On pilgrimage
Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from the 11/7/10 issue of
The trip to Spain by Benedict XVI expresses symbolically the most profound reality of the itineraries that the Bishop of Rome carries out in the world.
The Pope himself said this in his now usual encounter with journalists, on the flight which brought him to Santiago de Compostela, when he recalled that pilgrimage - inscribed in his own personal biography, having passed through several German universities - represents the experience of every believer.
In the inevitable instability of life and in man's passage through this world, faith is, in fact, first of all, a pilgrimage, expressed for the believer by the exemplary figure of Abraham.
In the Middle Ages, the various roads to Compostela - that 'milky way' indicated in the skies by the white light of the stars - spiritually shaped Europe.
[Compostela is derived from Latin words which mean 'field of stars', referring to the vision by which a medieval peasant discovered the site where the remains of the Apostle James were buried, after his martyrdom in Judea. Disciples are believed to have taken him back to Iberia, where he was believed to have brought the Gospel earlier.]
Even today, the roads to Compostela are travelled by those who undertake the pilgrimage - or simply, wich to take the route - in order to render virtual embrace to Santiago, the Apostle James the Greater, and in this way, allow oneself to be embraced by God himself.
And that is what the Pope himself did, in that great Romanesque and baroque Cathedral perfumed by the incense from its famous giant 'botafumeiro' (thurible) - a pilgrim like so many others in history and in the present day, in a continent and a world which have often seemed to have forgottoen God, for whom, in truth, they feel nostalgia.
In the Pope's view, in fact, pilgrimage means exactly this: to step out of our daily life and from ultilitarian logic, and transcend them to find a new freedom.
Between Santiago and Barcelona - dominated by the spires of Sagrada Familia - the Pope's itinerary this weekend moves between tradition and creative renewal, between truth and beauty, according to the dynamic expressed in such an admirable and visionary manner by Antoni Gaudi in the expiatory temple that he worked on all his life.
The edifice, whose consecration occasions the Pope's visit to Barcelona, was born from the 19th-century devotion to St. Joseph (the Pope's baptismal patron saint) and to the Holy Family. Even today, it expresses in art the centrality and the importance of the family as an institution, an important reality not just for Catholics but for all of society which is founded on the family.
If the quest for the encounter bweetn faith and art, parallel to that between faith and reason, has marked Christian history since its early centuries - a task that remains urgent in the tormented panorama of our time, the Pope told the newsmen - the quest today for the Church in the Western secularized world ought to be that between faith and secularism, which, in many European nations, as in Spain today, in order to overcome the logic of confrontation that has prevailed in various times during the 19th and 20th centuries and that has often rekindled intolerance.
The circumstance of this return to Spain by Benedict XVI is striking, after his visit to Valencia in 2006 and amid preparations for World Youth Day in Paris next year.
The Pope said it was a sign of his love for Spain, underscoring that the circumstances of all three trips demonstrate a profound reality in common: the actual power and dynamism of faith in a land that is historically Christian.
Spain, which in the 16th century provided the Church with 'a constellation of great saints', has been able to give rise to a modern Catholicism which now aims to propose the Christian way in the perspective of a 'universality without bounds' represented by Compostela, which in the Middle Ages, was the virtual
finis terrae, the extreme limit of earth.
For all this, the Bishop of Rome, welcomed with a warmth that dissipated the autumnal fog in Santiago, continues his pilgrimage in the communion of the Church.
Other photos from the 11/7/10 issue of OR:
Vatican Radio's online mini-slideshow of major papal events - discarded in the English and Italian services but still used in the Spanish, French and German services - has a couple of pictures that I have not seen elsewhere.
The following two were taken upon his arrival at the Catehdral, where he prayed first at the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament and then at the tomb of St. James:
Above panel, top row: The Holy Father walks through the nave of the Cathedral to the Portal of Glory, where he greets the faithful. Second row: He greets them again after donning the pilgrim capelet, then returns inside to pay the traditional homage to the statue of Santiago Apostol. Third row: The Pope puts incense into theg the giant censer (botafumeiro) before it is swung from the ceiling of the catehdral, at the end of a brief liturgy led by the Pope, who also addressed an audience of sick and aged people and their caregivers.
There is a wealth of pictures from Santiago from Spanish websites that I will try to post at least by the time the Holy Father reports on his trip at the Wednesday General Audience.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/11/2010 14:21]