Pilgrim Pope

Today, Pope Benedict XVI visited Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, the famous and inspiring pilgrimage site honoring St. James, the brother of John, who was the first apostle to be martyred (in 44 AD), but who visited Spain before then, according to a much later legend.  (You can find a lot more about him and the traditional pilgrimage site of Santiago at the Wikipedia entry.)

I found his three talks very helpful in coming to a better understanding of pilgrimage, as a metphor for the whole journey of life, of Christian life, and of the Church.  This shed a lot light, for me at least, on the reality and purpose of our Early Christian World Pilgrimage.

At the welcoming ceremony at the airport, he said:

In his deepest being, man is always on a journey, ever in search of truth. The Church shares this profound human desire and herself sets out, accompanying humanity in its yearning for complete fulfillment. At the same time, the Church pursues her own interior journey which, through faith, hope and love, leads her to become a transparent sign of Christ for the world.

At his speech at the Cathedral, he gave a wonderful definition of Pilgrimage, which I am going to adopt in future informational and promotional materials:

To go on pilgrimage is not simply to visit a place to admire its treasures of nature, art or history. To go on pilgrimage really means to step out of ourselves in order to encounter God where he has revealed himself, where his grace has shone with particular splendor and produced rich fruits of conversion and holiness among those who believe.

While he mentioned in particular the persons and events associated with the Holy Land, Rome, and Compostela, the Early Christian World sites of Turkey do not trail behind them in significance for the same reasons.

And in his homily at the Mass, he spoke of the common experience and goal of all Pilgrims, whether those who trek the long hiking trail through France and Spain to Compostela or those who, in the relative comfort of Turkey's hotels and tour buses, follow the arduous schedule enforced by Fr. Tom and Aydin:

The fatigue of the journey, the variety of landscapes, their encounter with peoples of other nationalities - all of this opens their heart to what is the deepest and most common bond that unites us as human beings: we are in quest, we need truth and beauty, we need an experience of grace, charity, peace, forgiveness and redemption. And in the depth of each of us there resounds the presence of God and the working of the Holy Spirit.
I urge you to read the whole of these documents; they are not long, but they very much speak to the heart.

Tomorrow, visit the Vatican site to see what he has to say as he dedicated the imposing "work-in-progress" church of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

You can also watch excerpts from Vatican TV on the Vatican Channel on YouTube.