Be careful. Killers roam the streets of Amsterdam. So said the driver as our bus rolled into the capital of the Netherlands in mid-November. The warning, he explained, referred not to reapers on the loose but to cyclists so zealous of their designated red lanes on city sidewalks, they leave any stray pedestrian with but nanoseconds to steer clear of them.
Brightening skies and a gentle breeze greeted me and my friend from Nigeria as we disembarked and walked past some of fall’s last flowers and browning shrubs into the Sloterdijk terminal. She came as a tourist, I came as a pilgrim, and we both looked forward to the joyful gaze of resident friends.
We bought tickets and rode a train to the central station. Along the way she commented that the terrain looked almost Danish in its flatness. I agreed, noting, however, the feeling of certainty that we stood on relatively more depressed topography. At our stop, we climbed the first set of stairs to ground level. The station’s main entrance, where we would part, loomed palatial a few meters away, through wide canals and tram lines silent on that cold Thursday morning.
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We walked, my brother from Montenegro and I, in search of the court of the Begijnhof. I learned about this place while researching shrines on the Web. In ordinarily bustling postmodern Amsterdam, the shrine quietly speaks, to those who seek, of the miracle that put the waterlogged city on the map centuries ago.
Is this it? He asked, looking up from his phone map. I said yes. We stopped at the narrow, arched gateway into the Begijnhof, a haven that on the outside looked like an ordinary Dutch villa, and walked in.
For hundreds of years, the houses here sheltered ladies engaged, like Mother Teresa, in caring for the needy. Unlike nuns, they could get married if they wished, but while they lived here they focused on doing works of mercy. The last of the ladies died in the twentieth century.
Today, a chapel commemorating the Eucharistic miracle of Amsterdam constitutes the centerpiece of the Begijnhof. The wonder had to with a Dutch parishioner on the throes of death. One of his carers, sure that the sick man laid on death’s throes, sent for a priest who came and gave him the last rites. The man proved to ill even to keep the Sacred Host. He vomited and expelled the Body of Christ.
The Bread of Life defied gravity and floated in the hearth, above the fire. A lady attendant took the host and placed it in a chest for the priest to bring with him to church. This the priest did. The following mornings, the host reappeared inside the chest. Finally the priest took it to church, but only in a solemn procession that most of the town attended.
The report spread far and wide, drawing in pilgrims who venerated Amsterdam’s holy fireplace until the Reformation touched the Netherlands. The shrine that the faithful built in thanksgiving for the miracle deteriorated and passed over into non-Christian and eventually secular use.
The chapel of the Begijnhof, whose exteriors project nothing religious, nevertheless keeps remembrance of the miracle, particularly through a painting that depicts it.
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I do not know if the late ladies of the Begijnhof had counterparts among men. But I count my brother from Montenegro among the merciful today.
Which pilgrim would not feel forgiven in your hospitality?
You woke up to meet me amid a chill morning, walked with me in search of a confessor, sat patiently with me by the river while I philosophized about the abstract over chocolate turning cold, and made sure I would not get lost getting to another Amsterdam chapel, where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared as Our Lady of All Nations.
Man has lived like a shrine disguised, when knowing him you feel the host’s sacred fire.
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