I’m in Granja de Moreruela (KM 627) tonight. It’s significant because here the Via de la Plata divides, one route heading north for Astorga and concluding with a westward stretch on the Camino Francès, and the other route, mine, heading northwesterly into Galicia more directly to Santiago.
I’ve been to Mass this evening and enjoyed it. For no apparent reason, this small town’s 7 p.m. service drew the largest attending congregation I’ve seen this summer in Spain, I’m guessing easily 75 to 100 people. There were more men than usual attending and they seemed to prefer as their domain the upper rear choir loft from where they could look down on their women. The priest conducted the service expeditiously with no deacon, reader, or altar serving help. Not a few parishioners have retired since down the street to a taberna. My refugio is in this same air conditioned building so I have an excuse for joining them. Pleasantly, the priest has dropped in for a little nip. He hasn’t stayed long but I like that he enjoys the company of his “flock”.
A Mass detail that I like is worth describing: The priest consecrates a large “host”, breaks it, and then consumes only one small piece of it. The other pieces he puts into the chalice and distributes with smaller consecrated hosts to communicants. This sharing of bread is symbolically very appealing.
I’ve been reading Henrik Ibsen plays as I walk, the last two of them being “The Lady from the Sea” and “An Enemy of the People”. They can be worthy of Pilgrim meditation. “Enemy” essentially concludes that “the strongest man is he who stands most alone”. Interestingly, its lead Dr. Stockman character offered to illustrate this proposition, though prescient and far sighted, is a flawed, even weak figure, in other words, not doing so well standing heroically alone.
