It is the same anywhere in the world. If there is a famous pilgrimage center, many other things would be happening in the world around it. If possible, a township or even a city would get built around the pilgrimage center. There will be various businesses coming up there. There will be accommodation facilities for pilgrims. Especially, there will be businesses, depending on the kind of offerings or sacrifices offered there. In the past, there would be also many beggars on those streets. Many a people would be finding their livelihood depending on the place of pilgrimage.

Most of this was also true about the Temple of Jerusalem. But there is one thing. Pilgrims would mostly be staying in the homes of their relatives or acquaintances. They could also stay in the temple for a day or two. The temple authorities themselves had made feeding arrangements for the pilgrims and the poor subsisting there. We can assume that many people were staying in the temple courts. Like Simeon and Anna, those who gave their lives to God, prayer, singing, prayers of the hours, and meditation. Then there were the children who were presented and left in the temple, like the boy Samuel. Tradition has it that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was also presented in the temple as a child. There were facilities for such little boys and girls to stay. From morning onwards, there were scribes and teachers to teach them the Jewish scriptures and traditions. That is why the boy Jesus, who came as a pilgrim with his parents at the age of twelve, stayed back in the temple.

The coming together of prophets, sages, saints, and children for worship, study, respect, discussion, devotion, and rituals - were all taking place there in the Temple of Jerusalem. If only the centralized structure and alienation of it from the concrete life had been avoided, if only the temple had come down to enter into the life of the people!

History has it that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. That was because they failed to distinguish between what was necessary and not so important traditions and dogmas. How long will it take for a society that fails to distinguish between the essentials and accidents to learn that the delay that they are causing is shaking up its own capstone?