Pilgrim's Road

remaining spaces. Then it was off again, tray in hand, down several more staircases and corridors to a nasty little white-tiled room with a bare cement floor which was reserved for this pilgrim feast.
    Had there been nine others it might not have been so bad I thought, but I had the grotty little room entirely to myself, and it seemed the loneliest, most derelict moment of the entire journey. I tried the bean stew and it tasted repulsive, the chicken was exactly as it looked; even the apple was flaccid and flavourless. It was strange that in a country where food was so good and inexpensive, the first uneatable meal I was offered was the one that should have been a celebration. It left just the bread and the wine, and it was as I broke the roll in half that I suddenly knew that it was this moment that had brought the completion of the pilgrimage. Like the unnamed disciples on the road to Emmaus, I too had needed to encounter the reality of the Risen Christ. He had been there in every meeting I had had along the way, and perhaps I had known this somewhere in a remote corner of my mind. But to realise it fully had required this ordinary, everyday action in which the symbol could suddenly break free and be recognised for what it was. ‘They recognised Him in the breaking of the bread.’ Of course.