Best Guidebook for Camino de Santiago – Wise Pilgrim apps

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The best guidebook for Camino de Santiago isn’t a book at all, but the Wise Pilgrim guidebook app for iPhone and Android. This guidebook app gives information about albergues, distances, elevation, tourist stops, churches, and so much else as you make pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. This version is for Camino Frances, but Wise Pilgrim has apps available for nearly every pilgrimage route (Camino del Norte, Camino Portugues, Via de la Plata, Camino Primitivo, the route to Finisterre, and many others).

Check my channel for lots of videos on Camino de Santiago spirituality, gear, and planning helps.

Information about the Wise Pilgrim apps is available at: https://www.wisepilgrim.com/

To support this site, you can purchase from this packing list of my recommended items for Camino de Santiago (Affiliate Link): https://amzn.to/3vwvcef

John Brierley guidebooks are available here (Affiliate Link): https://amzn.to/3tIGkTD

Why did Martin Luther Hate Pilgrimage to Camino de Santiago?

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Why did Martin Luther and other Reformers critique pilgrimages like Camino de Santiago so harshly? Why did they think Christians shouldn’t make these journeys? In this video I analyze some of Martin Luther’s writings on pilgrimage to gain lessons for making pilgrimage to Santiago in 2021. With Camino de Santiago making such a strong resurgence in the last 20 years, this is a good time to learn from Christian theologians of the past. His arguments probably won’t be very convincing for secular pilgrims.

The Pilgrimage Is Like Life: Reversing the Metaphor

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Our first day on pilgrimage we were greeted with a pretty significant hail storm.

It’s not uncommon among those that are versed in the life of a pilgrim to speak of life being like the pilgrimage. They note that living life requires navigating a path and going toward your life mission.

Medieval Christians would have said this in the reversed fashion. For Medieval Christians life is the pilgrimage, and the various place pilgrimages such as the Holy Land, Rome, or Camino de Santiago are just small samples of this much greater pilgrimage. No matter which direction you take your metaphor, you learn a great deal from becoming dependent upon your surroundings.

As we started our long awaited walk, it was already raining. But when you have travelled for this one purpose, you don’t decide not to walk just because the conditions are not ideal. So we set out through the rain and the mud that resulted. The walking was slower than expected, but there were enough moments of sunshine that we could soak in the beauty of the place that we were traversing. Even as it rained we walked past centuries old churches and monasteries, ate our first empanada con jamón y queso (ham and cheese pie), and strolled through countryside covered in wild flowers.

Just a few hours into our walk we decided to take our first real break in a very tiny village. As I said, it had been raining off and on most of the morning. But it was mostly sunny now. Just as Jen suggested that we start walking again, it started to rain lightly. We were glad to stay under the covered bus bench a bit longer as the rain would likely pass. Just a few moments later it began to hail very badly. We considered it quite a privilege to be covered and watching from a dry bench.

Today we learned that life (like pilgrimage) requires that you take what you are given if you are to pursue a mission. Living life aimlessly might allow you to “stay out of the rain.” But living life on purpose requires that you take the rough moments and the moments of provision with joy as you take another step toward your calling.

Related post: What is a Spiritual Pilgrimage?

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