[Gocamino] Celebrating the Feast day of my favourite Pilgrim Saint!

[Sil]

29th May - the feast day of St. Bona of Pisa (1156 - 1207).
A native of Pisa, she experienced visions from an early age. On one occasion
she saw a vision of Saint James the Greater. She was frightened by the light
around these figures, and ran away. James pursued her, and led her back to
the image of Jesus. Bona was devoted to James for the rest of her life. By
the age of ten, she had dedicated herself as an Augustinian tertiary. She
regularly fasted from an early age, taking only bread and water three days a
week. Four years later, she made the first of her many journeys, going to
see her father who was fighting in the Crusades near Jerusalem. On her trip
home, she was captured by Muslim pirates on the Mediterranean Sea, wounded,
and subsequently imprisoned. She was later rescued by some of her
countrymen, and completed her trip home.
Shortly thereafter, she set out on another pilgrimage, this time leading a
large number of pilgrims on the long and dangerous thousand-mile journey to
Santiago de Compostela, where James the Greater is honored. After this, she
was made one of the official guides along this pilgrimage route by the
Knights of Saint James. She successfully completed the trip nine times.
Despite being ill at the time, she took and completed a tenth trip, and
returned home to Pisa, dying shortly thereafter in the room she kept near
the church of San Martino in Pisa, where her body has been conserved.

-- 
Sil
http://amawalker.blogspot.com/
www.2009pilgrims.blogspot.com
www.vfpilgrims.blogspot.com
www.csjofsa.za.org