We attended Mass at the Cathedral of St. James. We were going to go to the noon Mass, which is called the Pilgrim's Mass, but we were tipped off that the Mass later that day, which is the Feast of the Sacred Heart, which Spain is dedicated to.

Later that day, the evening mass was going to have the Bota Fumero.

Now the Bota Fumero in Spanish boat

boat fumero smoke this is the smoke boat it is to my knowledge the largest

thurable

thurable is a metal encasement that holds charcoal and incense and this thing is humongous and I was

hoping they were going to swing it at the offatory they didn't the entire mass

went on I thought oh no we're not going to do it and then once mass was over

I think it was before the final blessing these men in maroon ropes came out and filled it with charcoal filled it up with incense and let the thing fly and I'm going to include on the page of this podcast the video that I took of the Botafomerra apparently goes up to 70 kilometers per hour

things putting out smoke as it arched over us you could see the flames inside of it burning because the things going so fast

the cold's getting so hot. So it's a remarkable sight everybody loved it a huge

highlight of this enormous

terrible smoking out the place.

And the backstory to it is, not only

did they want to give glory to God,

the primary purpose, as St Thomas Aquinas says in the Summa is to reduce smells.

Medieval people didn't smell well, especially if you're a medieval person and

you've just walked 500 kilometers without a bath and you multiply that by several

hundred people pilgrims that church is stinky and so the priest there came up with the brilliant idea of let's just make a bigger

thirble hang it from the dome of the cathedral and swing it back in 4.70 calm

per hour and smoke out the place so we don't smell the nasty pilgrims, we

smell the beautiful aroma of incense rising. So look on this podcast page if

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