The End.... Almost

Each day of the Camino has been for me a time of gratitude for each year of my priesthood. Having come to 2024 yesterday, the final day of walking was a time to reflect on the Camino itself. 

I am grateful for the time, the opportunity and the means to be able to walk it. 

I am grateful for a body which, for the most part, works well enough that I could walk the 1.3 million steps which Max's Strava calculated on our 800ish km. 

I am grateful for the many hospitaleros and staff at albergues, some of whom are volunteers for their hospitality. 

I am grateful for the capacity to enjoy being alone, and to be with people.

I am grateful for the capacity to perceive beauty and to experience awe and wonder. 

And as I walked along I recognised that this has been one of the now four great side trips of my life. 

The trajectory of my life is pretty straightforward, from seminary at aged 19 to ordination at age 26 through ministry in parish after parish through to now. And I am grateful to God for his calling on my life which has resulted in this. 

But along the way there have been several side-trip, gap-year, bonus experiences which have enriched me,  of which I think the Camino will now be one: 

Two winters living and working at CYTA Lodge Cooma in 1995 & 1996 while I took some time out of seminary. 

The Institute of Religious Formation in Chicago in 2007-2008. 

The Christian Spirituality Program in Omaha over the summers of 2016-2018. 

Each of these experiences helped make me who I am. 

Eaach of them were characterised by the quality of community relationships formed when a group of people share a common goal, whether that is to run a ski lodge, to form ourselves for ministry, or this case, walk to Santiago. 

And each of these experiences had an end date. Semesters and ski seasons come to an end, as they should.  

And so too with the Camino which comes to an end at the steps of Santiago Cathedral. 

So yesterday was our day to walk the final 35km in the Santiago. We had hatched a marvellous scheme to do a vigil, leaving at midnight and arriving to watch the sunrise together in the Praza do Obradoiro. It would have been a fitting, symbolic way to end. However the overnight rain and our own exhaustion put paid to that. 

Instead, we walked as we do each day, past the various kilometer markers which had previously indicated how many hundreds of kilometers we had left to go now down to double digits, then single digits, then glancing the catheral and the city in the distance. 

I don't think any of us quite knew what to feel as we approached, uttering the maxim "it's the journey not the destination". But I was overjoyed that, in contrast to my disillusioned blog post of just two weeks ago  https://frjimsreflections.blogspot.com/2024/09/2015.html?m=1 , and with heightened emotion because of that, the seven of us: Tim, Ophelie, Josh, Max, Chelsea and Raf did walk into the Praza do Obradoiro hand in hand, and then embrace together. 

This was a truly wonderful moment. I am so grateful for this little Camino family whom I could share it with. 

And it wasn't just our group. The Plaza was filled with hundreds of people, maybe a thousand, all doing as we were, rejoicing, embracing, reuniting with fellow prilgrims who have walked The Way together. People posing for photos. People lying on the ground in exhaustion. There were people from so many nationalities all rejoicing together that it can be a symbol of only one thing: Heaven, when our earthly pilgrimage comes to a joyful completion. 

Alas by the time we arrived then checked into our accommodation (hard to find in Santiago, even a couple of kilometers away) we were too late for the Pilgrim Mass, but I'll get to that in a couple of days' time. 

So the pilgrimage has ended - almost, because although Ophelie today left to start her new vetinarian course in Germany, and tomorrow Raf will leave to start his studies in Oxford and Max will leave to start his new grad position in construction management, Tim, Chelsea and Diego are walking the rest of the way to Finisterre, the traditional "end of the world", and Josh and I are bussing it out there due to my time constraints. More on that tomorrow.