Journey to the End of the World

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Perplexed by the solitude, too stunned to fall on my knees or kiss the ground, awed by the enormousness of the towers before me, I turn and see a magnificent architectural facade, the 25 arches across the front of the Palacio de Rajoy. As in a dream, I walk across the enormous expanse, hearing no sound except the regular tap . tap . tap of my staff.

How should I imagine the people who arrived before me? English, who sailed to La Coruña, and walked from there; Poles, whose pilgrimage was a ritual preparation for knighthood; royalty, like Louis VII of France; saints, like Brigid of Sweden; and thousands known only to God. Do I walk in their footsteps? Do I know anything of their spirit? Am I truly one of them?

The city begins to awaken. The sky is clear . it will be a glorious day! But I'm troubled. I feel a tinge of fear. A weighty sadness descends and muffles my spirit. A bleak discouragement blocks any hope of relief. I cannot move.

Slowly, I make my way through the darkness. This is a new day, radically different from the others. I got up this morning and walked four miles... and then sat down. I've never done that before. Today, I will go no farther. I will never again struggle to lift my feet out of the mud, hour after hour. I will not gaze at a horizon, knowing that just on the other side, a new vision of creation awaits me. The pain is past, the thrills are over, the magic is finished.

The Mass ends. I climb up behind the altar to give the traditional kiss to the back of the statue, and then step down to view the silver reliquary of Santiago. In the Middle Ages, the cities, with their churches, nurtured pilgrimages of devotion. The people were drawn to these places because they contained the physical remains of saints. One could touch the holy there; all was made symbolic and concrete in the relics. But my religious sensibility must be different; I have no desire to see or touch any relic.

I have learned something in these 31 days: that I'm not alone, that I am not an autonomous self with some potential to realize. Rather, I exist only to the extent that I participate in the innumerable practices that collectively establish the living tradition that is my heritage, which my parents and the pilgrims have given me. All the "inner" experiences of these weeks occurred because they had real links with the experiences of the dead who accompanied me. I have learned how to speak a truthful "we," a radically different act from the spurious and aggrandizing "we" one so often hears today. The relics I touch are those ancient pilgrims, their real presence. I have met, embraced, and kissed them . and their lips were not cold. Looking around me, I don't recognize any of them here today.Most of them are out there . on the camino, waiting to welcome today's pilgrim. All my thought, all my intense longing, is to walk back out there, and to join them in their journey.

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