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And I knelt down

At our last "Tapping into Theology" get-together at Larry Murphy's Pub, Jim Rawls and Stephen Brannon of Trinity Episcopal and our own parishioners Bill and Mary Shea led us in a discussion of pilgrimages - those journeys Christians have been making for centuries to various shrines throughout Europe and the Middle East in honor of some saint or holy event but essentially in search of some spiritual boon (an archaic word Jim Rawls described as some "good", some spiritual bonus). They dwelt mainly on the trek from all over the world to Santiago de Compostella - in northwest Spain - believed to be the final resting place of the Apostle St. James. Most interesting. And the popularity of this particular pilgrimage site seems greater today than ever. Of course to do the thing "properly" you should literally walk from some place in the Pyrenees near France - how many miles? I think Mary Shea said 400!

But aside from all the details presented, what impressed me most during the session was the absence of any questioning about the authenticity of the shrine - questions like: how could St. James wind up in northwestern Spain; was he actually fished out of the sea covered with sea shells? People seemed to delight simply in the information delivered and the spiritual value of pilgrimages - that intangible something people experience when they make their way to Canterbury or Lourdes or Rome or Assisi or Guadalupe. Our intellects, so conditioned by modern doubt, were compelled to tag along while our hearts and faith and imagination and whatever else makes us completely human took precedence throughout the session - as it apparently did in days of yore.

Which reminds me of something I once wrote - about my experience of the province of Abruzzo in Italy a few years ago. Ernest Hemmingway in his novel A Farewell to Arms speaks of the Abruzzo (where my grandmother was born) as a province still unaffected by the haste and materialism of modern times; a place where the supernatural is still taken for granted. As such it is a place of multiple shrines, almost every village the target of local pilgrimage - towns with such melodiously polysyllabic names as Manopello, Serramonacesca, Pescosansanesco and Roccacaramanico, where you might see the veil Veronica used to wipe the face of Jesus; or the body of the apostle St. Thomas; or the house Jesus grew up in (delivered by angels some centuries ago).

Now as an American, a product of the Age of Reason and a condescending Secularism, I made my way through this region somewhat on guard, quick to question rather than to pray. And this was especially true when I reached the town of Lanciano where I ran into a group of pilgrims come all the way from Holland to see in a glass container the coagulated evidence of an 8th century Eucharistic miracle in which blood fell from the consecrated host upon a linen napkin to contradict a priest's doubts about the real presence of Christ in the sacrament!

Well I must say, as I watched that group of Dutch pilgrims kneeling before Lanciano's ornate display of those 8th century drops of blood, I found it hard to be anything but an observer. I wondered how they could be so unquestioning. That is, until they began to sing the Tantum Ergo. Remember its Gregorian simplicity? In essence, it speaks of sacramentality, of the presence of the divine in our midst under one sign or signal or hint or event after another and pleads for a faith strong enough to supplement the limitations of our minds and senses. And suddenly I realized that perhaps more so than those 8th century drops of blood - this devout, kneeling, singing group of beautiful Dutch pilgrims and their faith offered me the most immediate evidence of God's presence in that sanctuary (as do all such pilgrims)! And I knelt down.

-- Geoff Wood