Dear Family, Friends, and readers,
Praise God! With much patient endurance, we finally arrived at the tomb of Saint James at 7:30pm local time on Wednesday, July 3rd, which was the feast of a fellow apostle, Saint Thomas. Thirty-three days of walking (and one day of rest) came to their end as the golden beams of sunlight struck the impressive edifice. A bagpiper street performer, catching sight of our backpacks, changed his theme to provide an epic soundtrack for this epic ending to our journey, as we descended the steps into the main piazza. I am immensely grateful to you, my spiritual benefactors, for praying us there! Our last day was especially hot and difficult, covering 40K under the same sun, which made us even more grateful for the arrival.
We caught the tail end of the 7:30pm Mass that evening and brought your prayers and intentions to the tomb of the saint who spread the Gospel to the end of the known world.
After a good night's sleep, we went to the pilgrims' office the morning of the 4th to receive our "Compostela" which is a document in latin, the official language of the Church, issued by the Cathedral, to officially declare that we have arrived as pilgrims to the tomb of Saint James and have devoutly visited the Church with a religious reason, a "pietatis causa."
The scene was of great joy throughout the entire city as pilgrims reconnected after days, or even weeks of not seeing each other. Just as we met up with a Hungarian pilgrim who had just arrived after two months of walking from Le Puy, France, a group of Russian tourists approached us out of curiosity, desiring to see our compostela. They did not know all the struggles we had been through, but they had immense respect, or at least curiosity for these oddities in the modern world, that is, us, the pilgrims, who decide to take a month out of their life to walk to the tomb of a saint. Flashes went off left and right. The only thing that was missing was the red carpet.
At noon that day, we attended the Pilgrim Mass, which brought to end in a very fitting way the pilgrimage. More on that in the next post...
With much gratitude again!
Pax et Bonum,
Paul
