Sue Agnew

Dear friends,

Today we commemorate Saint James “the Greater.” (Saint James the Lesser is celebrated with Saint Philip on May 1, and Saint James, brother of Jesus, is celebrated on October 23.) Today’s Saint James and his brother John were called by Jesus early on to be Apostles. Saint James was the first of the Apostles to be martyred, in about AD 42.

Tradition has it that he had made a missionary journey to Spain, and his body was taken back to Spain and buried at Compostela. The Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage to this site, was popular in the middle ages, declared by Pope Alexander VI in 1492 to be one of the “three great pilgrimages of Christendom.” The pilgrimage gained renewed popularity in the 1980s. Since then, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have traveled the Camino each year, including parishioners from St. Philip’s.

I recently read Brother. Do. You. Love. Me. by brothers Manni and Reuben Coe. Reuben has a diagnosis of Down syndrome. During COVID, he became increasingly isolated at his care facility and became nonverbal. The book is about the brothers’ journey “back.” Manni tells of having walked the Camino with Reuben and another brother years previously. They quickly realized that they needed to change their expectations of the Camino experience because of Reuben’s slow walking pace, and instead experienced it as Reuben did, accepting the rhythm as it was. (Manni re-learns this lesson throughout the book.)

I have never done a religious pilgrimage, but I will make a pilgrimage of my own next month when I visit Thunder Bay, Ontario. My sister and I always drive by the house on the hill where our mother grew up, even though it was sold some 60 years ago and has been remodeled several times. And at the lake property, I will crash around in the underbrush looking for remnants of the fence that used to back Grandpa’s garden.

There isn’t a goal for this pilgrimage except it reignites childhood memories of the big old tree in front of the house with the wire fence running right through it, or Grandpa letting me pull a carrot and wash it in the lake before eating it.

Ultimately, the point of a pilgrimage is not where it gets you in the end, but where it takes you along the way. 

Saint James, pray for us on our pilgrimage.

Yours in Christ,

—Sue Agnew