The Road To Compostela
Loxterkamp, David
THE ROAD TO CO M POSTELA A doctor takes stock David Loxterkamp eneath the high altar of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in the wind-worn province of Galicia, Spain, lies a silver...
...In 813 the monk Pelayo discovered it, Bishop Tiomidoro authenticated it, and King Alphonse II built a modest cathedral over the grave of Spain's new patron saint...
...There we greeted other pilgrims with whom we had shared the camino, and took photographs of one another in tired, huddled poses...
...Bones prove not only that the saint once lived, but that she still mingles in the traditions and triumphs of the church...
...We know him through his disciples...
...I dressed in layers of nylon, polyester, blended wool, fleece...
...Friends stole it away on a stone boat bound for Spain, where it lay quietly in a Roman mausoleum for over 750 years...
...As a foreigner, I was aware of my vulnerability, and grateful for my good fortune...
...The militant nationalism that helped end Moorish occupation of the peninsula in the fifteenth century has been replaced by national and European pride...
...I could have quoted Henri Nouwen, who after seven months in a Trappist monastery concluded: "It did not work...
...James the Pilgrim...
...It was a day like all others in Galicia, where it is always raining, just rained, or about to rain...
...That noon we attended the pilgrims' Mass and circulated among those whom God had improbably and inscrutably brought together...
...It is one of the great consolations of the pilgrimage, and one deeply missed when it is over...
...Penitent travelers can expect a full discount on their purgatorial bill instead of the usual half off...
...I battled impatience with the slower, less focused members of the group, and had to stifle my annoyance at their exaggerated mannerisms...
...y trek to Santiago ended with a shrug of relief and disappointment...
...James (July 25) falls on a Sunday (a so-called Xacobean Holy Year...
...This marriage of giving and receiving has worked for a millennium, and is working still...
...The camino is a finite journey, but onethat spans the emotions of a life: youthful optimism to mid-journey focus, to a growing inattention to personal hygiene and social grace...
...dart, sinuses snort, and suddenly the whole amebic mass was moving, whispering, packing, walking to start the new day...
...many just need a holiday...
...Another miracle was worked: the faith of an aging, secularized American had become childlike again...
...I longed for the solitude of my darkened den in the hours before my family arises, the coffee steaming in the glow of my Macintosh...
...L P The dangers of today's camino are no longer wolves and witches, swindlers and the highwaymen of legend...
...James the Greater...
...Sitting at home and meditating on the divine presence is not enough for our time...
...We (must] come to the end of a long journey and see that the stranger we meet there is no other than ourselves—which is the same as saying we find Christ in him...
...In Spain, a pilgrim is never made to feel a stranger...
...Our task, Thomas Merton has suggested, is to travel to the ends of the earth "and there find ourselves in the aborigine who most differs from ourselves...
...Gone is the medieval angst over "salvation," though the vast majority of today's hikers acknowledge some spiritual intent...
...How would I answer my wife and friends who wondered: "Why did you go...
...The numbers will quadruple this year when the feast day of St...
...They were fishermen by trade until Jesus summoned them...
...For what does the world really know of the pilgrim...
...Catholicism is not mere etiquette, philosophy, or law...
...The Gospels say that he was the son of Zebedee and brother of John...
...The real challenge of the camino for me involved an interior journey and the company it kept...
...Dessert invariably included fruit, flan, or yogurt, and all for six euros...
...We dreamed pilgrim dreams of hot showers, pain-less feet, and warm breezes to dry our dripping laundry...
...His martyrdom is the first—and only one—among the Apostles to be recorded in Scripture...
...in an open dormitory...
...I confess that my friends and I lived royally on inexpensive food, fine wine, and clean accommodations...
...They en-courage recollection, prayer, even pilgrimage...
...Soon we would gather on the tarmac and brace our-selves against the morning chill, looking for a directional arrow or a pilgrim just ahead as our guide...
...For a thousand years, pilgrims have been walking a path to his bones...
...Days are drenched in the strong scent of cigarette smoke, all-purpose soap, cow manure, eucalyptus leaf, espresso coffee, and the bouquet of our toil and sweat...
...Life would stir and release its shadows, as we rolled from our bunks and hobbled to the water closet...
...Luckier still, we might find a vespers service at 7 p.m., and a much anticipated pilThe camino is like a moving monastery, but one where you can laugh out loud...
...The menu del dia usually consisted of white bean or tripe soup, green beans, or egg and potato omelet...
...Chores followed: a shower, washing clothes, nap, and journal entry...
...The following day we hopped a train from Burgos to Sahagun, and began to hike the Camino Frances...
...We respond to the power of touch, and to "seeing with our own eyes...
...Relics lend a tacit proof of someone's holiness...
...The second course was a choice of trout, hake, veal, or chicken, garnished with French fries...
...The look and smell of him seem to provide comfort to those he en-counters...
...A typical day began before 7 a.m...
...They unite us worldwide through their being imbedded in every consecrated altar, a practice tied to the early On the trail of the martyrs JORDAN / POYSA Commonweal 16 February 27, 2004 Christians who celebrated Mass over the bones of the martyrs in the catacombs of Rome...
...Our itinerary reflected the times: we flew to Madrid, rented a car, and spent the first night in the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silas, where we adjusted to jetlag and treated ourselves to the sounds of ancient chant...
...The most moving moment, and one that I had not anticipated, happened during my descent to the sepulcher holding the body of St...
...On a stone fence or mat of grass, we would unpack our picnic booty—bags of apples, oranges, bread, cheese, ham, juice, and chocolate—and savor the still and the weightlessness of the moment...
...And we harbor and honor their bones...
...We literally race with Simon Peter to Christ's empty tomb, and we side with Thomas, who needed to probe the wounds of the risen Lord...
...Blaise, wear the smudge of Ash Wednesday, and kiss the wood on Good Fri-day...
...Relics remain the hard facts of a religion that requires us to suspend our postmodern sense of disbelief...
...My heart seemed to ache with what God had uncovered inside me...
...Pilgrims—now as always—walk the camino to Santiago for mixed reasons [see Paul Moses, page 26...
...Our meditation is punctuated by crunching gravel, barking dogs, crowing roosters, lowing cows, screeching espresso machines, honking bread trucks, and the dim whine of traffic on nearby national highways...
...By midmorning, we usually wound around a tiny table in a smoky bar, sipping the life force that is cafe con leche grande Then we circled in prayer and were off again...
...Catholics still queue for candles crossed at our necks on the feast of St...
...Some simply value the physical exercise, while David Loxterkamp is a physician who lives and practices medicine in Belfast, Maine...
...We are even inclined to acknowledge someone's holiness if she lies in-corrupt in a glass case...
...From Monte Gozo, where for centuries pilgrims have first glimpsed the beautiful spires of Santiago's cathedral, we could see only the thick morning haze...
...James...
...They reconnect us to that first, unmarred moment when our faith was potent, undoubting, alive...
...Here the span of two thousand years vanished instantly, and the living rejoiced with the dead...
...the pilgrim gives thanks...
...By ten o'clock we had collapsed on our bunks and set weary thoughts adrift on the tidal snores resounding through the hall...
...in fact, it peaked in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when some years over a half million souls traveled a route already serviced by a system of hostels and military outposts...
...Little lights wouldgrims' meal in a local restaurant...
...There is an often-repeated saying on the camino: the tourist demands...
...This is one of the mysteries that the camino continues to throw back at me even now: We are Catholics to the bone...
...Blessed are you, pilgrim, if you discover that a step back-ward to help another is more valuable than one hundred forward without awareness of those at your side...
...Because a monastery is not built to solve problems but to praise the Lord in the midst of them...
...No yellow-brick road DAVID LOXTERKAMP Commonweal 1 8 February 27, 2004...
...Candles were lit for those we had left behind, and in gratitude for our safe arrival...
...If we were lucky, there was a cold San Miguel or Mahu beer waiting in a nearby bar...
...it did not solve my problems...
...The popularity of the pilgrimage is hardly new...
...No one questions his intentions or his sacrifice...
...Still, the notion of pilgrimage suggests something more...
...THE ROAD TO CO M POSTELA A doctor takes stock David Loxterkamp eneath the high altar of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in the wind-worn province of Galicia, Spain, lies a silver sarcophagus containing the relics of St...
...I could have answered like the Japanese pilgrim I encountered who quickly tired of my interrogation: "The camino is for walking," he said, "not for thinking...
...Everywhere, crucerios (stone cross-es) rise along the roadside, chapels dot the deserted hills, church bells toll, and parish priests wave as if in benediction...
...I was reminded of Kathleen Norris's observation that "living in community is all the asceticism you need...
...ast October, I became another thread in the still-unfolding tapestry of camino history...
...Oriented by yellow arrows and concrete markers, we joined the sure, unbroken line of pilgrim ants...
...We laughed, lounged, unwound from our day as we planned the next...
...Even the physical elements have been tamed by Gore-Tex and Thermolite....The real challenge of the camino for me involved an interior journey...
...People of all faiths and in every age have responded to the restless desire for theophany by walking to where holy men and women lived and were martyred in the service of a god...
...We bless ourselves with holy water and take Communion under both species, to more fully experience the Real Presence...
...Commonweal 17 February 27, 2004 The dangers of today's camino are no longer wolves and witches, swindlers and the highwaymen of legend...
...Even the physical elements have been tamed by Gore-Tex and Thermolite...
...Then having molted a layer of clothing, we swung on our packs and trudged further westward...
...It was only after my return home that I began to realize my deeper fear...
...We were the "pilgrims from the United States, starting at Sahagun," the priest announced before a concelebrated Mass in English, German, and Spanish...
...James belonged to the apostolic inner circle and witnessed the raising of the daughter of Jairus, the Transfiguration, and the agony in the garden of Gethsemane...
...With a fresh simplicity they soon come to their senses...
...Of course, they are both right, but the camino is forever beckoning us beyond our tentative conclusions...
...My personal devotion became placing a pebble on the official camino monuments that bear a scallop emblem, and offering the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner...
...ilgrims accept a new denominator: Their sole purpose is to walk, and to walk toward Cornpostela...
...I was self-conscious of my snoring, my night terrors, my social insecurities...
...Who was James, and why has he become a posthumous celebrity in Spain...
...Before dinner was even served, we had devoured a basket of chewy bread and a bottle of unlabeled wine...
...By late afternoon the sky had darkened, and we hurried to the nearest albergue (hostel), had our certificates stamped, paid the suggested offering of three euros, and staked out a bunk with our backpacks...
...It yields its wisdom incrementally for as often and as long as we return to it—whether in body or in spirit—in search of self-awareness and hope...
...We walked until early afternoon...
...and "Did it work...
...And I know that a year, two years, or even a lifetime as a Trappist monk would not have 'worked' either...
...By his walking stick, scallop shell, and backpack, he is known and respected, greeted and received as a blessing...
...He was be-headed by Herod Agrippa in A.D...
...With three friends, I spent twenty days walking the pilgrimage route to Santiago...
...All our efforts to prevent swollen limbs and bubbling blisters quickly failed, and we were required to hire a taxi to make up lost time...
...In fact, it was only when we ran smack into the nine-hundred-year-old edifice in the Plaza de Obradoiro that we realized its size and beauty...
...In the end, the pilgrim cannot merely contemplate the journey, but must walk it...
...44, and his body was thrown to the animals...
...Modern walkers love to travel, and many long for the diversion of strange lands and foreign tongues...
...Only that he is walking, walking toward Compostela...
...The most fabled trail follows the Camino Frances, which stretches nearly five hundred miles from east of the Pyrenees to Santiago...
...The destination itself, Santiago de Compostela, becomes the heavenly gates, the mythical Emerald City, its towering spires and baroque altars rising above the bones of a man who literally embraced Christ and died for him...
...Then we entered the church and dutifully touched the base of the Tree of Jesse, where a hand's imprint has been worn deeply by endless repetition, and climbed the steps behind the high altar to hug the jeweled statue of Santiago Peregrino, St...
...The trail begins in the Pyrenees, stretches to Compostela, and then flows abruptly to the sea at Fines Terra, transforming the pilgrim into a drop of water who is subsumed in the vast eternal stream...
...It is an embodied faith, and bodies—living and dead—are what convey the Gospels' claims...
...The mortal remains of the saints—revered by Catholics as relics—belong to the fleshy fabric of the Catholic tradition...
...In 2002, nearly seventy thousand people completed the journey and so earned a certificate, or cornpostela, from the Archdiocese of Santiago...
...This fall from grace is forgiven in a common camino prayer: "Blessed are you, pilgrim, if what concerns you most is not arriving, but arriving with the others...
...The bones of the saints lie at the heart of our Christian faith: that a man named Jesus lived and died and proved himself the Christ...
...It offers us a universal road, one that designates us pilgrims and march-es us to God...
Vol. 131 • February 2004 • No. 4
