By Tom Blackburn, Seminarian
Following in the footsteps of St James, four men training to be priests for the Diocese of Westminster spent a week this summer with a group of 120 young Spanish pilgrims walking the Way of St James.
Having set off from the northern Spanish city of Ourense, Deacons Juan Sola and Domagoj Matokovic and seminarians Paolo Gambardella and I, walked roughly 20 kilometres a day, with time also given to receiving catechesis, praying together, and receiving the sacraments.
The Camino de Santiago, known in English as the Way of St James, is a network of pilgrims' ways leading to the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in north-western Spain, where tradition holds that the remains of the apostle are buried.
The pilgrimage was organised by the pastoral team of the home parish of Deacon Juan Sola in Caravaca de la Cruz, a town in the south of Spain. Largely comprising young people from the Neocatechumenal Way, the pilgrimage was open to anyone in the town from the age of 18 to 35 and gave particular focus to discerning what the Lord’s vocation is for each person.
We spent the week as a community with these young people, simply as brothers and sisters in Christ, walking, talking and living together in a simple yet beautiful way. These young people came from a range of situations in their lives and journeys of faith: students and professionals, practising and lapsed Catholics, and those with no faith formation at all. Regardless of their situation it was obvious that each had their burdens and equally a deep yearning for a life that offered greater fulfilment than that which the world offers.
While the catechesis were important, we discovered that much more important was the experience of abandoning the usual comforts of home, and entering into some small sufferings.
It is fair to say that most of us, perhaps first of all the deacons and seminarians, thought the pilgrimage would be something beautiful but also fairly gentle. However, we soon discovered that carrying everything that was needed for the week, including sleeping bag and mat, and subsequently sleeping on the floor for a week, took its toll and the pilgrimage became more physically demanding than expected.
It was in this that the Lord shone light on our lives. This pilgrimage, we discovered was not detached from our daily lives back home but was an experience of remaining in Christ through all that life offers. On top of the physical suffering was the experience of sharing the journey together; at times we discovered ourselves, and how we struggle to accept the others as they are. In the midst of spending a lot of time together and occasionally finding the other frustrating or different from us, the Lord led us to seek forgiveness and ultimately created a communion between us that wasn’t man-made.
Everyone had come from different places but over the course of the week our ideas of life had been refocused towards our Lord. At the end of the week we processed towards the Cathedral of St James, singing and giving glory to God. Not simply because we had been told to do so, but because through the week we had experienced God’s love and accompaniment in everything we had lived. We received the plenary indulgence while praying in front of the tomb of St James, and left the holy place nourished by God’s immense love for each of us.