IN PRINT: BOOK REVIEW
To The Field of Stars

TO THE FIELD OF STARS: A Pilgrim’s Journey to Santiago de Compostela
by Kevin A. Codd
(Grand Rapids, Mich., William B. Eerdman Publishing, 2008, 271 pages, paper, $18)

Reviewed by Msgr. Thomas P. Ivory, a retired priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J.

The Second Vatican Council described our church as “a pilgrim people of God,” and many of us have become accustomed to that image. However, fewer of us have ever been on a real pilgrimage in the medieval sense, when pilgrims actually walked to the shrine of their favorite saint. We are “a pilgrim people,” but in the 21st century most of us take an airplane to the country of our pilgrimage, and then a bus or car to the actual shrine.

Father Kevin Codd, a priest of the Spokane Diocese, chose to make a pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. James in Compostela in northwestern Spain the old-fashioned way—in 2003 he walked the 500 miles as a pilgrim from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in southwestern France across northern Spain. He had recently turned 50 years of age and celebrated his 25th year of ordained ministry. At the time he was serving as rector-president of the American College, a theological seminary sponsored by the bishops of the United States at the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain) in Belgium, and wanted to petition St. James on behalf of this seminary: “Santiago, I’ve got this seminary here that needs more than I can give it. I’ve got some work for you to do on my behalf, so here I come.”

Fortunately for us, Codd kept a journal on his pilgrimage and later transcribed it to produce this splendid book. His writing reminds one of Ernest Hemingway’s powerful descriptions of the magnificent scenery of Spain. Vicariously we can picture ourselves on pilgrimage with Codd, hiking through the countryside, sometimes painfully with a limp and sometimes with a spring in our steps and a song of praise on our lips. Although Codd shares some very personal reflections, somehow the reader identifies with these intimate spiritual insights. In the phrase of St. Francis de Sales that Cardinal John Henry Newman chose for his motto, “cor ad cor loquitur” (“heart speaks to heart”).

For example, after experiencing a rare incident of inhospitality by one of the innkeepers at a refugio (hostel) along the pilgrimage route, Codd writes that what annoyed him most was that in their three encounters that day, the innkeeper failed to look at him even once. He reflects on the French existentialists’ notion of le regard, the look, as a fundamental principle of human relationships:

If I remember my philosophy classes from years ago, good “regard” makes another person or thing a subject in relationship with me. The other is no longer then just an object, an “it,” something outside of me, the existentialists say. It makes you and me an us. Bad “regard” or no “regard” keeps us trapped in a loveless and meaningless world where no one ever knows anyone...Regarding is one of the best lessons I am slowly learning on this road. Truly looking at things, beholding, appreciating, pondering, and allowing them into me: this is what happens when I notice a flower or a person or talk to an old statue of Santiago in a niche somewhere. I also know that disregarding, not beholding, not really seeing, especially when I’m tired, is one of the great faults in my life. I don’t regard God. I don’t regard others. I don’t regard life...He (the innkeeper) reminds me of me and that is why I don’t like him. We both fail in what Jesus was so extraordinarily good at. I am sorry for both of us and promise, for my part, to do better tomorrow.

It is lessons such as this one that Codd shares from his various experiences on the pilgrimage. They make for good spiritual reading.

Interestingly enough, Codd meets many young adults journeying on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and offers his thoughts on their various motivations and attitudes toward God and religion. The reader is impressed by their quest for spirituality and challenged to explore how our church community can engage and support them in their search for God and the transcendent. At evening prayer in the Benedictine monastery of Rabunal, Codd is refreshed by the intense interest and rapt attention of the pilgrim visitors. He writes that this is one more example that “gives the lie to the common belief that this generation of young people has no thirst for the beautiful and the holy…This evening prayer makes it clear that they do thirst for something transcendent in their lives, but to our shame don’t find it often enough in those of us who are supposed to be mediators of the holy in this world. To the extent that they are empty and thirsty it is to an uncomfortable degree our fault, not theirs.”

During his six years as rector-president of the American College, Codd also studied for and earned his doctorate in theology from the Catholic University of Leuven. He blends his academic background, his pastoral sensitivity, and his gift for writing in this fascinating account of his thirty-five day pilgrimage. Now serving as pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in rural Othella, Wash., Father Codd encourages all of us forward on our spiritual pilgrimage.