From the tomb of Santiago / St. James on my second visit: I dropped off my backpack, and made my way to the great cathedral. The front was still covered with scaffolding, just like the first time, but this second time the thought occurred to me that all this repair work was a good thing. I think of this great cathedral as something very special in my own life, and it makes me happy to think that it was being cared for, that future generations might tread there.
By chance, I saw five friends that I had made on the Camino sitting in the pews waiting for Mass. They had arrived the day before me, and I didn’t expect to see them till later that evening when we were going to tour the cathedral roof together. None of them were Catholic but it didn’t matter to them or to me. We had done the last weeks together, and I was so pleased to see them. Celebrations are always better with friends.
I made my way to the sacristy, as I was there in time for the pilgrims’ Mass. I was one of about twelve priests, but the only native English speaker in the group, so they asked me to do one of the prayers of the faithful in English. I was pleased to have even so small a part to play in the liturgy. I was part of a companionship of priests and pilgrims from all over the world. I remember my heart was just singing! I later read a passage from the Codex Calixtinus, though written so many centuries ago, still is true: “To this place come the tribes of barbarians and those who inhabit every climate on earth…. It arouses joy and admiration to see the choirs of pilgrims at the base of the venerable altar of St. James in perpetual vigil: the Teutons on one side, the French on another, the Italians on another; they stand in groups, with lighted candles in their hands; the whole Church is thus illuminated as if by the sun on a clear day. Each one with his compatriots individually and adeptly fulfill his turn on guard. There one can hear a variety of languages, diverse voices speaking strange tongues; conversations and ballads in German, English, Greek and the languages of other tribes and different peoples from all parts of the world”[1] Centuries have passed, and this description from nearly a thousand years ago is still true.
Genesis 15:7-12, 17-18 – 7 He then said to him: I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as a possession. 8 “Lord God,” he asked, “how will I know that I will possess it?” 9 He answered him: Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. 10 He brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other; but the birds he did not cut up. 11 Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram scared them away. 12 As the sun was about to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a great, dark dread descended upon him… 17 When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram.
For reflection: The connection of the death of martyrs, and the placement of altars over their tombs is no accident. Martyrs share in a particularly powerful way in the self-giving of Jesus Christ on the cross.
The altar, itself, resting over the tomb of one who gave up their life for service of God, is a place where we enter into the timeless significance of that once-and-for-all self-offering of Jesus for our sake.
But let’s not be confused. It’s not that God the Father was ever pleased that his Son should suffer simply for the sake of sufferings.
Back in Genesis 15, Abram acted out an ancient Near Eastern ceremony of covenanting, between rulers, in which the lesser ruler would cut up animals, and pass between them, as if to say to the more powerful overlord, “Let it happen to me as has happened to them if I fail in the terms of this covenant.” The greater lord did not undergo this humiliation. This rite was a human construction. It seems barbaric to us perhaps, but the powerful in our day are no less adept at humbling the less powerful, perhaps in less bloody manner, but still viciously done. Yet we note in the scripture that the smoking firepot and the flaming torch that pass between the split animals represent God, not Abram. As early as this moment, the very first covenanting with Abram and his descendants, God takes on the burden.
In the course of human history, it was not God, though, who failed the terms of the Abrahamic covenant, or any other covenant either. It was we who crashed…and it is a corporate catastrophe. The failure doesn’t belong any more to the Jews than it does to Christians or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists. We all own it as humans who fail, in the affairs of our lives, to love and care for each other as all the ancient traditions challenge us to do.
In the ancient rite, to which God was committed, truly Abram, as our representative, should have walked humbly between those riven animals. So, who should have died? Certainly not Jesus, and certainly not in so dreadful a way as crucifixion. And why did he have to die? Certainly not to satisfy the blood lust of an angry God.
On the night before Jesus died, he directly connected his first Eucharist to the sacrificial elements of Abram’ rite with God when he said, “This is my blood of the covenant which will be shed for many” (Mark 14:24; see also Matt 26:28; Luke 14:24). In essence, when we failed a covenant creating using human customs and terms (Gen 15:18), God comes as one of us, and takes on the burden we created for ourselves, on our terms. Why did he do this? Apparently, God will not let us go. God wills, in spite of our intransigence and worst behavior, to be in a relationship with us.
We are loved.
The placement of the James’ bone, in a crypt under the altar, unites the self-giving of his martyrs death, with that of Jesus’ passion and death: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
We, too, can lay down all the burdens of our pilgrimage, its aches and pains, its inner struggles, all the painful growth, every selfless act, each loving gesture, at this holy place of communion between the martyred James and the crucified Jesus.
We, too, love back.
[1] Liber Sancti Jacobi, 199-200, as quoted by Julián Barrio Barrio, Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela in Pilgrims of Faith and Witnesses to the Risen Christ: The Archbishop of Santiago’s Pastoral Letter for the Compostellan Holy Year 2010.
