Pilgrim's Road

and think about lunch. St Sever was an unexpected delight; as medieval a town as any twentieth-century pilgrim could hope for, built in the round with a particularly lovely Romanesque church at its centre. And perhaps because it was market day, this church was not only open, but its dark interior was warm and welcoming with islands of soft candlelight. Men and women came one by one out of the shadows with the matter-of-fact air of long custom. As they stood before the pricket lighting their candles and murmuring a brief prayer, their heads were haloed in the warm yellow light, and took on the drama and beauty of a Rembrandt painting.
    I felt at home there, for lighting candles as a focus for prayer is one of the many customs that makes me glad to be a part of the High Anglican tradition, rather than the broad or the low. Some Christians need such drama — ‘the smells and bells’ — as it is often slightingly described by those who prefer a plain, no-nonsense approach. I remember an old lady defending her High Church practices to a young visiting cleric of strong evangelical persuasion who had referred disparagingly in his sermon to ‘mere musical Christians’, implying that High Anglicans are more interested in the beautiful external trappings of their faith than in the hard core of the Christian message; that they confuse church with theatre. ‘Young man,’ she said, ‘there is a lot of very indifferent drama enacted at the theatre and the opera, but people pay good money to go to it, so they must get something from it. The life and death of Jesus Christ is the most dramatic and moving story ever written, so why on earth should we not celebrate it with all the beauty, skill and passion at our command?’
    Candles are particularly important because the celebration of light and heat as the great gifts of God is something that we share, not only with Roman Catholics and the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches, but also with Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and people of many other faiths. And it was through this same ritual that I first gained an insight into the strong core of unity that exists within the wide diversity of beliefs. It was when I was making a journey through the Himalayas and had come to a Tantric Buddhist temple in a remote part of Sikkim. An elaborate exorcism ceremony was in progress in the vast hall, and every gesture and sound of the colourful, involved ritual were alien to me, and even somewhat repellant at first. Yet at the same time I had this sense of recognition, of being in some way connected with it. Eventually I realised that this was because of the worshippers drifting around the perimeter of the hall in ones and twos to light yet another of the hundreds of reeking little butter lamps, adding their visible token to the universal prayer.
    Since the dawn of man’s existence on the planet, fire has inspired him with feelings of awe and wonder — emotions that lie at the very heart of the religious response. To the Ancient Greeks fire was a gift so precious that it had to be stolen from the Olympian gods and paid for by the torments of Prometheus. The Christian Church made it central to its drama and liturgy from the very beginning — in the Descent of Holy Fire at Easter, in the Light of Christ, and in the Flames of Pentecost, when it signals the descent of the Holy Spirit and is accompanied by the great ’gift of tongues’.
    And here was I in the twentieth century, seated in an ancient church in a small town, feeling that I was a part of this long celebration of light and fire as I read through the medieval prayers in my sadly neglected ‘Pilgrim’s Itinerarium’. I had fully intended going through these prayers each day to put me in the proper state of mind for the journey, but somehow had never quite got round to it. It would be easier to remember, I thought, if only there was a church like this one at an appropriate point in each day’s travel.
     
‘Archangel Raphael accompany me as you did Tobias. Direct my feet so that I may travel in peace, safety and joy.’
 
    I couldn’t get a stamp for my passport in the church, the priest ‘was in hospital with his chest’ one of his concerned parishioners told me, adding, helpfully, that I could get one at the Mairie instead. Wheeling Roberts between the market stalls, I found myself a focus of interest in a way that had not happened anywhere else in France. People pointed me out to their neighbours, ‘Une pèlerine’ — a