From after the Camino: I was intrigued by a little cultural detail of the Galicians who live in Santiago and the neighboring towns and aldeas. They, too, go on pilgrimage, but curiously, they refer to their pilgrimages as romerias, and themselves as romeros. The name clearly refers to the ancient practice, centuries longer than the visits to Santiago, of visiting the tomb of the apostles in Rome. They use this term, though, when they are visiting their own local pilgrimage sites.
The cathedral of Chartres was also a place of pilgrimage, sheltering the Sancta Camisa, the veil of Mary. From the 12th Century to the present day, many came to reverence this memorial of Mary.
Built into the floor of the cathedral is the famous labyrinth, with its eleven circles and roseate center. Among the many explanations for the very common medieval practice of putting labyrinths in the floors of cathedrals, the one I find most captivating, is that they were there for the local people, who couldn’t make pilgrimage to the place where they lived, but desired to enter into the whole spirit of those who had come from far away to venerate Mary’s veil. They would make their way through the labyrinth, perhaps on their knees, to make their own pilgrimage within reach, and be one with those who had journeyed so far to join them in their home cathedral.
In essence, while the essence of pilgrimage would appear to be a dislocation from home, and heading to some other place, the people in those other places have needed to find their own opportunities for sacred transformation. So peregrinos from all over the world journey to Santiago, while romeros from Santiago head elsewhere. The people of Chartres make their own pilgrim way on labyrinthine stone. Everyone makes do with what is possible.
Luke 2:41-42 – 41 Each year his parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, 42 and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom.
For reflection: As Joseph was a carpenter, and not tied to the rhythms of spring planting, he might have been able to accomplish this where most other peasants would have been too tied to the land in Spring.
The distance from Nazareth, the home of Joseph, Mary and Jesus, was 64 miles. The route was over rough and mountainous terrain, and perhaps included detours around Samaritan territory, where welcome may have been uncertain. That would have lengthened the journey considerably, perhaps up to 100 miles in length. As beasts of burden were subject to confiscation by Roman soldiers, the pilgrimage would have almost certainly been accomplished on foot.
The Holy Family’s yearly pilgrimages would have taken five or six days in each direction. Once in Jerusalem the whole family would have been participated in the necessary rites of cleansing, which could only be performed over a week in Jerusalem, before participation in the Passover could be done in purity. To have done this yearly would have required considerable effort and sacrifice. Still, they weren’t going to a holy place on the far side of the globe. They were relatively close to home.
How far from home do we have to go to experience the holy, to undergo transformation, to make the kinds of relationships that the Camino provides?
Is it possible for pilgrims to maintain the spirit of the Camino in their native places? Does it require long walks and uncomfortable nights, blisters and ancient cloisters? Do we require the reputed bones of the long dead? Do we, in fact, need a shrine? All of the elements of the Camino do, in fact, create an environment for reflection, camaraderie and transformation. But are they necessary?
Almost certainly not.
If we were not susceptible to the holy at home, it’s unlikely that we would ever have sought it at a distance. It may take a different kind of focus, though. There is no doubt that the dull sameness of walking the same trails, week after week, leads to a less uplifting experience than a journey over cobblestones on a Basque mountainside. And yet, the streets of your home city or town are holy, made so by the generations living there, struggling to love one another in ever more authentic, deeper fashion. Perhaps we need a deeper consciousness of our connection to the neighborhood around us? The churches, synagogues and temples of home are also sacred, and set apart for the worship and experience of the divine. Perhaps we need to take them more seriously?
