Luke Larson - Keeping Company with Saint Ignatius: Walking the Camino of Santiago de Compostela

Keeping Company with Saint Ignatius

Walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela

Luke Larson

Foreword by Chris Lowney

PARACLETE PRESS

BREWSTER, MASSACHUSETTS

2014 First Printing

Keeping Company with Saint Ignatius

Copyright 2014 Luke J. Larson
Copyright 2014 Foreword by Chris Lowney

ISBN 978-1-61261-519-6

All Scripture quotations in this publication are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica, Inc.

Excerpts from Letters of St. Ignatius of Loyola selected and translated by William J. Young, SJ (Loyola University Press, 1959). Reprinted with permission of Loyola Press. www.loyolapress.com

The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) is a trademark of Paraclete Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Larson, Luke J.

Keeping company with Saint Ignatius : walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela / Luke J. Larson.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-61261-519-6 (pb with french flaps)

1. Christian pilgrims and pilgrimagesSpainSantiago de Compostela. 2. Ignatius, of Loyola, Saint, 14911556. 3. SpiritualityCatholic Church. 4. Spiritual lifeCatholic Church. I. Title.

BX2321.S3L37 2014

263'.0424611dc23 2014019346

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press
Brewster, Massachusetts
www.paracletepress.com
Printed in the United States of America

To Evie, my wife and pilgrim companion.
Thank you for keeping company with me
on the Camino,
and through all of life.

With all my love.

Foreword

Our life is a journey, and when we stop moving, things go wrong.

Pope Francis said that, though most would not intuitively associate those sentiments with a pope or the Catholic Church. When we stop moving, things go wrong? The Catholic Church of popular imagination seems to be about the opposite: eternal, unchanging truths and finger-wagging at a modern culture that seems to have lost respect for tradition in its endless fascination with whats new and fashionable.

To be sure, the pope has warned that if we are not grounded in the truths of our tradition, we become aimless wanderers.

But grounded does not mean stuck. And there is a difference between aimless wandering and a purposeful journey, a pilgrimage.

In writing Pope Francis: Why He Leads the Way He Leads, I came to understand how deeply the imagery of journey, of pilgrimage, has touched the Pope. He was formed as a Jesuit, and pilgrim imagery is deep in the Jesuit tradition. Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuit founder, undertook a life-changing, five-hundred-mile personal pilgrimage from his home in Loyola to the towns of Montserrat and Manresa, both near Barcelona. (I worked with a small group to construct a modern pilgrim route tracing the path Ignatius followed; modern-day trekkers can google Ignatian Camino or visit caminoignaciano.org to learn more about it.)

Though Ignatius would never have used such trendy terminology, his month-long trek was a journey of self-discovery. Decades after that trek, while dictating his Autobiography, Ignatius was still referring to himself as the pilgrim. Whats more, he prescribed the same pilgrim medicine for all future Jesuits: during novitiate, each trainee Jesuit is supposed to undertake a pilgrimage. The requirement, as far as I know, is unique to Jesuit training.

Pope Francis presumably made a pilgrimage during his own training, so perhaps it should not surprise us that journey imagery bubbles up constantly in his talks and writing. Read his talks and note how often words like journey, pilgrimage, periphery, frontier, or margin all arise. He more than once has said that he far prefers a Church that endures accidents in the street, because it is out there trying something new, to a Church that is locked in upon itself. He aspires to a Church that is bruised, hurting, and dirty because it is accompanying people where they really live, out in the real world.

Well, some of this mindset may trace directly to his own Jesuit formation, but the idea of life as pilgrimage or journey is not uniquely Jesuit. The Catholic tradition, and indeed every great spiritual tradition, seems to have the same wisdom. Devout Muslims are called on pilgrimage to Mecca; the Torah calls the Jewish people to journey to Jerusalem for the so-called pilgrim festivals; Buddhists and Hindus also recognize the tradition of spiritual pilgrimage. And, if we squinted just a little bit, we would also see pilgrimage pretty clearly in what we might call the secular spirituality of the United States: a visit to a Civil Warera graveyard may be called a tourist visit, but something more profound is happening. We go to honor those who sacrificed their lives, and, along the way, we think about our own lives.

The idea of pilgrimage is so deeply enshrined in human culture, I suspect, because pilgrimage is the great metaphor for life. Life is a journey. We journey from childhood to senescence. We meet new people along the way, get lost at times, discover things we never knew existed, and learn a lot. We hope that we will get to our destination safely, but we also hope that we will grow and learn something along the way.

Still, those romantic notions notwithstanding, we humans typically resist aspects of the journey, because the journey means change, and we dont like change. We all say we do, but the reality, once we start to settle in to our lives, is different. How intimidating to pack up ones life and move to a new city, start a new career, end an unfulfilling relationship and start a new one, break out of the familiar roles that each family member has settled into and, for example, let her be the one who makes the plans for a while and let him be the one who manages the household finances. The pope told us that when we stop movinggrowing, learning, experimenting, exploringthings go wrong. Yet, truth be told, a lot of us stop moving in some ways.

Pilgrimage can be good medicine for that. Luke Larson appropriately invites us all to hit the road. But he wisely points out that hitting the road need not mean the 500-mile journey across Spain that he and his wife undertook to the centuries-old pilgrimage site of Santiago de Compostela. If you have the month, the resources, and gumption to do that, by all means go! (I tried it once, and it remains a life highlight.)

But for many, that will remain one of those bucket list dreams that remain forever in the bucket. So, as Luke suggests, do what you can, whether that be walks through unfamiliar parts of the neighborhood, laps around the mall, or a trek from one end of Manhattan to the other, as I do with a few hundred other Catholics each year, ending with Mass at the Mother Seton shrine at Manhattans southern tip.