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The 2008 Joint Pilgrimage (with SOM) to Lourdes - Report by Betty Jarrett

Dr Robin Ward's CHURCH TIMES article on the Lourdes Pilgrimage

PILGRIMAGE TO LOURDES

Betty Jarrett, a Guardian of the Shrine, (front row, left) writes about the joint Society of Mary and Walsingham ecumenical pilgrimage to Lourdes.

On Monday, September 22nd 2008 more than 400 Anglican pilgrims set out for Lourdes. It was the first joint pilgrimage of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Society of Mary. It formed part of the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the appearance of Our Lady at Lourdes. The Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes had chosen 12 themes or 'missions' to represent all that Lourdes has meant over the years. One of the 12 missions was Ecumenism and the Society of Mary was asked to carry out this mission. The pilgrimage was co-led by Cardinal Kasper and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Pilgrims were received with a kindness and generosity beyond our imagination. Among the pilgrims were 10 Anglican bishops and 11 Guardians of the Shrine at Walsingham.

The pilgrims gathered in the Upper Basilica (pictured right) on the first evening and Mass was celebrated by the SOM Superior General, The Bishop of Whitby (The Rt Revd Robert Ladds). Baptismal promises were renewed and a first visit to the Grotto was made. This was followed by a late dinner in our hotels and a chance to recover after what had been a very early start.

Tuesday morning began in the Chapel of S. Joseph which was used by the Anglicans later in the week for the service of Healing and Reconciliation - and the final Mass on Friday morning. Morning Prayer was said and then in various groups, according to the physical fitness, the Stations of the Cross were made. The able-bodied followed those up the hill above the Grotto, whilst those with walking difficulties traced the way of The Cross along the banks of the river. They were able to use the magnificent new Stations - massive marble sculptures which reflected beautifully the words used as prayer and reflection. Sung Mass was then celebrated in the beautiful (lower) Rosary Basilica (pictured below.)

By the Tuesday afternoon the clouds of the morning had dispersed and in glorious sunshine the pilgrims had an opportunity to walk the Lourdes Jubilee Way. At four stations small coloured emblems could be collected and were then attached to a cross worn around the neck. The four stations were four great links in the life of S. Bernadette. Pilgrims visited the 'Cachot', the small room in which the Soubious family lived after poverty had struck; the parish church, where Bernadette was baptised; the small hospital chapel, where she made her first communion and finally - and obviously - the grotto where she met Our Lady.

In the torchlight procession on Tuesday evening the image of Our Lady of Walsingham was carried alongside that of Our Lady of Lourdes and escorted by the Guardians wearing their blue mantles. They were accompanied by Cardinal Kasper. It was incredibly moving to see so many thousands of people bearing candles, and slowly and reverently walking towards the lower basilica. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Cardinal solemnly proclaimed the feast day next day - which of course was September 24th, the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham.

The next morning - Wednesday - servers, bishops and Guardians assembled very early, as did the congregation of many thousands. The image of Our Lady of Walsingham was carried into the underground basilica accompanied by robed Guardians. The image rested at the top of the sanctuary steps throughout the International Mass, During the Asperges, mingled Walsingham and Lourdes water was carried through the congregation by the four Anglican laymen who had carried the image. The Sprinkling was carried out by four Anglican bishops. The Mass was served by a team of Anglican ordinands and one of those proclaiming the Gospel was an Anglican deacon - Fr Simon Morris. The Gospel is proclaimed in four languages and it was a wonderful moment to hear the English version read by an Anglican. The Archbishop preached an inspiring sermon calling on us to remember Our Lady as the first missionary. For many there it felt as though all the boundaries of ecumenical hospitality were being pushed as far - and as generously - as possible.

After lunch, and after a celebration of Mass in the Rosary Basilica (for Anglican pilgrims) we all gathered for an Ecumenical Conference. Both the Archbishop and the Cardinal spoke about the importance of our Lady and about recent ARCIC documents on Marian doctrine. Later there was a procession of the Blessed Sacrament followed by Benediction. Again it was very moving to watch hundreds of sick and disabled pilgrims being wheeled on their beds or in their chairs into the heart of the underground basilica. The Anglican pilgrimage was again fully involved, providing another deacon to read in English and a serving team.

That evening the Guardians and the committee of the SOM entertained the Archbishop and Cardinal at a large reception for all our pilgrims. Presentations were made to them both and speeches of thanks were given. Then the SOM committee took the Archbishop and Cardinal, the bishops, the Guardians and those who had organised the pilgrimage to a restaurant in Barthes where all enjoyed an evening sampling the local food and wine.

On Thursday morning the pilgrims gathered with the Archbishop for a service of Healing and Reconciliation. This deeply thought provoking as Fr Philip North preached and pilgrims were anointed and then prayed together. This was followed by a gathering at the Grotto where the Archbishop preached. The pilgrims then venerated the Shrine and processed with an enormous candle to pray for Christian unity.

During the afternoon a number of pilgrims stayed in Lourdes to bathe in the waters. The prayerfulness and peace of those waiting to bathe was wonderful. Many had to wait in the long queue and their hymn singing echoed around the Domain. The rest of our pilgrims set off for Barthes where Bernadette had kept sheep for a while. The tiny church where she had worshipped was fascinating and typical of that part of the beautiful French countryside. From Barthes the coaches took everyone to Betharram. There was a Shrine of Our Lady at Betharram long before that at Lourdes and Bernadette was known to have visited it. After Mass in the highly decorated Baroque church, there was an opportunity to explore the amazing eclectic collection in the museum behind the church.

Returning to Lourdes, dinner that evening was a leisurely meal and many pilgrims decided to watch the torchlight procession from the steps of the Rosary Basilica. Again there were thousands of lights shining in a river of movement around the Domain.

Friday morning began with an early Mass and after breakfast we all began to make our way back to the airports at Lourdes, Pau and Biarritz. For some there was the long drive across France. For all, the care, courtesy and love which was shown to this Anglican pilgrimage was exemplary and will serve as a model for all as they return to their homes.

(photographs by James Bradley and Richard Mantle)

A LITTLE MIRACLE OF ECUMENISM

The Pilgrimage to Lourdes

The Revd Canon Dr Robin Ward, Principal of St Stephen's House, Oxford wrote this article for The Church Times , reflecting on the pilgrimage organised jointly by The Society of Mary and the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham . We are grateful for his permission to publish it on this site.

When Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher visited Pope John XXIII in 1960, the first visit of its kind since the Reformation, he was apparently rather astonished
when the Pope’s initial remarks included a warm commendation for the revival of the shrine at Walsingham.  Fisher was no Anglo-Catholic, but even where the Oxford Movement had made rather more progress than it had in his headmasterly mind, anything other than the most subdued Marian devotion has generally been seen by most Anglicans as impossibly exotic and potentially superstitious.  And of course the culture of Marian devotion in the Roman Catholic Church appeared to lend justification to this suspicion: apparently detached from any firm scriptural moorings, it built binding dogma on tradition defined by Papal decree, and then surrounded the ensuing theological superstructure with a visionary, often apocalyptic piety.  Not for nothing has the ARCIC process struggled most to find consensus in the area of Mariology.

So when Dr Fisher’s successor the current Archbishop of Canterbury agreed to join the pilgrimage organised by the Society of Mary and the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham to Lourdes in this one hundred and fiftieth anniversary year of the Marian apparitions there, he was committing himself to a bold ecumenical act.  For Lourdes is not a sanctuary which can be taken moderately: it is pre-eminently the shrine at which Mary ishonoured as the Immaculate Conception, the title by which Our Lady revealed herself to the peasant girl Bernadette at the rubbish dump of a small Pyrenean town in 1858, only four years after Pope Pius IX had defined Mary’s freedom from Original Sin as part of the deposit of faith.  Indeed, thepen with which he carried out this act of magisterial machismo is preserved in the treasury of the shrine.

There is of course just enough Anglican theological hay with which to make bricks here: Thomas Ken writes of Mary as cleansed from congenial, kept from mortal guilt, and Jane Shaw has shown us more recently how the miraculous was rather more prominent than we once thought in post-Reformation England.  But this pilgrimage led by the Archbishop and in which eight bishops, seventy priests and five hundred laity took part was not looking to be tentative.  It was looking to come to the place where pre-eminently for millions of souls over the past one hundred and fifty years prayer has been valid, and to bring our own penitence and intercession to the grotto of the apparitions which has been called the ‘ear’ of the Catholic church.

The boldness of this gesture was matched by the generosity of the welcome we received.  The Archbishop’s banner flew over the shrine grounds for the duration of the pilgrimage.  At the great International Mass at the heart of the pilgrimage, twenty thousand people heard the Archbishop preach, while one of our deacons read the gospel in English and our ordinands served.   In his homily, the Archbishop related Bernadette’s encounter with
Mary to that of Elizabeth in the gospel of Luke: to both, Mary comes as a missionary of the Christ she bears in her womb, passing on this joyful truth
not by the communication of rational information from one speaker to another, but a primitive current of spiritual electricity.  At Lourdes, Mary calls to Bernadette as one unlettered virgin peasant girl to another, and the message which she brings is what the Archbishop called our ‘Elizabeth’ moments -when life stirs inside, heralding some future with Christ that we can't yet get our minds around.  The Archbishop developed this theme subsequently in the ecumenical colloquium which took place with Cardinal Kaspar: the physicality of Mary’s Godbearing elucidates both the grounding
of the Gospel in history and the way in which that history finds its continuation in the sacramental life of the Body of Christ.

What did the pilgrimage achieve?  Cardinal Kaspar described it as a little miracle of ecumenism and there were many powerful, moving images to bear this out: the Guardians of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham taking part in the torch-light Procession; the Archbishop walking bare-headed behind the Blessed Sacrament as the desperately sick were blessed; his meditation and prayer in the grotto of the apparitions.  And for us as individual pilgrims there was the opportunity to fulfil our own intentions: to receive reconciliation and forgiveness for our sins, and for the sick to pray for healing of body and soul.   The success of the pilgrimage as an ecumenical event owed everything to the willingness of inspired individuals to transcend old differences: the perseverance of Fr Graeme Rowlands who for thirty years has been bringing Anglicans to Lourdes and the willingness of the Archbishop to express through pilgrimage the eirenic search for common ground which has been the inspiration of the ARCIC process.   And as Anglicans committed to the Catholic character of our inheritance we were left with a hard question: what justifies our continued separation from those with whom we share so much?