Guided & Graced
Guided & Graced
by Kelly Murphy Mason | Watertown, MA
The day I met Veronique along the Camino Portugués on our way to Pontevedra, she was marking the anniversary of her father’s death. As we walked and talked, she bared her recent loss with me. She wanted to find a church where she could light a candle in his honor and say a prayer in his memory. I assured her that we would find one easily, and together we searched for one in the city.
Soon enough we reached the Santuario de la Virgen Peregrina, a lovely chapel built centuries ago and shaped like a scallop shell. Inside the narthex, while Veronique purchased a candle to light, I browsed the souvenir table. I found a ribbon bracelet woven in the bright blue and yellow of the stylized Camino shell dotting nearly every waymarker pilgrims pass. Translating the Spanish, the bracelet read: “St. James the Apostle, guide my way.” I bought it on the spot and tied it tightly around my wrist. I had no special devotion to St. James, but with each mile I logged, I felt increasingly confident that my steps toward his Cathedral were being guided. Whether guided by St. James, Mary the Virgin Mother, God, or an inner wisdom mattered little to me; what mattered was that I trusted that guidance.
The prayer to St. James strung around my wrist reminded me to invite and welcome that guidance day by day, as I approached Santiago. Each day of my Camino, I made a practice of stopping at the first church I passed and would recite the 12th century prayer printed in the pilgrim Credencial issued by American Pilgrims. The prayer’s text is translated from the Codex Calixtinus, regarded as the first guidebook to the Camino de Santiago. It reads in part: “Guard these your children who…make a pilgrimage to Compostela.” But I became increasingly uncomfortable quoting the prayer as it was written in the third person. Why not include myself? I belonged there.
After Pontevedra, I shifted my prayer to the first person plural, including myself, Veronique, and all the other pilgrims I met along the way. “God, be our companion on the way…our guide at the crossroads.” I came to include myself in the prayers because I finally grasped how much I needed them.
Once I arrived in Santiago, I took off the bracelet and tied it to one of the loops atop my backpack. It still holds a special place there today, a colorful reminder of how I was both guided and graced on the Camino—in ways I may never fully understand.
