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Four Good Friday pilgrimages in New Mexico
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From Sunland Park near New Mexico’s borders with Texas and Mexico to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico, in the days before Easter, the faithful fill highways and hillsides on Good Friday pilgrimages.
“The pilgrimages are this time to pray, pray the rosary, reflect on the stations of the cross, to reflect on Christ's sacrifice of love for us, and then that prepares us to celebrate Easter,” Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester said.
Good Friday is part of Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter, one of the most significant holidays on the Christian calendar. Good Friday focuses on the Via Dolorosa — the way of suffering — the path Jesus was believed to have taken to his crucifixion, and according to Wester, pilgrimages symbolically echo that path.
“We have the stations of the cross, which is a way for everybody to do a pilgrimage even in your own home. You could physically do it by going to the church or the cathedral,” Wester said. The stations of the cross are a series of images and prayers that follow Jesus’ path from his condemnation to being laid in the tomb.
Good Friday pilgrimages also attract people who are not Catholic.
“There’s become a broader invitation of Catholics and non-Catholics alike from all over the state to climb the Tomé Hill, which is a beautiful volcanic butte that sits in the Rio Grande Valley in Tomé,” said Allen Sanchez, director of the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Some of the pilgrimage destinations, like El Santuario de Chimayó, were spiritually significant long before Catholicism came to the Americas.
At the feet of Christ on Mt. Cristo Rey
Christ gazes out from the top of the 820-foot peak of Sierra de Cristo Rey in Sunland Park. Chiseled from white limestone, the statue of Jesus Christ on the cross towers 42 feet over pilgrims trekking up the 2.5-mile trail that winds to the base of the statue.
The statue came from the vision of Smeltertown parish priest Fr. Lourdes Costa, and the El Paso Diocese raised money to build it. Sculptor Urbici Soler hand-picked 40 tons of limestone from a quarry in Austin, Texas. The monument was built in 1939 and dedicated in 1940.
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Ruben Escandon grew up in the shadow of the monument. His grandparents were instrumental in building the statue, and his parents helped maintain the monument. He is a third-generation volunteer — a story he shares with other volunteers who still work to maintain the monument.
Escandon remembers changing out of church clothes and into work clothes on Sunday afternoons to go hang out on the mountain with his family. The men cleared trails and built retaining walls while the women cooked meals for everyone, Escandon recalls.
For 40 years, Escandon has continued the tradition, helping to maintain the monument. At 18 or 19, Escandon joined the Mt. Cristo Restoration Committee and has been on the board for the past 30 years. After becoming a police officer, he helped with security for events at the monument.
Lightning strikes have damaged the statue, and vandalism is a problem, Escandon said. People have thrown rocks at the statue’s face and broken off toes.
But most of the restoration committee’s work is maintaining the trail up the mountain, which is often washed out by rain. Natural erosion takes a toll on the path, so volunteers spend weekends leading up to Good Friday clearing the trail.
On Good Friday, 8,000 to 12,000 people will journey up the mountain. Some will walk. Some will make the trek on their knees. In times of war, mothers have promised to make pilgrimages to the top of the mountain if their sons come home safely, Escandon said.
“When you reach the top, getting to experience that view and then the view of the monument itself, it's just something kind of magical that happens and you feel a spirit come over you as you're standing there at the foot of that monument,” Escandon said.
Walking I-25 to San Lorenzo
Socorro’s San Miguel Mission is one of the oldest Catholic churches in the United States. The church officially celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2015, but San Miguel is not alone. The historic mission parish oversees five mission churches that still offer services, including the site almost 12 miles north where hundreds of the pious journey on Good Friday: San Lorenzo.
Nadine Ulibarri-Keller, along with her husband Nick Keller, cleans and cares for the San Lorenzo Mission, a small adobe church in rural Polvadera. Ulibarri-Keller is mayordomo for San Lorenzo, just as her grandparents were before her.
"Aside from the post office, (San Lorenzo) is the only public building. So, we are pretty small and most people don't even know where we are. It's a small congregation,” Ulibarri-Keller said.
The church’s namesake was a martyred deacon in Rome in the 200s.
“He is an amazing intercessory saint and for ages, for years and years, people have just really remained faithful to him in this particular mission,” Ulibarri-Keller said. “It’s kind of miraculous on its own ... It’s faith that draws them here and faith that keeps generations of families coming back.”
San Lorenzo has a dedicated following, said Ulibarri-Keller, and the small Polvadera church named for him gets visitors from all over the United States all year. But during Holy Week, the visits intensify.
“One of the things that we've learned is that if we don't leave the church open overnight starting on Holy Thursday, then somebody's going to be knocking at our door at 3 o'clock in the morning, 'can we go open up the church,’” Ulibarri-Keller said. Ulibarri-Keller and her husband live nearby on the farm where her father was born.
Pilgrims typically take two paths: walk south from San Lorenzo to San Miguel, or leave a car at San Lorenzo near dawn, and get a ride back home before journeying on foot to San Lorenzo. Some also take a more arduous path through the wilderness and across nearby mountains.
“And there used to be an organized Good Friday walk from Magdalena down Highway 60 through Socorro to San Miguel, and some people will continue to San Lorenzo. That’s a really long walk,” Ulibarri-Keller said.
Ulibarri-Keller has done Good Friday pilgrimages herself. Her first was a 10-mile journey to Chimayó. She used the pilgrimage to reflect on issues in her life, clear her mind and get more in touch with her faith. In recent years, she’s made the pilgrimage to San Lorenzo from La Sagrada Familia Mission in Lemitar, nearly 4 miles away.
“I think it's just helped me get more in touch with my faith and really get more in touch with that feeling of being in the desert. You know, those 40 days in the desert that Christ participated in that people have gone to pray," Ulibarri-Keller said. “It's another way and another form of prayer.”
Reflecting on salvation and sin on Tomé Hill
For 30 years, Jerry Baca has risen early on Good Friday and made his way to Our Lady of Belen Church to meet other walkers at first light. They often start as a group praying the rosary or The Divine Mercy. Along the 14-mile journey to Tomé Hill and back down, the group drifts apart, taking time for private reflection and prayer.
But for the last two years, Baca hasn’t made the journey. Instead, he’s been running a soup kitchen on Good Friday and every Friday in Belen.
"Maybe my doing what I was doing for 30 years caused me to open the soup kitchen,” Baca said with a laugh.
Tomé Hill draws thousands of Good Friday pilgrims every year
Good Friday is a day of fasting and prayer for reflection on Christ, Baca said.
“It's also a day used for reflection on our own life, and how we've sinned and turned away from Christ and even within year to year. Our human nature causes us to sin, probably every single day of our life,” Baca said.
Tomé Hill is a 500-acre volcanic butte. Half of the hill sits on the Rio Grande Valley, while the other half stretches across the mesa.
The tradition of climbing the hill for the Good Friday Passion is borrowed from a Lenten Good Friday pageant that the parish of Tomé did for many years starting in the 1700s, according to Sanchez, the Catholic bishops conference director.
“There are statues in the Tomé church that were used in that pageantry of reenacting the judgment and crucifixion of Jesus,” Sanchez said.
The 300-year-old statues are made with leather arms, legs and knee joints, so they could be put up on the cross and taken off, Sanchez said. The pageantry was lost for a while, then reborn in a new way with a connection to the hill.
“The journey removes us from our distractions at home,” Sanchez said. “It gives us a task for our body, that we’re concentrating on this walk.”
Praying for healing at Chimayó
Chimayó in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is the best-known pilgrimage spot in New Mexico. An estimated 300,000 people visit the site throughout the year, according to a National Park Service history of Chimayó. Tens of thousands make pilgrimages on Good Friday. Famously, some people walk all the way from Albuquerque to El Santuario de Chimayó.
Chimayó is perhaps the best-known Good Friday pilgrimage site in New Mexico
Chimayó was believed to be a site of healing before Spain conquered modern-day New Mexico. According to the NPS history, Pueblo and Tewa people used Chimayó for healing before the Spanish occupation.
In 1813, Don Bernardo Abeyta wanted to build a chapel dedicated to Our Lord of Esquipulas on land that he believed had healing powers. There were so many stories of miraculous healings that a larger shrine was built in 1816, according to the NPS history.
Archbishop John Wester has a liturgy to lead on Good Friday, so he cannot spend the whole morning on a pilgrimage, but he does a shorter walk beginning about a mile from Chimayó.
Wester spends much of the walk reflecting on Jesus, ways the church could better help people, and on his own life.
“I think of how in our own day here in 2024, we encounter violence and sometimes my thoughts turn to the poor of New Mexico, to the violent crime, to the people who are afflicted with addiction, drug or alcohol addiction. These are crosses that we bear in New Mexico,” Wester said.
