Hi Peregrino Falcon -
Your thread had me recalling an hilarious story from my time volunteering at Refugio Gaucelmo at Rabanal in July last year. We had a wonderful Scottish pilgrim stay with us one night who had several of us doubled over with laughter with his many stories, one of which I've dined out on countless times since I heard it. The Scottish pilgrim lived in a small town and and was very actively involved with his local church, along with many others in his town. The parishioners would take it in turn to do the readings, some with responses required, and some were more confident with the readings than others. At one Mass the response to a particular reading was "May His dynasty last forever". The person doing the reading was a bit nervous and instead of directing the parishioners to respond with "May His dynasty last forever", she directed them all to say "May His DYSENTERY last forever"! He said for a moment or two there was the most awful, uncomfortable silence, then much laughter all round, including from the person who'd slipped up big-time! It was a great story!
The postscript to the story is that I ran into the Scottish pilgrim in the Cathedral in Santiago a couple of weeks later. We were both attending the English Mass in one of the small chapels within the Cathedral. It was fantastic to see him and to hear that the rest of his camino had gone really well. After the Mass we both chatted to Fr. Jay from the US and Sr. Bridget from Ireland, who were the chaplains there at the time, and I asked him if he would recount the story to them, which he did. Again, much laughter all round!
Cheers - Jenny
