Santiago

Today is the feast day of Saint James. It has got to be a zoo over the ocean in Santiago de Compostela, though not quite as much as were it a Jubilee year (next year when the feast lands on a Sunday).


When we finally arrived in Santiago on 4 May 2004, my first reaction was, 'So this is the object of my desire? This is the thing for which I have been slogging 400+ kms?' And the next thought was, 'Oh God, do I have to go up all those stairs?' It was raining (of course; Galicia in a normal year has 165 or so days of rain) so it was best to go in and so we did. The rituals in which we engaged, placed our fingers into the Pillar of Glory and knocking our heads on the bust of the architect of the Romanesque church that is hidden behind that Baroque façade, no longer are permitted.


Of course what we really wanted to see was the massive thurible, the botafumeiro. Here, at the end of the Pilgrims' Mass, the attendants are stoking it up, about to launch it, and start pulling on the rope to get it swinging in a high arc over the north and south transepts. Stunning.

So I think of all those pilgrims who have descended on Santiago today knowing some of what it is like... knowing how hard it is to leave the pilgrim route.