injustice. Pope John Paul II addressed this point when he wrote that shrines are places in which “believers not only revive their faith but also become clearly aware of the duties that derive from it in the social field.”

Shrines and the Missionary Oblates

A visit to a shrine is a physical journey to a place of reverence. But more importantly, it is a stopping off point at that place within the soul where the believer can encounter God face to face. The Missionary Oblates minister at more than 50 Marian shrines on five continents, where they make the Virgin Mary known and loved.