Faith

Easter.

Rebirth.

Where after it was cooked, the chicken crowed.

The crowd gathered on that rainy Sunday for service, but the swarm of faithful were held out in the square while a darkly dressed contingent waited upon the steps of the cathedral. Beautiful women in black lace and white pearls wept profusely; swarthy men wearing skinny ties stood teary-eyed and tough, defensively keeping those not known to the family down and away. A hearse pulled up slowly through the mourners and the holiday celebrants. The throng moved back allowing the long car to pass. The windows were dark, the side panels: a shiny ebony. It stopped, and a coffin was brought forth from its belly and ushered up the stairs and through the western doors. A scream of dread rent the onlookers as the wife, a blur of black satin, was escorted up the stairs and into the church, lamenting each inch forward by shrieking and bawling. No one tried to stop her howling dirge, they just carried her forward knowing it was her right to protest the unfairness of death.

In medieval times, a family of Germans moved through Santo Domingo de la Calzada on their pilgrimage to Santiago. The son, spurning the affection of one of the locals, was framed for robbery and promptly hanged. The parents in their piety continued their pilgrimage onward. A month later, on their return trip home, they passed by the town again, only to find their son still hanging from the gibbet and alive. St. James had held him aloft and continued to do so, he proclaimed. The father and mother rushed to the mayor to let him know of this miracle, who was at the moment roasting some chickens. He laughed at these rubes and said that their son was as alive as the chickens he was preparing for dinner. At which point the chickens came back to life, jumped off the spit, grew feathers, and flew away while screeching: “Santo Domingo de la Calzada: Where after it was cooked, the chicken crowed!”

The priest saying mass, the Easter Sunday I was there, cried through the whole service. The coffin sat before him on the altar steps. It was dark in the church, and parishioners held candles for the deceased. The widow bellowed unanswered tears. The celebrant finally gave up in the end: after touching the casket momentarily with a loving swipe, he fell to his knees hysterical and had to be helped off the stairs.

I didn’t speak enough Spanish to understand what was happening. I had planned on an uplifting service while on my way to Santiago myself. The man who had died was clearly an important citizen of the town to be grieved in such a manner and time as this, and obviously he was known by most of the people in the packed cathedral. But I felt alone and abandoned. I found myself crying in sympathetic empathy for all that had been lost, for the rush toward the end for us all.

I sat directly below an enclosed pen, positioned high upon the western wall. You could see in through a dimly lit panel of hazy glass. Inside were kept the descendants of the miraculous chickens.

Crowing long after they had been cooked.

 

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