ULTREIA ET SUSEIA
Here is the poster that greeted me in Palas de Rei, a town in the province of Lugo, Galicia in northwestern Spain. It made me smile.
What caught my attention is not the good news that I only have 67.160 KM left to reach Santiago, not the dictum “No Pain, No Glory” or “Palas de Rei”, the town where I will be spending the night, but the other word “Suseia!”
Today, the most common phrase on the Camino is “¡Buen Camino!” (“Good Way!”). But there was a time when one pilgrim said to another “Ultreia!” and the other responded, saying “et Suseia!” This Latin/French/Spanish phrase means something like, “Go further!” and “And go higher!”
As I see it, it is a phrase intended to encourage pilgrims not to just physically walk onwards (“Ultreia!”), but also and more importantly to grow spiritually, to go “upwards” (“et Suseia!”).