I’ve been thinking lately about those who point us towards Christ, and how they pointed me towards Christ in my youth. Growing up as a Presbyterian, Mary and the saints were first a threat, then a mystery, later a delight and a reality.
Spain converted me (I know, it’s grace – but Spain was my context). Spain, the land where Mary and the saints take to the streets weekly.
I made my first trip away from home when I was 18. I didn’t know what Santiago de Compostela was but there was a cheap flight from Edinburgh, and it sounded exotic.
I knew ’Santiago’ was St James, and there was a St James Catholic Church near me which I’d sometimes visited. And I knew enough Latin to know ‘compostela’ must be field of the star – which was intriguing.
I arrived from chilly Scotland late night in the balmy air of Santiago’s tiny airport, surrounded by pine trees and strange noises, wolves I think.
I got the last taxi which dropped me about 11 pm in the Obradoiro square, in front of the most glorious cathedral in the Catholic world.
The square was filled with pilgrims, mainly young, eating, laughing, praying. In those days the cathedral main door stayed open and people wandered in and out all night through the Portico de la Gloria, one of the great treasures of Christian art.
I didn’t go in then. I was starving, and down the side streets the endless bars filled the air with the smell of frying fish and roasting meat. The dark baroque splendour of the old cathedral would have to wait.
Over many subsequent visits the details of the city were filled in for me and gained meaning. But one detail of that 1982 visit remains very clear, 44 years later.
Around 10pm the next night a giant and beautiful image of the Mother of God was processed with military band, thurifers and priests through the cramped medieval streets.
I learned that Our Lady of Mercy was visiting the old town from her hermitage on the way back to the church in which she was venerated.
Several things hit me. This was a real person – as the Catholics taught, she was as real, body and soul, in heaven as a human person could be.
Secondly, she was loved – not with fake piety or sentiment but nodded to respectfully by courting couples, old folk, families eating dinner as a familiar presence, revered but one of our family.
Thirdly, an enormous effort went into this procession. People had worked hard to bring the Virgin back to their town because it mattered as part of the cycle of life. And above all, it was her Son’s mercy that was celebrated. As in the Gospel, Mary’s procession was to Jesus and for Jesus.
The Presbyterian story crumbled that night. Mary was no threat to faith. The holiness of the saints was entirely about Our Lord and not our selves.
Ever since, and in almost 30 visits to Spain, I’ve loved processions. I know that sometimes it’s sensory – colours and lights and music – and sometimes it’s emotional – it is after all very moving.
But there is always the knowledge that the holy men and women are real, really in God’s presence, and are praying with us and for us. I was trained in philosophy and we can be a bit abstract and theoretical in our religion.
Love of Mary and the saints – their stories and our representations of them – shares our faith with remarkable people, witnesses for God now with God.
And still today I love the colour and ceremony of processions because I know it isn’t all frippery but part of the human reality we carry with us on our personal processions from the hermitage home to heaven.
