A Great Cloud Of Witnesses: The Power That Comes With Holy Sites And Saints

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(OPINION) If you’re reading this post on Oct. 1, Kathy and I are winging across the Atlantic, returning to the States after spending two weeks in Italy. For me, the trip been a kind of pilgrimage. Now there’s a word with which many of us are unfamiliar.

Not the word pilgrimage itself. We know it means walking over a distance to some place for the purpose of venerating (honoring) it. What few of us know — and this includes me for many decades after coming to Christ — is why would a Christian venerate a place or a person?

Paul Kingsnorth knows why. A recent convert to the Orthodox tradition, Paul and his family live in the west of Ireland. He’s been on a kind of pilgrimage over the last two years, visiting 50 holy wells in and around Ireland, all of which were originally Catholic.

One of the many happy side-effects of my well tour has been a much deeper immersion in the world of the early Irish church, which I knew very little about a couple of years back. I still know far too little, but then I’m just a wandering writer, not an academic historian. This, at any rate, is my excuse. What I do know is that during Ireland’s astonishing spiritually productive Christian Golden Age, which perhaps stretched from the sixth to the tenth centuries, this land produced uncountable numbers of monasteries and churches, which in turn produced uncountable numbers of saints.

These saints include Patrick and are commemorated at holy sites, featuring holy wells, crosses, and relics. Kingsnorth reminds us that the power of holy sites is they’re sewn into the landscape of Ireland, reminding us of the saints’ living presence — a mystery, he writes, that we in the West have forgotten and need to be reminded of more than ever.

The kind of pilgrimage I have been on… is nothing to do with ‘idol worship’ or ‘superstition’ or some attempt to ‘paganise’ the path of Christ. It is simply that reminder that God is in all things living, including our landscape. A reminder that the saints still live. A reminder that the world is a much greater mystery than we can ever fathom. I’m an Orthodox Christian, and one reason for that is that the Christian East, unlike much of the West, never lost sight of this reality. God fills all things. Matter can be blessed. Prayer works. Nature sings to us hourly of the glories of its creator. The saints live. I can prove none of it, and yet I am sure it is true.

It is true. But with the Enlightenment, many in the West lost sight of the power of holy sites and saints. If you doubt it, read Kingsnorth’s accounts of the wells he’s visited, including this one of a hermit who lives in a cave. It comes from pre-Enlightenment Christianity, the 1,500-year era of the faith that most of us are unfamiliar with.

I know I wasn’t for decades.

To read the rest of Michael Metzger’s post, please visit his Substack page.

Michael Metzger is the president and founder of The Clapham Institute, which consults ministries and nonprofits.