Last May, I had the opportunity to go on pilgrimage on El Camino de Santiago. It’s an ancient road through northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela and the Cathedral of St James, where the apostle is buried. The tradition goes that St James wanted to preach the gospel “to the ends of the earth,” and when he died, his followers took him literally and carried his body to the end of the known world: the west coast of modern-day Spain. So, for the past thousand years, pilgrims from all over the world have walked The Way of St James, El Camino de Santiago, finishing at the saint’s final resting place.

So I made my Camino in May and absolutely loved it. My dad and I walked 72 miles in 5 days and got to venerate the relics of St James and have Mass at the stunning Cathedral of St James (home to the largest thurible in the world—did you know it was originally created to smoke out the smell of pilgrims? Hah!). Then, in God’s providence, I went on pilgrimage to World Youth Day in Lisbon 3 months later, and we got to visit a few pilgrimage sites on the way to Portugal: Lourdes, Fatima, and Santiago! Upon seeing this itinerary, I was excited to visit these holy sites, especially Lourdes and Fatima, which I’d never seen before. I assumed that since I’d just been to Santiago 3 months before, it would be old news to me and not as exciting as the sites that I’d never been to.

I was wrong.

Our stop in Santiago was on the third day or so of our pilgrimage, and I could not WAIT to be there. I had this giddy feeling about being back and seeing the cathedral, watching pilgrims round the corner into the square, and getting to go to Mass with them. I was eager to show my fellow WYD pilgrims the relics of St James, the side chapels of the cathedral, and point out where my family and I had eaten and shopped a few months prior. I realized how much I loved Santiago, and frankly it surprised me! I asked myself why that was so.

I came to the conclusion that my first pilgrimage to Santiago via the Camino was rooted in anticipation. For days (and for many pilgrims, for weeks or months), there was this shared sentiment of a common goal and a common refrain of “When we get to Santiago…” It made this city something we all anticipated together, all looked forward to, and all walked on the same path towards.

As Advent approaches, I’ve been thinking about how the season can have that same sense of anticipation. Christmas celebrates one of the most mind-blowing realities: God became a man, a little baby in fact, to be with us. He took on our humanity to show His great love for us and to save us from sin and death. What an incredible mystery! What unfathomable love! The event that changed history: the birth of Jesus Christ.

With an event this holy and of this magnitude, the Church in her wisdom has set a time of waiting for Christmas: the season of Advent. It’s a 4-week period meant to mirror the 400 years between the last words of the final Old Testament prophet Malachi and the birth of Jesus Christ. Then, Christmas begins on Christmas Day and continues until the feast of the Epiphany around January 6th (Note: December 25th to January 6th are the real 12 days of Christmas!) and is chock-full of feasts like the Holy Family, Christmas hymns, decorations, and the Octave of Christmas. The Church sees Christmas as SO joyous an event that it treats the next 7 days as if it was Christmas Day 8 days in a row (in the words of a homily I heard, “we get 8 days to ‘unwrap’ the gift of Jesus’ birth). What a special time of year!

Over the past few years, I’ve come to see the beauty of Advent and the fruitfulness it bears in my heart when Christmas DOES come. A few years ago, I went to a Christmas concert performed by Lauren Daigle, and she shared this reflection before O Come Emmanuel, “The Jewish people heard the last words of the prophet Malachi promising the coming savior and they were thrown into silence, a silence that lasted 400 years. That silence must have been so difficult, and they must have whispered to themselves and each other, ‘is he ever going to come? Is he ever going to get here?” Those sentiments of our ancestors in faith are exactly where the Church wants us to sit in the season of Advent. When we lean into Advent, we wait for and anticipate the coming of Jesus, singing “O Come O Come Emmanuel.”

I find this to be a very fruitful practice, to join our ancestors in faith in that waiting, and like the anticipation that I experienced on the Camino de Santiago, a greater joy awaited me once I reached that day. The Lord has great graces for us on the feast of Christmas, and if we enter into Advent, I think we’ll find it to be a blessed time of anticipation that leads us to a greater joy when Christ is born on Christmas Day.
Happy Advent!

Kelly Guilbeau is a Harvest Journeys Travel Specialist, based in Dallas

For information on walking El Camino with Harvest Journeys visit El Camino Way or contact us at [email protected].