Listen

Since my conversion, May the second has loomed large in my life. Shortly after my baptism, I became an Oblate of the Order of Saint Benedict. Each year, we read through Saint Benedict’s Rule three times, a chapter or so each day. May 2 is one of the three days of the year where we begin the Rule again. This is how the prologue starts:

Listen, O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father, that by the toil of obedience thou mayest return to Him from whom by the sloth of disobedience thou hast gone away.

It’s always a strong reminder to me. I often joke that I’m still working on following the first word of the Rule, never mind the rest. This is, of course, a clarion call to listen above all to the voice of God. For while Saint Benedict is clearly referring to the monastic superior, he says elsewhere in the Rule that the Abbot is “to hold the place of Christ in the monastery”. So who else is the true master but the Lord?

We are called to listen to the small, still voice of God with the ear of our heart. To listen for God’s poetry – for God is a poet, rhyming history and weaving our sacramental reality from signs and symbols, types and tropes.

So it is perhaps no great surprise, that the Supreme Poet wrote this day into my heart.

On this day in 2013, Francine and I walked into Santiago de Compostela for the first time, at the end of our first Camino. At this point, Francine had been walking for almost two weeks, and me for more than a month. I can’t describe the joy of that day.

Three years later, on this day in 2016, Francine and I walked into Santiago together again. This time, we had both been on Camino for 34 days. Due to the terrible weather, which included flooding and deep mud, we had to bus or train it for a couple of days if we were to arrive in time for our flight.

It was a very different Camino experience, but that joy, that relief, that utter exhaustion, was the same.

We had arrived. We overcame the odds and made it.

Living on Camino is a heightened version of living the sacramental life. Everything points to something else; signs and wonders are everywhere. God and His saints are ever-present, and there’s a miracle around every corner of the Way. And we live in simple gratitude.

Perhaps this is simply how the sacramental life should always be lived, and on the Camino it’s just more obvious, or we’re just more aware of it.

As the Camino itself is a sacramental sign of the entirety of our earthly pilgrimage, so too is Santiago a sacramental sign of its desired destination. As I’ve said before, walking into Santiago is like walking into heaven at the end of your journey. From my journal:

Praise God, at about 3pm we arrived in Santiago de Compostela. On the way into the city, we kept running into people we knew – people who had shared some portion of the walk with us – probably a dozen reunions before we even reached the Cathedral.

Entering the plaza in front of the Cathedral was an experience like no other. The emotions were overwhelming: gratitude, relief, wonder, the childlike excitement of Christmas morning all rolled into one.

I have a feeling that heaven is a lot like that: constantly meeting old friends in an overwhelming place of wonder and delight.

But not all of our milestones on this date are related to the Camino de Santiago.

On this day in 2018, our pastor Rev. Michael Wagner passed to God.

Last year on the anniversary of his death, his two parishes united again and sang Vespers of the Office of the Dead for his memory. In this time of plague, I hope that Father’s scattered flock will remember him and pray for him as once we did.

And I pray that Father Wagner walked into the Heavenly City, the Heavenly Jerusalem, of which Santiago is only a sign and shadow.

Francine and I took a short Camino in the autumn of 2018, and among the many things I carried, I took Father Wagner along with me on this spiritual journey. If your spiritual reason for walking is for a specific soul in purgatory, for someone who has died in the past year, the Cathedral will put their name on your compostela at your request, and the spiritual fruits of the pilgrimage are obtained by the deceased.

So Father has completed his earthly pilgrimage – in Tacoma where he died, in Seattle where he is buried, and in Santiago where the fruits of the pilgrimage were obtained for him. I continue praying that he rests now in the arms of his beloved Savior in the Heavenly Jerusalem.

Some of Father’s family attended Vespers last year, and I gave them this Compostela. The pilgrim’s shell I retain, to carry on our next Camino adventure, whenever that might be.

Perhaps this time, I will begin on May 2.