Hiking the Pilgrimage Trail: Religion, Art and Experience in Spain

We often think of our lives as a project. We organize our choices and hopes around some particular goal in an aim to make meaningful the life each of us is given.  For the Christians of Medieval Europe that goal was the “beatific vision,” to be enjoyed eternally by those who merited heaven.  The “beatific vision” was understood as the culmination of a life spent in pursuit of perfection. To achieve this, faithful Christians devoted themselves to a process of spiritual formation in imitation of Christ’s life and journey. For them, a pilgrimage was both a strenuous physical journey to a sacred geographic destination and an inner, spiritual journey leading to heaven.

This course reenacts the physical journey of these long departed pilgrims by retracing their steps along one of the most heavily traveled medieval routes the pilgrimage across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela.  Our pilgrimage will invite each of us to consider in inner pilgrimages we undertake in our modern quest for meaning.  What are the projects that give purpose to our lives? How does modern media express faith today in terms of sacred spaces, symbols, and art, liturgy and Scripture. In the 21st century, along what sort of roads, and towards what end?