You remove your sandals, stepping barefoot across the threshold onto holy ground. You cannot help but shiver, the thought ‘At long last’ crossing your mind as you reach the final destination of your pilgrimage and the beginning of the Long Walk. The stone is cool on your bare feet, and you feel that the air would be cooler if not for the mass of fellow pilgrims and hundreds of burning candles that occupy every alcove and flat surface. The hundreds of burning candles are outnumbered by far in the thousands of long burn out waxen remains of those that came before. No psalms are sung in this sacred place, lips move in silence as each pilgrim wanders the halls in their own time and in their own place. It is not a large place, a handful of rooms that overall encompass an area no wider than a humble farmstead. Down the hall at the end a single hooded Comitas knight stands watch, proof against desecration or blasphemy by any that have come here with wicked intent.
There is no tapestry or engraved image here, the stone is smooth from the touch of a thousand thousand passing pilgrims from the ages that came before. As you slowly wander from one room to the next you reach out a tentative hand to touch the wall yourself, perhaps your finger strokes against the very same section of wall that your grandfather touched more than a generation ago on his pilgrimage. It is as though you can feel the hand of your ancestor on your very shoulder, grandfather smiling down at you, and that of his ancestors before him… It is electric, and a part of you is reminded of the Angel’s touch during your vigil at the Brother’s Landing. You feel that in some not insignificant way, you have honoured the memory of your forefathers by coming here.
No golden altar or magnified idol is needed here, this place is holy enough as it is. Here, right -here- is where the Brothers lived, laughed and played. You look down at your own bare foot on the cold worn stone, taking a half-step back and fighting back tears as you imagine the child-sized foot or Adam or Cain walking this very place. Stepping in that very -spot-. Eight hundred, no, nine hundred years later and here you are walking in the shadows of their steps. The men that would topple a tyranny and lead your ancestors to a new world, a better world.
You sink to your knees, your right hand gripping your left below the fist at the wrist painfully tight in the sign of the One True Faith, and you begin to pray.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uj8h4SCsnE&t=749s&ab_channel=AdorationoftheCross – Adoration of the Sanctum[2/4]
