Santiago, Day 4

"Day 4": already? Have I been here in Santiago that long? Long enough for this place that has captured my imagination for so very long begins to seem more ordinary and more like any other place even as the many more days trundling across Belgium and France take on a bit of a dreamlike status as well. I don´t really like the sense that Santiago de Compostela should begin to feel ordinary to me; I rather want it to remain a hope, a dream, a sacred place in my life. When that feeling gets too strong, I dip back into the Cathedral, wander about within its dark and cool interior, step down into the crypt where James´bones are kept in a silver reliquary, and there return to the base and reason for it all. Asking him to care for my family, my friends, our Louvain seminarians, those who have cared for me along the way, that brings me altogether back to the sense of being in a place out of time and beyond ordinary space, a holy site, a set of bones that draw us from such far away places to them mysteriously.
My appreciation for that crypt and the basilica built on top of it grew appreciably today during a personal tour of the Cathedral Museum given to me by Father Alejandro Barral, its founder and retired director. That crypt goes back to Roman times, the first century perhaps; on display where bits and pieces of pottery, glass, and even a stone button used to weave wool into thread, all testifying to its ancient past. If an apostle of Jesus were to be buried anywhere this would be it. The evidence that significant Christian cult on the site goes back into the very early centuries is also there. Those early Iberian Christians were paying attention to someone very special there from very early on. No one can prove it was the apostle James, but Christian writers were mentioning him and Spain together from way back as well.
The other thing that fascinated me was Don Alejandro´s description of the stone choir that originally stood within the nave of the basilica, it was a great work of art designed and executed by the third great architect of the basilica, Master Mateo. A segment of it has been re-erected in the Museum and it is spectacular, especially when its details and the spirituality behind them are described lovingly by someone who knows the place like his own child. That choir, an enclosed place within the church where the canons of the cathedral sang the daily office of psalms and readings, was designed to represent the New Jerusalem that is our Earth when it reaches its fullness in peace, justice and life under the loving hand of it Creator, the Father of All, through the saving grace of his Son and the refreshing breath of his Spirit. I love that image from Revelations/Apocalypse; "all will be well and all will be well" it reminds us (in the words of Julian of Norwich).
So it is that image along with that of Santiago´s crypt that I take to bed with me tonight. Sleep well for all will be well and all will be well...