Pilgrim Again

   As in 2022 and 2024, so this year, God willing, I will be walking the Camino Francés across northern Spain to Santiago. My route will be basically the same as before, as will be the time of year, and I have wondered if I am getting in a rut. Would it be better to make a pilgrimage to a different destination? or at least to take a different route to Santiago?

    In the Middle Ages, there were three principal pilgrim destinations: Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago. In the year of our Lord 2026, walking to Jerusalem would present obvious difficulties. To walk to Rome, by contrast, would be quite possible: I know a peregrina who walked from Canterbury to Rome, about 1500 miles in total (she did it in three, 500-mile pieces, one piece every other year). Why not Rome?

    Or why not get to Santiago by a different camino? There are ancient paths from Seville and Lisbon, for instance; there is also the Camino Norte that runs close to the Mediterranean. Further options are to start in France, for instance at Le Puy; that camino (about 500 miles in France) is an earlier French part of the Camino Francés that I have walked.

    Nonetheless, I keep coming back to the original plan: to walk, alone, the Camino I have walked before. My decision has to do with the nature of pilgrimage. The point is not tourism. As T. S. Eliot says in his poem “Little Gidding,” about a minor pilgrimage destination in England (an old church in an out of the way place which has survived centuries and which, at one point, was the center of a family-based Christian community under Nicholas Ferrar): One does not go to such a place in order to inform curiosity or carry report back home. Instead, Eliot says, you come to such a place “to kneel Where prayer has been valid.” 

    This is the strange thing about pilgimage. You have a destination; you have a period of time cleared on your calendar; but you must let go of control of the details. People ask me how I will get to my starting place, and that’s something I’m still working out. (Things happen in the world and they affect pilgrims just like everyone else. In my case, it has to do with changes to Spain’s train service subsequent to a derailment and crash earlier this year.) Once you’re at the starting place, you entrust yourself to the Camino, to people you will meet who will offer food and shelter, to your fellow pilgrims. You can make reservations, though I prefer not to. 

    The biggest letting-go, however, is not with regard to arrangements of travel and lodging. It is letting-go of yourself into God’s hands. You start a Camino not knowing what God wants to give you. It is, precisely, a journey—not only a journey through landscapes and villages, but a journey of the soul. A few years ago I had the sense that I was accompanying Jesus through the multitude of humanity to his cross. By Camino lore, Santiago himself is a pilgrim on this route, going with us to the cathedral which, by tradition, contains the tomb that contains his mortal remains. 

    The ancient Greek Heraclitus said you can’t step into the same river twice. It’s the same Camino as before, but it is as open to possibility as ever.

    And of course, this is true for everyone reading these words. Everyone of us is on a pilgrimage here on Earth. (This is always true, but especially this is what Lent is about, and supremely the holy week.) At the center of our lives is our letting-go of ourselves and taking the hand of Jesus, to walk with him. Where will he take us? No matter where it might be in terms of geography and lodging and bodily health, it will be into his heart, into the life of God.

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    Out & About. Wednesday, March 25, at St. John’s Church in Corsicana, Texas, I am to speak at the Lenten program. My talk is titled, “Walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain: A pilgrim's reflections.” The program starts at 6pm and includes a light supper; everything is concluded by 8.

Patience and the Dying Art

 A couple of weeks ago I wrote in this space about medicine and dying. Recently I wrote also for The Human Life Review about patience and the art of dying. The word “art” is deliberate: old Christian wisdom about dying is that there is an art, a craft to it. This art of dying is something we can encourage for people, and it is also something we ourselves can practice. There are particular virtues that are apposite for dying well, for dying in a way that is holy and encouraging to others.
    Traditionally, five good virtues are noted, namely, faith, hope, patience, humility, and charity. Dying persons would be encouraged to practice these things, as best they could, while they had time to do so. These goods arose to combat typical temptations that we humans face as we encounter the limits of our mortal life, temptations of doubt, despair, impatience, vainglory, and avarice.
    In my post, I focused on one of those goods, the virtue of patience. And to explicate it I turned to the Anglican bishop Jeremy Taylor, who in 1651 published The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying. 
    “Taylor’s first word on patience is directed at the friends and visitors of the sick person. Don’t tell sick people to suppress their sighs, groans, humble complaints, or dolorous expressions. When you are sick you do not have the duty of being cheerful! Different people feel pain to different degrees, and one should allow a sick person to cry out when pain is severe. Indeed crying out may be helpful, in that in some cases it abates or diverts the pain. . . .
    “Christian patience does not forbid complaint but it should shape the way sick people complain. First, our complaints should be without despair. Complain you may, but do not lose hope. Why? Because God really is good, as we know already from our experience. So pray to God to help you; turn to spiritual guides; make use of ‘holy exercises and acts of grace’ that are proper to a state of sickness.
    “Second, our complaints should be ‘without murmur’! Murmuring is what the fallen angels did: they murmured against the way God had arranged things. Instead, think on God’s justice, wisdom, mercy, and grace. Confess your sins, for by doing so you increase and exercise humility. Sing God’s praises—even from the lowest abyss.
    “And third, our complaints should be without peevishness, that is to say, we should be civil and decent towards people who are ministering to us. Seek to be tractable, easy to be persuaded, apt to take counsel. Don’t be ungentle and uneasy to the ministers and nurses that attend you, and bear their accidents contentedly and without disquietude or evil words.”
    Then I listed things that, Taylor points out, people who are dying or very sick can do even in the midst of their weakened state, even if they cannot leave their bed. They can contemplate particular truths—for instance, that others have suffered worse, many of whom were weaker than we are, and some of them children. He says also that a person endures sickness only one minute at a time. Our duty to endure extends only to the present minute. “One minute at a time,” of course, is akin the AA mantra, “One day at a time.”
    Besides such contemplations, there are deeds we can perform in the midst of sickness, confident that God will provide what we need. For instance, we can make an act of thanksgiving, and we can resolve to do all that we can, as God gives us the power. And we can hold before our eyes and in our heart the example of Jesus upon the cross.
    The whole column has more detail and practical examples, and connects with what I wrote two weeks ago in this space. You can read it here: https://humanlifereview.com/patience-and-the-art-of-dying/
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    Out & About. Wednesday, March 11, at St. Augustine’s Church in Oak Cliff, Dallas, I am to speak at the Lenten program on Jesus as, basically, the culmination of all things! The program starts with Stations at 5:30pm followed by a lenten supper at 6. The program runs from 6:30 to 7:30.
    Regrets and commiserations. It is perhaps some consolation that we all go through it together, the shift from Standard Time to the falsely named Daylight Saving Time. Falsely, I say, for the sun rises and sets according to astronomical laws that defy our ability to save daylight. All we can do is rename the hours, we can’t save them! I have long thought, though, that it is unfair for the time change to occur always on a Sunday. Let it be on a fixed date—April 1, say—and let the time change happen on whatever day of the week April 1 happens to fall. That would be a true April Fools!

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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