Prayers for Ourselves and Others

In my previous post, I talked about creating a daily pilgrims’ prayer for ourselves, but what I haven’t mentioned is the gratitude we have to all who have promised to pray for us as we’re walking the Camino de Santiago.  And in addition, I haven’t talked about the prayers we’ll be saying for others along the way.  While this prayer practice will continue throughout the nearly 500 miles and six weeks of walking, it reaches a climax of sorts at the Cruz de Ferro, the cross of iron, when we leave behind the stones that symbolize the burdens we carry and our sins.

The Cruz de Ferro is located at the highest point along the Camino Frances route, elevation 1500 meters (4900+ ft), a mile or so past the small mountain village of Foncebadón, which is approximately 340 miles from our starting point in St Jean Pied de Port, or roughly two-thirds of the way to Santiago.  While there are many crosses and shrines along the pathway, the Cruz de Ferro is one of the most significant landmarks, not only for where it is but for its significance to the pilgrims.  Legend says that there was Celtic monument at this point in pre-Roman times – this might have been nothing more than a large stone cairn marking the way along an ancient road.  Later, it supposedly became a shrine to the Roman god Mercury, and finally in the 11th century, it became a Christain monument or shrine.  The current monument consists of a long wooden pole, perhaps 5 meters (15 feet) tall, which is anchored in a large mound of stones and topped with a large cross made of iron.  Much, if not all, of the mound surrounding and supporting the pole consists of the hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of stones left by pilgrims over the course of a thousand years.  In 1982, a small chapel dedicated to St James was built adjacent to the Cruz de Ferro. 

It is custom or tradition for each pilgrim to bring a stone from their home place to leave at the foot of the Cruz de Ferro, symbolizing their purification, the sins they leave behind, or the burdens they have carried in life.  I am bringing a small, smooth, rounded stone that I picked up on one of our training hikes on Green Mountain and which will be my “burden” stone.  I am also carrying a small chunk of quartz I picked up on one of our hikes right on the Continental Divide, elevation 12,500 ft, directly over the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 near Silverthorne, Colorado.  That stone will represent the thanks I give to God for allowing me to live in such a wonderful place.  But perhaps most important is the small bag of pebbles that I will have been carrying with me, each marked with the name of someone for whom I’ve been praying as I walked.    This bag contains 40 or 50 (the final number will vary as I receive more prayer requests) small, fingernail-sized pebbles, and each day as I begin my walk or as I resume walking after a break or lunch, I will remove one pebble from the original bag and place it in a second bag.  As I walk, I will be offering my prayers for that person.  While some of my friends and family know I have a pebble with their name on it, many do not, and those are names that God has asked me to pray for on my pilgrimage.