Leòn Cathedral is among the greatest of human works in Gothic style. The church features one of the world’s largest collections of medieval stained glass windows.

Right now, the bells are ringing, calling the people to service. You can hear the bells toll across the city on this rainy morning.

I am wearing my waterproof, trotting across the town square, just in time for mass.

Church is full. There are no pews available. I stand in the rear of the ornate sanctuary alongside other pilgrims, our 100-pound backpacks snugly fitted on our shoulders.

Daylight shines through a stone Gothic frame of 130 individual stained glass windows, illuminating the heads of all congregants with a rainbow spectrum of medieval colors.

Mass is conducted in Spanish. Although I speak Spanish, I am only able to understand a total of three words.

Meantime, I am looking at the stained glass. In one window, I see 12 bearded men, wearing bathrobes and Birkenstocks. I assume I am looking at a depiction of the apostles, although they could be Dead Heads on their way to San Francisco.

It hurts to stand. I am currently nursing a spasmed calf muscle. It is only a cramp, but it has slowed me down. I am now walking with a slight limp, lingering behind the troop.

Other pilgrims have been passing me on the Camino, they all see the telltale athletic tape on my calf and ask in concerned voices, “Estas bien?”

“Bien, bien,” I always reply with a self-effacing laugh. But deep inside I am embarrassed. Because I feel like a dork. Limping along. One painful kilometer at a time.

I look around the cathedral at my fellow pilgrims. There are many teenage hikers in the congregation. They are brimming with adolescent energy, emitting sine waves of testosterone and estrogen into the sanctuary. They are so strong and fit. So young and attractive. So hopelessly optimistic about life.

And I stand behind them, probably three times their age, and I feel like a consummate fool.

What am I doing out here? I am hiking 500 miles alongside actual teenagers, like a middle-aged American idiot having a midlife crisis, minus the Porsche. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt like more of a fool in my life. And being American in a foreign country doesn’t help matters.

My eyes are then drawn to a stained-glass image of who I assume is the apostle Peter.

Peter is always the apostle depicted with a thick beard, a perpetually confused expression on his face. He is almost always drawn by artists as a big, fuzzy, lovably, moderately dumb, uncoordinated man in serious need of a qualified barber.

In other words, he looks a lot like me. And as I am staring at this window, something interesting happens.

I can’t explain this. But the priest is now speaking slower, or maybe my ears are growing more accustomed to the cadence of his words; I am able to understand what he is saying.

He is reading scripture, reciting a story about the apostle Peter, from the final chapters of the book of John.

In the story, Jesus is newly resurrected, Peter and the boys are fishing in a boat when they see Jesus standing on the shoreline.

Peter screams, “It’s the Lord!” And he dives into the water. He swims ashore like the impulsive, reckless rocket scientist that he is. Have you ever tried swimming a quarter mile? It’s a wonder he doesn’t drown.

Soon, they are all sitting around a campfire, Peter is probably cold and wet, and everyone is cooking breakfast. That’s when Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him.

Peter replies, yes, of course he loves Him. Then Jesus asks him again, “Do you love me?” And Peter answers yes again. Jesus asks this question a third time, “Do you love me?” And this time Peter is deeply hurt. He says, “You know I love you, Lord.”

And there are probably tears in Peter’s eyes when he answers, because only days before, Peter had deeply hurt Jesus publicly. At the time, Jesus was being led to His execution, and Peter was afraid he would be captured too, so he denied his best friend and saved his own proverbial ass.

Jesus would not have blamed him for laying low, of course. Peter was only trying to protect himself. But this might have been Peter’s lowest moment.

And now, in a unique way, according to the story, Peter was being forgiven for his screwup, three times. Publicly. And I have this feeling that if Peter had screwed up 3,000 times, he would’ve been forgiven 3,000 times. I don’t know how this story applies to me, but I have the strange sensation that it does.

I look at the tape on my tightened calf. Evidence of my own brilliant genius over the past three weeks. I look upward at the image of Peter, beaming down at me, with a warm look that says he gets it.

And I feel, maybe, that I am in good company this morning