For any one who enjoys walking, the way of Saint James is a fairly compelling challenge. It ranks among the greatest of pilgrimages. And it goes back a long time. Indeed, the faithful have been walking from Le Puy-en-Velay in central France to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain for well over a thousand years : since somewhere around AD 835 when a peasant found the mortal remains of Saint James - Iago - in a field - a ‘campo’ - with the aid of a star - ‘stella’ a place known ever since as Santiago de Compostela. It is a long walk. When we did it, I believe we walked about a thousand miles.
     After being blessed in the cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay we walked for sixty-five days, through the Auvergne, across southwest France, over the Pyrenees and on, across the meseta of northern Spain until we reached Santiago. There, 2004 being a holy year, we were able to enter the Puerta Sancta or the Puerta del Perdón and file past the altar and kiss the golden shell on the golden effigy of Saint James the Apostle, the kiss which, by tradition, completes the pilgrim’s journey. We attended mass and then visited the crypt where the mortal remains of Saint James lie in a golden casket, filing silently past, thinking of all who have been coming here for so many years.

Walking as a Way of Life

We had walked more or less all the way. It was a magnificent experience. After some early troubles with blisters, blisters which bled, we eventually picked up a rhythm and began to get going properly. We rarely went wrong - thanks to excellent foot path way marking in both France and Spain - and we got used to walking seven or eight hours a day - sometimes nine or ten - and we got used to the paths, though we really did appreciate paths on flat ground where you don’t have to keep looking down all the time. And we got used to walking as a way of life. We enjoyed it : waking, walking, eating, drinking, praying and sleeping, with stops to visit churches or cathedrals or simply to pray... it was actually a very simple way of life... a sort of time out, in a way.
     The Catholic church, being both sensible and benign, only asks the faithful to walk a hundred kilometres - about sixty miles - to obtain the compostellana or certificate saying you have done it. Which means that even relatively elderly people and the less agile can still qualify. In Spain, which is, even today, about ninety-five per cent Catholic, almost every one reckons they will or would like to make, the pilgrimage one day.
     Certainly a great many people do make it - in 2004, about twenty thousand pilgrims entered Santiago cathedral just as they have been doing for centuries. The history of the pilgrimage is written in the beautiful bridges that were built for pilgrims then and which are still there now ..very old bridges and many beautiful, eleventh and twelfth century churches with sculptures as beautiful as you will see anywhere - churches and hostelries - walking El Camino, as it is called in Spain, you feel part of that history.

Pointing the Way

What is particularly engaging about walking in Spain in particular is that every one you pass greets you... saying ‘buen camino’ or buen viaje’ . Equally important, yellow arrows point the way for you to follow. You cannot go wrong, even in the heart of cities like Burgos or León, cities resplendent with cathedrals as fine as any in Christendom.
     Or you can go by coach or car. But then, that can not be the same. For you are bound to miss so much : particularly the company. We enjoyed meeting people and we met people from all over the world. You talk about paths and hostelries, boots and where to buy food, where you are from and how far you are going. It’s very pleasant; if the walk is a challenge, meeting people is marvellous. You feel you are part of a community.
     Indeed the saddest part of the walk is coming to the end. Then, as one of our French friends said : ‘We are just tourists now...’ And yet... the real point of the pilgrimage is surely that once you have come to the end, you simply carry on... you shed all you do not need and you go on.
     What remains is this sense of a shared experience. Being engaged in a common endeavour predisposes to friendship. And I often think, with warmth and affection, of some of those whom we met, at different stages, on our walk. I think the Craft is like that too.
     For many of us, the pilgrimage ended in the cathedral. For some, the walk goes on for another three days to what was, at one time, the very end of the known world, a place called Fisterra or Finisterre. Reaching the shore, pilgrim would take out a pebble, a pebble they had brought with them when they set out many miles and many months earlier.
     This they would now throw out as far into the Atlantic as they could, the pebble carrying with it their love, their prayers and their hopes.
     Then they would wander along the coast for a while to find a scallop shell, a shell to take home. Thus it was that the shell, at one time to be found only on this shore, came to symbolise the Way of Saint James, the shell becoming the symbol of Saint James himself.

The Miracle of Faith

For some, the story of Saint James is a myth. For many the reasons for the journey to the end of the earth are a mystery. For all of us, I think, the pilgrimage is a metaphor, a metaphor, if you like, for life itself. The miracle remains, ‘the miracle is the faith’.
     Indeed I was struck by the parallel with masonry for the Craft can respond to the deepest of human needs, the needs of the spirit in an age which has seen the triumph of the secular, the Craft should surely be fit to respond to the longing for something more than the materialism of the consumer society - and I am not a critic of this society - it is reasonable for people to want to live in decent homes and lead decent lives. I would not find fault here. I just think there is a limit to the material, and I believe there are many who want more, who want the life of the spirit, and I think they want what many of our churches, alas, have failed to give them a sense of direction... of purpose, of endeavour; people surely want a spiritual life, and it is here, in the quietness of the lodge, that we can search, as we move towards the mystery of life itself, so that we may, in time, be able to share, to show others, how it is possible for fallible humans to work together to achieve a spiritual unity transcending us all.