My decision to make a month-long visit to Spain gave birth when I learned that the Texas Prelature of Opus Dei was organizing a nine-day tour of cities important in the life of the Prelature’s founder, St. Josemaria. The nine day pilgrimage was to take place as we made our way to join an expected 100,000 persons at an outdoor Mass in Madrid, to celebrate the recognition of St. Josemaria’s successor, Bishop Alvaro del Portillo, as Blessed. It turns out nearly 200,000 people were at the Mass. This video report is the first of several I will post in the coming weeks regarding our Opus Dei pilgrimage visits to those key cities we hear about in stories of the life of St. Josemaria. It is a privilege to be able to visit these locations, even though some structures where St. Josemaria and/or members of his family resided – as all things of this world – have “passed on.” But the towns, cities, the neighborhoods are still there. Please allow me to explain why it has taken so long to post this video. And why the below report is only the first part of three reports regarding our nine-day pilgrimage. Following the Opus Dei pilgrimage, I stayed on, in Spain. For the past three weeks I have been on my own personal quest to learn how much basis there is to the legend, now widely circulated even on the Internet, that – in the 9th Century – our AGRAZ ancestor saved the life of King Alfonso II, The Chaste, when the Muslim Arabs began to battle their way up the Iberian Peninsula – to battle the same frustrations that Julius Caesar encountered in this land centuries earlier: the cold, the wind, the rain, the mountains and valleys and the people who would just not stop fighting. Unlike the Romans, this time, the Muslim Arabs had to deal with the visigoth, Catholic, “ferocious barbarians” of Asturias and Galicia inhabiting the land in the ninth century. This neophyte researcher has been busy collecting as much documentary data as possible. Some, I learned, is already in digital form. But the “real story” – who exactly was my ancestor – is nowhere to be found in the digital archives. Perhaps it will also not be found in original documents, either. Also, other hurdles: I have been confronted with balky Internet connections, fighting my efforts to upload my reports to this site. And finally, need I mention the “blessing” of today’s digital photography world which allows us to take lots, and lots, and even more, images? Oh, for the former world of just 4 or 5 rolls of KodaChrome slides! But I bravely slog through the thousands of images and video files with my Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Audition, and Adobe Photoshop, and then finally produce these unworthy video report files with my Apple Final Cut Pro. I hope they will at least be a bit entertaining and informative, both about the Opus Dei pilgrimage and about my search, both of which are admittedly probably interesting only to those near to us, such as family and friends. Nevertheless, after too much explanation, here is my first offering regarding the Texas group: Part One – Texas Group Beatification Visit, September 2014.
