In the autumn of 2015, an hour after I arrived alone by train at the city of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, I got lost trying to find my way around the old city in search of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
Instead of finding the Cathedral, I found myself resting under a shed that sat on a hill overlooking a small park with the buildings of the old city in the horizon. It was late in the afternoon and yet I decided to stay and just quietly sat on the ledge. As the evening came, one by one, the stars over this pilgrim city, named after Saint James, the Great, revealed themselves.
‘Compostela’ came from the Latin words
‘campus stellae’, meaning ‘a field of stars’. And as I sat there gazing up the
Galician night sky on a spot I claimed my own, I wondered whether the millions
of other pilgrims that came before me during the past millennium had gazed at the
same campus stellae and felt the same
serenity, peace, and humility for being in the resting place of one of Jesus’
apostles.
St. James, the Great was the brother of St.
John, the Evangelist, both sons of Zebedee and Mary Salome. And along with St.
Peter and St. John, St. James, the Great (sometimes known as St. James, the
Elder) was there during Christ’s agony in the Garden of Getsemane and His
Transfiguration, two of the most important moments of His life.
According to traditional belief, St. James,
the Great traveled to Romania Hispania (present-day Spain and Portugal) to
preach the Gospel. There, he encountered difficulty and disheartenment. But on
January 2, 40 CE, as he was praying at the banks of the Ebor River in Caesaraugusta
(present-day Zaragoza), the Virgin Mary, accompanied by angels, appeared to him
on a pillar to console and encourage him, and told him to return to Jerusalem.
This apparition of the Virgin was the first known mystical occurrence of
bilocation, a phenomenon where a person is in two places at the same time. The
Virgin Mary was still on Earth and living in Jerusalem in Judaea when she appeared
before St. James in Caesaraugusta. And on that spot where she appeared now
stands the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar or the Nuestra Señora del Pilar
in Zaragoza, Spain.
After his return to Jerusalem, in 43 CE,
St. James was beheaded upon orders of Herod Agrippa, the king of Judaea at
that time. According to the Acts of the Apostles, St. James, the Great was the
first apostle to be martyred. After his death, his own apostles brought his
body on a boat back to the Iberian Peninsula and buried him in a tomb in the
area what is now Compostela in Galicia, Spain.
For centuries, his tomb was forgotten and
neglected during the persecution of Christians. But in 814 CE, a hermit, who,
upon seeing strange lights at night over a forest in Galicia, went to
investigate and discovered a tomb. The lights over the forest might have been
stars that guided the hermit. This gave the spiritual meaning to the Latin words
‘campus stellae’, which then gave Compostela its name.
A bishop informed King Alfonso II of this
miracle. The monarch, who was said to have been the first ever pilgrim to St.
James’ tomb, ordered the construction of a chapel over the sacred site, and
over the succeeding centuries, construction and destruction of the church
happened under different rulers. But in 1075, during the reign of Alfonso VI,
the cathedral, which stands until today, started to take shape and the word
about this holy site in Compostela spread across Europe.
In the same year, it became an episcopal see and the church was elevated into a cathedral. In 1100, Pope Urban II made it an archiepiscopal see. And finally, in 1211, the Cathedral was consecrated in the presence of Alfonso IX.
Although the stories and sacred traditions about Santiago de Compostela are renowned and legendary, it is the individual journeys of each pilgrim that makes it special. It's not just a trip to a holy site to venerate the Apostle's resting place but a journey in search of one's faith or one's self. Each of the millions of pilgrims who traveled the network of European roads on foot, on a bike, or on a horse leading to Santiago de Compostela has a special story. Daily arrivals of pilgrims number to about 600 during spring and increase to a thousand during summer months.
A lady from England whom I met in Santiago told me she was not a Catholic but did the pilgrimage, popularly known as The Way of St. James or El Camino de Santiago in Spanish, because she did not know what to do with her life. And during her journey on foot from another Spanish city, she realized her life's meaning and was even tearful when I asked her what she learned about herself.
Veit, a guy from Dortmund, Germany, biked for 2,000 kilometers and set up camp with Mihai, a guy from Ireland, in a spot next to the shed where I rested. Veit told me that kindness is still humanity's greatest trait as, during his two-month road trip, strangers gave him food, helped him repair a busted tire, and provided him with a place to sleep without asking anything in return. They both invited me to share in their simple dinner as they sat on the grass by their tent. As the people that visited Santiago de Compostela are pilgrims and not tourists, the energy of the place is spiritual. Faith, not sightseeing, brought everyone to this old city.
On my visit to the Cathedral the day after I got lost, I joined the pilgrims in the traditional embracing of the golden statue of St. James behind the Cathedral's altar while chatting with an elder Spanish lady who told me more about the legend as we queued.
After that, I went down to his crypt below the Cathedral and knelt before his tomb to say a prayer of thanksgiving, forgiveness, and peace. Learning its history, I realized the monarchs who constructed this place were my namesake. They might have provided the money, materials, and workers to build the cathedral, but it's the love, the faith, and the kindness of the pilgrims that, over the centuries, have provided inspiration and strength to everyone's journey to Santiago de Compostela.💗
A lady from England whom I met in Santiago told me she was not a Catholic but did the pilgrimage, popularly known as The Way of St. James or El Camino de Santiago in Spanish, because she did not know what to do with her life. And during her journey on foot from another Spanish city, she realized her life's meaning and was even tearful when I asked her what she learned about herself.
Veit, a guy from Dortmund, Germany, biked for 2,000 kilometers and set up camp with Mihai, a guy from Ireland, in a spot next to the shed where I rested. Veit told me that kindness is still humanity's greatest trait as, during his two-month road trip, strangers gave him food, helped him repair a busted tire, and provided him with a place to sleep without asking anything in return. They both invited me to share in their simple dinner as they sat on the grass by their tent. As the people that visited Santiago de Compostela are pilgrims and not tourists, the energy of the place is spiritual. Faith, not sightseeing, brought everyone to this old city.
On my visit to the Cathedral the day after I got lost, I joined the pilgrims in the traditional embracing of the golden statue of St. James behind the Cathedral's altar while chatting with an elder Spanish lady who told me more about the legend as we queued.
After that, I went down to his crypt below the Cathedral and knelt before his tomb to say a prayer of thanksgiving, forgiveness, and peace. Learning its history, I realized the monarchs who constructed this place were my namesake. They might have provided the money, materials, and workers to build the cathedral, but it's the love, the faith, and the kindness of the pilgrims that, over the centuries, have provided inspiration and strength to everyone's journey to Santiago de Compostela.💗
(The silhouette of the Cathedral of
Santiago de Compostela)
