From the Camino: In the midst of the Meseta, on the outskirts of Sahagún on the town’s highest hill, lies a Franciscan convent, first built in the 1257 AD. It eventually became a pilgrim hospital and, with the installation of a statue of Mary the Pilgrim in the seventeenth century, the Santuario de la Peregrina. Now it is no longer a permanent church, serving as the Centro de Documentación del Camino de Santiago, a quasi-study center and museum of art and pilgrimage memorabilia.[1]
The original statue of the Pilgrim Virgin is kept in the Sahagún museum, a former a Benedictine convent. The replacement is still a thing of beauty, worthy of contemplation, perhaps three or four feet tall and standing by the altar in the chapel of the Centro. She wears, over time, a variety of unlikely, voluminous dresses for a pilgrim, beautifully decorated, one with bouquets of flowers, another with baroque filigree. Yet, still, she carries a walking staff with a cross on the upper end, from which dangles the pilgrim water gourd. Her head is shielded by a broad brimmed hat festooned with a scallop shell, front and center, though her cheeks are flushed from either the sun or her efforts. Her elaborately stitched and decorated shoulder mantle also contains scallops. She carries the infant Jesus along with her. He, too, has a pilgrim’s water gourd. On feast days, her clothing is upgraded, and the pilgrim hat is replaced with a splendid crown.
One of the stories, associated with this statue, tells of a man, struggling on his pilgrimage as he passed through the Meseta, as so many today would understand, with its shade-less heat. He struggled every day to reach the next refuge back when, as the story is still told, “the darkness was still black and the howls of the wolf bristled the spines of the walkers.” But his strength was lacking, and he was often tempted to stop and spend the night in the open, even if it posed a terrible danger. On the hardest days, though, when his fatigue was greatest, a fleet footed, and lighthearted girl walked in front of him, spurring him onward, inviting him to follow her and encouraging him with her jokes and good humor, dancing and singing for him, and promising refreshment ahead. Eventually, as he needed her less, she stopped appearing. When, at last, he made it to Sahagún, she reappeared to him, for her image was identical to the statue of the Peregrina.
Matt 2:19-23 – 19 When Herod had died, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” 21 He rose, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go back there. And because he had been warned in a dream, he departed for the region of Galilee. 23 g He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazorean.”
For reflection: We don’t think of Mary as a pilgrim, typically, and yet she is portrayed in the Matthean Gospel, as having fled to Egypt, for fear of Herod, and as having returned, on pilgrimage in a sense, to the land of the Promise. All this was to care for her son, Jesus, whose life she and Joseph were protecting from Herod’s willful violence.
Although driven by the promptings of the angels who were speaking to her husband in his dreams, Mary’s journey was motivated by fear, seeking safety for her child. Can we doubt that, all the while, she desired to return home? All of these prompts are played out in every century of human history, including our own, by the dispossessed and migratory. Not everyone’s pilgrimage is motivated by love of God or adventure. Some are driven to it by politics and warfare, famine or disease. How can our pilgrimage open our eyes to the physical struggles of those who have left everything behind, not because of religious pilgrimage, but because of poverty, hunger or terror, fleeing their homes?
And then there are the moments of our own struggle with the limitations and pains of our own bodies. Consider the lovely possibility of Mary meeting us each day at our low point, when we hungry, or our feet are battered, or our shoulders weary from the pack, and encouraging us, singing for us, even dancing for us, inviting us forward to safety and rest?
No one walks alone. Even while solitary, one can walk with either Jesus, or his smiling, happy, encouraging mother, la Peregrina.
Does our pilgrimage give us any window into the lives of the homeless, the undocumented immigrant, the dispossessed? Can we open up our hearts to their plight? Might we, in turn, take on the role of the dancing, encouraging Virgen Peregrina?
