Walking the Camino - A Reflection from Deacon Jack Alexander

Last week I was in Spain walking the Way of St. James, with 15 other pilgrims including Brother Knight Paul Cudahy as well as hundreds of others from across the globe.  The Way of St. James or the Camino is a pilgrim path people have been walking for more than a thousand years to venerate the remains of St. James the Apostle, who made his way to Spain to spread the gospel. St. James is the brother of St. John and was the first Apostle to be martyred.

One of the high points of this pilgrimage was going to Fatima. Fatima is totally different that it was in 1917 when the apparitions happened. It is a pilgrimage site with hotels, two basilicas and a lot of people; but it was a very peaceful and prayerful place. It is an oasis in the midst of the hubub of the surrounding area. On our tour of Fatima, I met the niece of Lucia, Jacinto Pererio Margo (pictured above), the older of the three children, to whom the Virgin Mary appeared. It was a very special moment to share with her.

Everyone who walks the Camino does so for their own reasons, at their own pace and for their own good, be that the mother from Dallas with her 4, 5 and 10 year old daughters, the 83-year-old great grandmother, or the man walking the Camino barefoot. Most do it for a spiritual or religious reason but some do it purely for the physical challenge. Mostly the pilgrims walk to get closer to God, to pray for health and healing, to get clarity to what God is calling them to do with their life, to pray for family and friends or to just get away from the normal busy-ness of life, to step out of the world of noise and constant conversation into the world of quiet and reflection.  Most of the pilgrims are walking, carrying their burdens and crosses as Jesus tells us we must do daily if we are to be a disciple of His. He says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. Whoever loves his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Each of us has an understanding of what this means for us based on our own experience and our relationship with God. For me this came alive on the Camino, walking 15 miles a day, having time to talk and listen to God, intentionally carrying my crosses, those things that keep me separated from God and being less than the man God made me to be, carrying those things that have caused me anxiety, frustration and pain. On the Camino we have a lot of time to reflect on our lives, to pray, to listen and to tell God the story of our lives that we have not or cannot tell to anyone else. It is here in the silence and the journey that we can understand what it means to pick up our crosses daily and follow Jesus.

Taking up our cross and losing our lives means that we must accept that pain and suffering are part of our lives. Accepting our cross means that we have to make peace with the unalterable fact that frustration, disappointment, pain, misfortune, illness, unfairness, sadness and death are part of our lives and must be accepted without bitterness. Taking up our cross and following Jesus means that He is walking with us because He has been there.

Taking up our cross means that we may not pass our bitterness to those around us. It is part of our natural instinct to make others unhappy if we are unhappy. Taking up our cross means we bear these burdens with grace, we can share our pain with others but without whining. Jesus groaned under the weight of the cross but no self-pity, whining or bitterness crossed His lips.

Walking in the footsteps of Jesus and carrying our cross means that we accept other deaths before our physical death. Jesus invites us to die to ourselves in order to live for Him. As we walk the journey of life we undergo many deaths, losing a job, failing in a career path, or letting go of a relationship. In carrying our cross we name our deaths and claim our births, mourn our losses and let go of what died and receive a new spirit for the life we are living.

As we carry our cross we await the resurrection. We spend 98 percent of our lives waiting. We wait in frustration, in injustice, in joyful hope, we await fulfillment in our lives in big and small ways. Jesus’ invitation to follow us implies waiting, knowing that through our relationship with Jesus we are reborn in the resurrection. Our life here is unfinished and so we wait for what is better to come.

To carry our cross is to be open to surprises. It means accepting that God’s gift to us is often not what we are expecting. God always answers our prayers but often times He gives us what we need, not what we want. The resurrection doesn’t come when we expect it and rarely fits our notion of how a resurrection should happen.

Taking up your cross and giving up your life means living in a faith that believes nothing is impossible for God. It means accepting God is greater than our human imagination. Whenever we give into the notion that God cannot offer us a way out of darkness and pain into resurrection and light it is because we have made God fit into our imagination. It is only possible to accept  our cross , to live in trust if we believe in possibilities beyond our imagination. We can take up our cross when we believe in the resurrection.

At the end of each day on the Camino most of us are tired, with some sore feet but we die to the pain and suffering of that day and rise to a new day of hope, walking in the light of the resurrection with God