Love in Action

Reflections on the Camino

The following reflection is written by Adam Cantrell, originally given as a closing talk for a retreat. All photos credited to Matthew Boehm.

How do we love? How do we go forward with the love we have received and live it out? I just want to lead with this: it isn’t complicated. It’s very simple. Look at Jesus; he walked perhaps over 3000 miles in his 3-year earthly ministry. With 12 dudes from a backwater of the Roman Empire, he changed the world. He saved the world. Mile by mile, he shared conversations, meals, sadness and rejoicing. He shared the infinite love of his sacred heart with the most broken and rejected people you could hope to find. You have been given a path to walk in this life. You have been given crosses. By those crosses we are each saved. By carrying them, we can hope to help Jesus save others. I think he said it himself in Matthew chapter 16;

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?

Love from Christ is meant to move, not be contained. It’s meant to be actions, even in the smallest and most practical ways. But it’s also meant to be prayer, which can sometimes feel so impotent, but is really the most powerful thing we will ever get to participate in.

I want to tell you about a time in my life where I had more crosses than I cared for. How I went on an adventure to forget them or leave them behind only to realize that they were inseparable, like two sides of the same coin.

Ya know, sometimes Christ’s love isn’t what we want it to be. In the moment, we can’t see the purpose of the things He is letting happen to us. We want His love to be that we are kept comfortable and happy, or what we think that is. We want our relationships to be easy. It is easy to let ourselves want a love that demands nothing of us, but that IS NOT LOVE. We want people to love us and never leave us. And when His love doesn’t feel how we want, we are left to wonder, “what’s the point of it all? If you love me, God, why does this have to hurt so much?” What is this love supposed to look like? How do we receive it and know it is true and good? How do we let His perfect love flow through us?

This is a story about how I came to the end of an adventure and completely realized and understood in a way I can’t perfectly explain on my own, that it was all for a reason. All the suffering and sadness and pain, crushing solitude and suffocating anger was for a reason. For the perfect reason. The perfect destination. It is how I truly came to feel that I’d do it all again for Him and for His plan.

I think, hope, that, at the end of our lives, that if we have participated in His Love and plan as much as we can, we will look back, and rejoice at the great purpose it had and especially in the hard parts. You will see how that life was planned from the beginning, that it could only ever have been lived by you. You’ll see that the people in your lives were meant to be loved in a particular and special way that could only come from you. And that the plan of your life fits perfectly with every soul you encounter.

The last year, 2024 into 2025, had been something of a total nightmare, which I lived out very much alone. In February of 2024, my plans went a little askew. I lost the hope of a marriage with the collapse of an engagement and I was left to put myself back together in solitude, renovating the house I’d hoped would be a family’s home during the dark nights. During the day, I labored to complete the enormous load of my doctoral research. It was a project I had barely begun and hadn’t any idea of how to finish. And I was so completely defeated within my heart, and wished I just had someone to help me get through it. Maybe you know something of what I mean.

For nearly a year, I trudged along, with raw force of will and my rosary. Having completely lost everything the way I wanted it, I somehow had the grace to trust, just barely trust, that God’s plan was better; that maybe He wanted something for me. Maybe that something was even perfect.

I remember getting to the end of it all – the house, the research, writing the dissertation, Christmas coming on – and sitting in the student lounge – lights off, Christmas lights hanging along the top of the room, the cozy Christmas Jazz Spotify playlist playing over my laptop speakers – to write the dedication of my dissertation. I looked back; even with it all nearly done, I felt no sense of accomplishment. I felt no pride in what I had done. It was all just a terrible memory that hopefully I could finally forget. I just wanted it to all be completely different.

Being left without the things that really mattered to my heart – love, belonging, peace, a home that made me feel safe (not shattered) – I sat down to write the hardest part of my dissertation: the dedication. I had really looked forward to this; I was going to dedicate it to my wife, my parents, the children that might’ve been coming, all of the joy that had got me through it. But that just wasn’t my reality in that dark, windowless basement student lounge with the dragging tempo of the Christmas Jazz.

So I decided to dedicate it to the only person I felt I could, the only person that could make something out of the whole mess, Our Lady. This is what I wrote:

I hereby dedicate this little work to the Seat of Wisdom, Undoer of Knots, Star of the Sea: The Blessed Virgin Mary. In this, the most arduous journey of my life, I fled to her protection, implored her help, sought her intercession. I prayed that she take my hand and lead me. With generosity far exceeding my plea, she has been my wisdom, undone my knots, steered my wandering bark through squalls that should have sunk me. Oh, Queen of Peace, lead me upon restful waters, forevermore.

Into those words I poured every tear I shed. I finally gave away the mess that I was holding on to. I gave it to her, and she knew how best to use it for the good of my soul and others. She showed me how she did, several months later, long after I had forgotten what I had written.

Finally, having finished all that, I wanted a break. I wanted to be spiritually nourished and built up. I felt completely empty, poured out, and wanted to receive, to be filled up again. So, my best friend Matthew and I planned an adventure across the mountains and plains of Spain on what is known as the Camino de Santiago. We would walk the way trodden by many great saints to see the bones once clothed in muscle and sinew which too burned as they journeyed to find the path Christ set for him.

But before I could catch my breath, more hard things had to happen before I could feel consolation. My best friend from back in high school lost his life in the arms of his wonderful wife after a two-year battle with osteosarcoma; bone cancer. As it spread throughout his body, he lost his arm and his ability to walk when the cancer inevitably reached his spine. At his funeral I got to see how he had 3D printed himself a remote that he could use one handed to control his drone. That way he could fly places he’d never get to walk to again. He flew to places he and I had run! Or biked! To trails we had barreled his jeep down in the woods many years ago. He never let himself be trapped. It seemed that he never gave up. He knew life doesn’t begin to end, or that we are made to be unmade. And even though he was in the darkest place he could be, he took Christ’s words to heart, “You are the light of the world” and that light shone not to be hidden, but to be seen. I am glad I got to see it. Because it taught me that I must do the same thing Grant did. The same thing Christ did.

Some friends and I organized a small tribute for him at his funeral where all of us from the old acapella choir sang the “Irish Blessing,” a song his voice had shared with us many times before. Perhaps his voice did join ours, somewhere. We sang this song at the end of every concert our old choir gave; it really meant something to us as we gave that final blessing of farewell to our friend. Friends that did not even know Grant came to sing in honor of him. I just told them about him, and they came.

I say all this because even though I was suffering, there was still an unmistakable call to share the love of Jesus with others and comfort them. Just in the same way Grant did not lose his joy in the pain which ultimately took his life. Even from the cross, Christ forgave. During his passion he comforted. Are we not meant to do the same? With joy in our hearts, through the pain? Isn’t that love in action?

Finally, Matthew and I arrived in France on May 8^th, 2025. I went to mass there in the small town of St. Jean Pied-de-Port. It was there that Matthew messaged to tell me that we had a new pope, just as mass began. As I went for communion my watch buzzed again. We had an American pope. Matthew and I were thrilled and knew God had great things planned for us. 2025 was also a year of jubilee. In the Old Testament, years of jubilee were special years in which all debts were forgiven and prisoners set free. I felt that maybe God had something great planned for us.

We got checked into our little hostel, built into the ramparts of the fortifications of the town. It was there that we met Annie¹ for the first time. Annie would become such a beautiful part of our journey. She was my age and from northern England; a physical therapist. She said that she had quit her job and needed to figure some things out… tell me about it. We told her we were Catholics and had just wrapped up our higher education and were making a journey of thanksgiving to God for having seen us through.

We told this to a lot of people. On the Way, that is usually the first question you are asked – what brings you to the camino? Why are you walking it? When we shared our reasons – the faith – the room usually turned to ice. A wall would come up. The same happened with Annie. She said something about having been christened and then found a reason to leave our stuffy bunk room in the hostel. We saw in Annie this “lostness” that so many of us have, especially at this time in our lives. We have done everything we have been told. We went to school, got a job, bought a house, and some other junk. All this was supposed to fulfill us and make us happy. That’s what everyone said! That’s what everyone told us! But by the time you do all the things and check all the boxes… we don’t feel anything.

I think this is where most people who we met on the Camino were. They were all searching for that which their heart desired. Maybe they arrived there like I did, because they wanted a break. They needed a hard stop. But we could tell that God was using whatever reason they had to come there to draw them closer to Him: the true satisfaction of their hearts. They just didn’t know it yet. Matthew and I were some of the few Catholics we met along the Way. And we quickly realized that we were not going to be there to just be filled up and given rest from our crosses, but that they would be used for His plan, for the good of our souls, and the souls of those around us.

That evening we climbed the ramparts of the old town and watched the sun set over the Pyrenees and wondered over which peak we might soon be marching over. We ran into Annie there and wished each other a very Buen Camino!

We passed through the gate which signifies the beginning of our journey. I played the LOTR soundtrack and quoted about half the movie. I think Matthew loved it at first but soon told me to shut it.

Matthew and I walked 17 miles over the mountains to Roncesvalles, an ancient monastery just inside Spain. Then two more miles to Burgette where we stayed for the night. We rose early and walked on to Zubiri, a small town with an asphalt plant and an ancient church by a stream. The next day we traveled down the valley which opened into a great basin where Pamplona lay. As we were walking through the streets after our pilgrim mass, we met Annie again and we had dinner together! It was there that her story transformed, and her reasons for being there became clearer. Her father had severe Parkinson’s and was not doing well. She was walking it as a hard stop after quitting her job, yes, but she was carrying her father with her along the way in her heart too. We could tell it weighed heavily on her. In days to come, we would walk many miles for her and her father and offer it up for their good. Sometimes there isn’t anything you can say or do. How can we know just what a soul needs? In prayer we can be given the wisdom to know. We offer our own personal sacrifices to God and he can do a great deal with them; much more than we can hope or imagine!

The village of Zubiri

We lost track of Annie for a few days. There were many people on the camino and sometimes you don’t always stop in the same places or the same times. But after perhaps our hardest walk, from Torres del Rio (Towers of the River) to Logrono, which I offered for Annie, we came to see her again.

By the time we entered the city, my heels were covered up in blisters and my left knee felt like it had been beaten with a baseball bat. I left our hotel (yes, we broke down and got a bathtub), and went to the pharmacy to get some blister treatment. When I walked out, I realized I was in the square where the cathedral was, Santa Maria de la Redonda de Logrono. Hobbling along with my swollen feet, I went inside and sat there for nearly three hours. After coming out of confession just before the 8pm mass, I saw Annie. She was sitting on one of the hard wooden pews that ended against one of the great stone columns of the church. It was a dark spot away from the tourists roaming the aisles. She was crying. Just softly crying and gazing up at man on a cross. She did not know this man. She didn’t know the things he had promised her. But he was doing something deep within her heart.

That day I had had the urge to find the lyrics to an old song by Josh Grobin. All day I sang that song and Matthew kept walking faster and faster to get away. Seeing Annie, I thought of them again.

When I am down and, oh, my soul, so weary
When troubles come and my heart burdened be
Then I am still and wait here in the silence
Until You come and sit awhile with me

You raise me up so I can stand on mountains
You raise me up to walk on stormy seas
I am strong when I am on Your shoulders
You raise me up to more than I can be

Recalling those words, I had to sit beside her. Just sit. I felt that’s what I was meant to do. When I sat down beside her, she asked me about my rosary. I told her about it and how it comforted me when I needed help. We did not say much. But she sincerely thanked me for taking the time to sit beside her. I didn’t know what exactly was wrong. But I prayed for her to God that he would work it all out. You see, when you get to pray for someone, you get to stop thinking about yourself and your problems. You get to offer them for the good of another, and it makes carrying those crosses so sweet to carry.

The next day we walked from Logrono to Najera. Annie caught up with me again in a vineyard and we walked a long while along the way. She told me that she was finally dealing with so many of the repressed feelings that work had been distracting her from. I got to share a bit of my story and how faith had become such an enormous part of my life. She wanted to hear about my faith and what my life had been like to have brought me there. I got to tell her that it was a year of jubilee and that if she felt imprisoned by anything, trapped, helpless, that this year had been proclaimed to offer souls special grace to be set free. I got to tell her that God wanted her freedom from those things. He made her for joy and freedom in Himself. I think she believed me.

I got to see Annie again, several days later, in Burgos. Matthew and I had lunch with her, and we caught up a bit more, swapping stories about the Way. Then again, we crossed paths at a collapsed monastery near Castrojerez. We didn’t have any great earth-shattering discussions. We just talked about simple things and spent time together on the Way. I think that is how life/love in action can be sometimes, and it shouldn’t discourage us if it isn’t grandiose. People flit in and out of our lives, and not every encounter is the most earth-shattering. But we never know how much the small words or actions may move others over months and years. We must rejoice even in simple interactions. Maybe it is in those that our greatest witnesses come. We have to trust The Holy Spirit and He will move us the ways we need to.

While walking down the street in Leon, many miles and days later, I met Annie again. I had left Matthew to sleep at the hotel, and I had gone on a tour of the town. We had just walked 27.7 miles and taken over 70k steps that day. I had missed Annie and was glad to get to spend some time walking with her and hearing about her trip. Her mother was flying in and would be joining her that evening to walk the last part to Santiago. I was overjoyed for her. Seeing her come down the street I could see that so much had changed within her. She was radiating a happiness that had been missing.

The next time I saw her was in Santiago de Compostela. It was her last day there, and mine too. Sadly, I never got to meet her mother; she had already flown out for England. But we got a beer and walked over to the park that I had got to visit some days earlier. We walked through the park and found that on the other side was the campus of the University of Santiago. A decade earlier, my parents had got me a hoodie from this University when they made their pilgrimage. Now I was in the same place, completing mine.

Annie and I had been talking and as we were beginning to leave the campus and return to the park, she abruptly turned to me and asked, “Can I share something with you?” She pulled ahead and stammered and shuddered and turned right, away from me and began to cry loudly. She burst out, “I was raped when I was twelve!” I was shocked. Surprised. I had no idea. This couldn’t have been. Not to this girl that I had come to know, who was standing just before me, crying. She turned back to me and I hugged her. At that, she wept harder and shook with each gasp. We stood there, embracing for a long time.

She had told everyone that this whole journey was about a job, her dad’s illness, finally working through some repressed feelings. And now I knew what she had really been carrying with her. And after 500 miles of walking together and many talks and walks and meals, she finally felt she could tell me.

She told me really it was that she had been consumed by this tragedy, transgression, assault, violation that it became everything and every motivation and reason. She said she found she was “losing herself.” And that her entire identity had become this one moment of her greatest pain. She said when I saw her in the Logrono cathedral, she had just felt so loved in that space. She let her heart be open and vulnerable in that Holy Temple and all of it just flowed out there. She wept before our Lord. In that moment she felt that she was glowing, radiating. She pointed to her heart and said she had been given such great healing.

The funny thing was that when I had seen her come across the square at Compostella, I told her that she was glowing with happiness. I loved to see that in her. She said she was no longer losing herself in anger and her identity that was only in the evil done to her, but in something new. She said she wanted to keep visiting churches when she went home. Like how her grandma had taken her when she was a child. She said she wanted to feel that peace, forever. Innocently, she asked if that was normal. Matthew said it was his favorite thing to do, and he spent many many hours, just sitting in the love of Jesus Christ

Matthew and I said goodbye to Annie there in the square by Compostela. It was a sad goodbye, but not so hard. We were each in God’s good hands.

Annie was just one of many people we got to share our faith with and love along the way. She stands out to me though, because, when we got to share the Way with her, we got to see the love and friendship we shared with her bear fruit in the Spirit. It wasn’t us who accomplished anything, but the Holy Spirit. He used us, gently, and in the small things, to reveal Himself to her. In answering her questions, in inviting her as we explored the villages and towns. In having a genuine interest in how she was doing.

I think that as children of God, this is the kind of Love God wants us to live out. Just walking the Way he sets before us, with the souls he sets beside us. You don’t have to go to the Iberian Peninsula to live this; it is present every day. I still wake up in the morning, like I did in Spain, and imagine lacing my boots and donning my pack, or my cross, to set out on the path he lays for me.

The next day Matthew left for Fatima, and I walked on to the sea. At the end of the camino, in a tiny village called Finisterre I walked into a tiny windswept church, 2 km from the cliffs where the camino ends. It was salt sprayed and covered with lichen. I went in, rounded a corner, and saw something, a sign, that told me everything I needed to know. On a side altar, I saw Our Lady, Estella del Mar… Star of the Sea. It was to her that I had dedicated the great crosses I had carried. She had been waiting there at the end the entire time. It was as if she told me every prayer was heard, and this walk was just a part of the great purpose that God had for my life.

The next day I walked to Muxia, an alternate Camino ending. What’s another 20 kilometers? I had mass there in the church of Santa Maria de Los Barcos. Barcos is the Spanish word for bark or boat. Again, Our Lady graced me with the knowledge that she had always been waiting for me here and that she and her son had always been with me.

There in that church built on the boulders jutting out from the sea that crashed against them, I had my last pilgrim mass. As I entered, my friend whom I’d lost to cancer came upon my heart. I realized I’d walked too few miles for him. And prayed for him far too little. So, I offered that mass there for Grant. There at the end, a little priest, old, white haired, came up and gave us all a blessing, but not the one for pilgrims we might have been used to. “You see” he said ,”I’m from Ireland… and I want to give you a blessing from my homeland.” We gathered around the sanctuary, he laid his holy hands upon us and said…

May the road rise to meet you

May the wind be always at your back

May the sun shine warm upon your face

May the rains fall soft upon your fields

And until we meet again may God hold you in the palm of his hand

I knew right then, and I hope you come to know, it is all for a reason. I’d gladly do it all again for the Glory of God. I knew my friend was ok, that he was with Jesus, and everything was worthwhile.

Reflection by Adam Cantrell

Photos by Matthew Boehm

Adam and Matthew on the last day of the Camino

1. Name and details changed for privacy’s sake.