The Pilgrimage

"Of all the ways we have found to hurt ourselves, the worst has been through love. We are always suffering because of someone who doesn't love us, or someone who has left us, or someone who won't leave us. If we are alone, it is because no one wants us; if we are married, we transform the marriage into slavery. What a terrible thing!" he said angrily.

We came to a square, and there was the church I had seen. It was small and lacked any architectural distinction. Its bell tower reached up toward the sky. I tried to see the angel again, but I couldn't.

"When the Son of God descended to earth, he brought love to us. But since people identified love only with suffering and sacrifice, they felt they had to crucify Jesus. Had they not done so, no one would have believed in the love that Jesus brought, since people were so used to suffering every day with their own problems."

We sat on the curb and stared at the church. Once again, it was Petrus who broke the silence.

"Do you know what Barabbas means, Paulo? Bar means son, and abba means father."

He gazed at the cross on the bell tower. His eyes shone, and I sensed that he was moved by something--perhaps by the love he had spoken so much about, but I couldn't be certain.

"The intentions of the divine glory were so wise!" he said, his voice echoing in the empty square. "When Pontius Pilate made the people choose, he actually gave them no choice at all. He presented them with one man who had been whipped and was falling apart, and he presented them with another man who held his head high--Barabbas, the revolutionary. God knew that the people would put the weaker one to death so that he could prove his love."

He concluded, "And regardless of which choice they made, it was the Son of God who was going to be crucified."

The Messenger

"AND HERE ALL ROADS TO SANTIAGO BECOME ONE."

It was early in the morning when we reached Puente de la Reina, where the name of the village was etched into the base of a statue of a pilgrim in medieval garb: three-cornered hat, cape, scallop shells, and in his hand a shepherd's crook with a gourd--a memorial to the epic journey, now almost forgotten, that Petrus and I were reliving.

We had spent the previous night at one of the many monasteries along the Road. The brother of the gate who had greeted us had warned us that we were not to speak a word within the walls of the abbey. A young monk had led each of us to an alcove, furnished only with the bare necessities: a hard bed, old but clean sheets, a pitcher of water and a basin for personal hygiene. There was no plumbing or hot water, and the schedule for meals was posted behind the door.

At the time indicated, we had come down to the dining hall. Because of the vow of silence, the monks communicated only with their glances, and I had the impression that their eyes gleamed with more intensity than those of other people. The supper was served early at narrow tables where we sat with the monks in their brown habits. From his seat, Petrus had given me a signal, and I had understood perfectly what he meant: he was dying to light a cigarette, but it looked like he was going to have to go through the entire night without one. The same was true for me, and I dug a nail into the cuticle of my thumb, which was already like raw meat. The moment was too beautiful for me to commit any kind of cruelty toward myself.

The meal was served: vegetable soup, bread, fish, and wine. Everyone prayed, and we recited the invocation with them. Afterward, as we ate, a monk read from an Epistle of Saint Paul.

"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty," read the monk in a thin, tuneless voice. "We are fools for Christ's sake. We are made as the filth of the world and are the offscouring of all things unto this day. But the kingdom of God is not in word but in power."

The admonitions of Paul to the Corinthians echoed off the bare walls of the dining hall throughout the meal.

As we entered Puente de la Reina we had been talking about the monks of the previous night. I confessed to Petrus that I

had smoked in my room, in mortal fear that someone would smell my cigarette burning. He laughed, and I could tell that he had probably done the same thing.

"Saint John the Baptist went into the desert, but Jesus went among the sinners, and he traveled endlessly," Petrus said. "That's my preference, too."

In fact, aside from the time he had spent in the desert, Jesus had spent all of his life among people.

"Actually, his first miracle was not the saving of someone's soul nor the curing of a disease, and it wasn't an expulsion of the devil; it was the transformation of water into an excellent wine at a wedding because the wine supply of the owner of the house had run out."

After Petrus said this, he suddenly stopped walking. It was so abrupt that I became alarmed and stopped, too. We were at the bridge that gave its name to the village. Petrus, though, wasn't looking at the road in front of us. His eyes were fastened on two boys who were playing with a rubber ball at the edge of the river. They were eight or ten years old and seemed not to have noticed us. Instead of crossing the bridge, Petrus scrambled down the bank and approached the two boys. As always, I followed him without question.

The boys continued to ignore us. Petrus sat down to watch them at play, until the ball fell close to where he was seated. With a quick movement, he grabbed the ball and threw it to me.

I caught the ball in the air and waited to see what would happen.

One of the boys--the elder of the two--approached me. My first impulse was to throw him the ball, but Petrus's behavior had been so unusual that I decided that I would try to understand what was happening.

"Give me the ball, Mister," said the boy.

I looked at the small figure two meters away from me. I sensed that there was something familiar about him. It was the same feeling I had had about the gypsy.

The lad asked for the ball several times, and when he got no response from me, he bent down and picked up a stone.

"Give me the ball, or I'll throw a stone at you," he said.

Petrus and the other boy were watching me silently. The boy's aggressiveness irritated me.