A Lenten Pilgrimage: The Songs of Ascent (Ps 120-134)
Join me on a Spiritual Lenten Pilgrimage beginning Ash Wednesday
In 2024, I walked the Camino Francés from St. Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. In 2025, I walked what I called the Camino Saint Dominic from Madrid to Segovia. I receive many graces on pilgrimage: silence, the ability to slow down, and deeper prayer. Pilgrimage is a Christian tradition rooted in Israel’s practice of annual ascents to Jerusalem.
Pilgrimage is essential in our noisy world, where chaos can spiritually choke us and drown out Christ’s voice. While age, physical limitations, cost, or time may prevent formal pilgrimages like the Camino, we can practice pilgrimage through simple daily walks or other spiritual journeys.
This Lent, I will be exploring a type of spiritual pilgrimage using the Psalms of Ascent as a framework. My prayers is that this spiritual pilgrimage is a movement towards a holy encounter with Christ. This encounter is an encounter of holy friendship.
Why the Psalms of Ascent?
The Israelites made annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast days—Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles—at the Temple. Three times a year, God’s people ascended to Jerusalem to praise him, singing Psalms as they went. Worship requires movement. The pilgrims moved toward God, praising him in song. The fifteen Psalms of Ascent centered on mercy, exile, hope, trust, and blessings. This “going up” together surely shaped the pilgrim’s interior life, since worship is never an isolated event.
Join me this Lent
We often think of Lent as a season of restraint. There is something holy in giving up what we’re attached to. But what if we approached Lent as a journey—a “going up” where we walk with Christ toward Jerusalem? Christ asks us to take up our cross daily and walk with him, not as mere observers but as companions on the road. Lent invites us into this rhythm.
The Church has always understood herself as a pilgrim people. The Psalms of Ascent give us the language to walk with him. Over the next 40 days, I will reflect on these psalms, hoping for a deeper friendship and encounter with Christ. I invite you to walk with me and to share this journey with others.
© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.
This I will do..
Do you chant the psalms?