Hello again, dear reader.
As the days stretch out after my walk along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, I find myself reflecting more and more on the whole adventure. One truth stands as clear now as it did with every step on that dusty road: I was walking that path in the company of Christ. From the first step out of Tui, to the last aching stride into Santiago, the whole experience was begun, continued, and ended in Jesus.
But—because the Lord is never content with giving us only one lesson at a time—another reality slowly came into focus. It is the one the Collect for All Saints’ Day puts so well: that God has “knit together His elect in one communion and fellowship,” surrounding us “with so great a cloud of witnesses.”
Now, because I am a musician (and have spent most of my life surrounded by other musicians and those who at least tolerate us), this “cloud of witnesses” often came to me through music. As I walked, suddenly a hymn would lodge itself in my mind—sometimes gently, sometimes with all the force of a brass band that had been waiting for the downbeat. And with every hymn came the memory of some saint of my own life, now in God’s nearer presence.
Take, for example, the Pilgrimage Hymn from Hymns Ancient and Modern, “He who would valiant be.” At various points along the Camino, my feet dragging and my blisters protesting like union workers on strike, the words would suddenly ring out in my head:
He who would valiant be ‘gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy follow the Master…
It buoyed me more than once, reminding me that hobbling along the Camino was, after all, a valiant thing to do. And then, inevitably, the second verse would pipe up—the one about “hobgoblins and foul fiends.” I could almost hear my old friend George Turcotte chuckling beside me. That was his favourite verse, and George, being something of a character himself, always maintained that the church doesn’t sing nearly enough about hobgoblins.
On other days, different hymns surfaced—ones dear to my parents, or to beloved parishioners from years past. Each melody carried a face, a memory, a blessing. And with each one came the gentle assurance: you are not walking alone. This was not merely my pilgrimage; it was an act of faith that stretched from the church terrestrial into the church celestial.
Perhaps that is why, when we sang the words “Santo, Santo, Santo eres el Señor” at the pilgrim’s Mass, I felt so undone. It was not just that Christ was truly present in the sacrament (though He was, gloriously so). It was that I was also surrounded by the community of saints—those who had walked with me in life, and who now walked with me still, though from a place I cannot yet see.
One night, David and I even raised a small glass of Scotch in honour of our dads, who—if I know anything at all—were definitely keeping step with us. It seemed only right. After all, the Sanctus reminds us every Sunday that heaven and earth, church militant and church triumphant, raise their voices together: “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
How incredible it was, then, to walk with Christ, and to know with every blister, every hymn, and every hobgoblin, that I was also walking in the fellowship of the saints.