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2010 National Pilgrimage Monday, 25th May 2009
The National Pilgrimage 2009
The
traditional pilgrim hymn sung at the Message from the Archbishop of Canterbury…’a shrine dear to my own heart’.
During the
morning Eucharist, the Administrator of the Shrine read a
letter of welcome to the bishop from the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. He had himself led an
Anglican
The Archbishop described Walsingham as ‘a shrine very dear to my own heart and a great focus of ministry to young people, to parishioners from around the country and to many seekers after Christ.’ He went on to say: ‘The restoration of this shrine in the twentieth century has proved a great gift to our Church and a powerful stimulus also to the deepening of relations between the churches.’ The letter received a warm round of applause from the pilgrims, many of whom will have remembered the Archbishop’s own visit to the National Pilgrimage some years before.
New Chapel of
Prayer for Young People
Reflecting on the vulnerability of young people to the ‘false shepherds’ of western culture, he took the opportunity to announce that the Chapel of the Finding in the Temple will be designated as a particular place of prayer for young people. Pilgrims and visitors to the Shrine will be invited to reflect and pray ion the chapel where the wall painting above the altar powerfully reminds them that Jesus shared the lot of teenagers, and gives to that age a dignity and sanctity. The ProcessionWhile the rosary was prayed and hymns sung, the procession of laity, clergy and bishops in company with the two images of Our Lady of Walsingham and Our Lady of Lourdes wended its way along the sunken road, past the parish church where Fr Hope Patten placed the newly carved image in the 1920’s, to the Shrine grounds for Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Pilgrims crammed into the gardens as Bishop Jack Iker, Bishop of Fort Worth brought the Sacrament from the Shrine Church to the altar of Lights. The pilgrimage ended, as will our life, with a blessing from the Lord. The Brandie GateBut the day was not quite over! Bishop Alan Chesters, sometime Bishop of Blackburn, an honorary Guardian of the Shrine, and the Chairman of the fundraising committee for the new Milner wing, rededicated the main arch into the Shrine grounds, refurbished as part of the building project.
There was long applause, and it was a fitting end to a glorious day in praise of the Lord and his holy Mother! |
THE
NATIONAL PILGRIMAGE In 1938 the Whitsun weekend saw a huge influx of pilgrims to Walsingham to witness the blessing of the much enlarged Shrine Church. As had become customary, there was a great procession from the Parish Church to the Shrine . It was estimated that the procession took "one hour less three minutes" to pass the Common Place and that 6,000 pilgrims passed through the Holy House. In the report of the weekend in the 1938 Our Lady's Mirror (the forerunner of the present Walsingham Review) the intention was announced to hold a similar day pilgrimage "as an annual event every Whit Monday." This indeed happened in 1939 and 1940, but then, for the remainder of World War II, the pilgrimage went into abeyance. 1946 saw its highly successful revival - but pouring rain meant the procession had to be cancelled! The Whit Monday great pilgrimage became known as the "National" in 1959 - after one of the guardians, the present Earl of Lauderdale, had written to The Church Times urging people to join the Whit Monday pilgrimage, describing it as "the first National Pilgrimage in the history of the Church of England to the Shrine of the Incarnation at Walsingham." In 1971 the Whit Monday bank holiday was moved to the last Monday in May and the National Pilgrimage moved from Whitsuntide to this date. The only cancellation since 1946 was in 2001 because of the Foot and Mouth epidemic. The Walsingham Archive pages contain fascinating accounts and much more information on the history of the National. Did you know, for example, that there were not enough cows in Walsingham to supply the milk needed for the pilgrims' tea on Whit Monday 1938? Or that 106 pilgrims had breakfast at The Clock Restaurant in Welwyn Garden City on their way to Walsingham and between them, left 4d (four pence) in tips! Go to the Archive home page, enter the Archives and find "Whit Monday Pilgrimages". Since 2004, when the programme of the National Pilgrimage was recast to include a lunch-break, the practice of formal picnicking in The Abbey grounds has grown. Last year, there was a wonderful sense of togetherness as pilgrims from all over the country produced hampers, tables and chairs - and the Walsingham National Pilgrimage lunch party began! If you are coming to this year's event, do think about bringing a picnic - of course the sun will shine and the grass be dry!
The Procession in Common Place in 2009
Our Lady of Walsingham and Our Lady of Lourdes 2009 (Below) Canon Brandie and the Guardians at the Brandie Gate 2009
A full photographic record of the 2009 National Pilgrimage can be found in the Shrine's Photo Gallery. Click here to visit. |
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Useful information about the NationalThe weather - (dare one say it) the National is
remarkably blessed with good weather. Washouts, fortunately, are
very rare. Last year (2006) whilst the rest of Britain had
torrential rain, this little bit of north Norfolk remained
sunny and dry until the evening (see picture opposite). But
do come prepared. STOP PRESS: 2007 saw the worst weather for
the National since 1983. You never can tell! |
 Brightly dawns the 2006 National day! - early arrivals await the procession from the Shrine (above) - the organist gets organised (below)
The procession to Mass leaving the Shrine Church in 2005 - the Shrine's famous "Maltese" lanterns to the fore (above); the return procession passes the Common Place (below)
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The Shrine Church here in Walsingham is filled, some might say, overfilled with religious art of varying kinds...and perhaps quality.
Of course I have only been spending all my days in the Shrine Church for some three months so have hardly begun to discover its hidden joys, but I have developed something of an affection for two pairs of feet. They belong to the same person, but they are profoundly different, and unusually for feet I have felt somewhat drawn to their beauty.
In the chapel dedicated to the story recorded in Luke’s gospel of the Finding in the Temple you will find a wall painting behind the altar of Jesus at the seat of learning. A startled teacher on one side, and a perplexed Mary and Joseph on the other gaze at this soon to be teenager as he tells them how it is. Educationalists and parents in our midst might find some sympathy and solidarity here.
The feet of Jesus loom large, not quite out of proportion, and it may simply be the curvature of the apse like shape on which the painting has been executed. The seat of learning, not intended for a boy, the feet almost dangle before you, clean and pure and innocent. These are the feet that no doubt gently kicked out at the constraints of his mother’s womb, feet that she washed and playfully fondled in his infancy, feet which fetched wood to and fro in the carpenters shop, scrambled the streets of Nazareth with other boys, climbed sycamore trees and all the other stuff of inquisitive boyhood. And feet that with mysterious confidence that made even his holy Mother ponder, took Jesus to this unexpected place of his teaching, the place where the law and the prophets were expounded, and which he fulfilled. In a precursor to his adult ministry, and with tantalising cheek he asked questions about his very self and spoke with an authority unlike the scribes. Unlike indeed, for unbeknown to his bemused listeners, God who had previously spoken through his prophets, was now speaking through a Son.
This art, these feet, speak of the energy and dynamism of Christ’s innocent youth. They speak of our God who like no other Gods participates in our flesh, of a God who when all the world was sleeping in sin leapt down from his heavenly throne to walk on terra firma living life to perfection; of the one beyond the material who became perfectly materialistic, and if the great Father of the second century, Irenaeus is right through such a participation, sanctifies all the ages of man. If most Christian art depicts Christ as infant or adult, there in that chapel we are reminded especially of his sharing in the age of youth. He enters those hormone racing years of growth and confusion and change, too often described by forgetting adults as the problem too difficult to deal with and just to be got through. But Jesus sets those years before us as an adventure to be loved and lived to the full; these are the years that speak of more yet to come, years of hidden preparation of a life that has not yet reached its potential or full purpose. And yet in his case was even then being lived with such completeness as to not want for more, for there can be no more to be achieved if one is living in total unity with the Father.
For those of us who believe in a God who has himself inhabited the body and soul of youth, and so given to those years an unimaginable dignity, and offered, by grace, the opportunity for young people to be alive in Him, it must be our concern that in recent years the Church has been drained of youth, not primarily because we want to keep the Church going as an institution, but because there is a battle for the soul of young people going on in our western world.
We are losing the battle, in part because of our own terrible frailty and timidity, but because as never before we live in a time when the false shepherds of this age, often of global influence, are seducing our young into longings and choices that dehumanise them; false shepherds that de sensitize their souls with secular materialistic ideas, claiming that no truth can be relied upon save the secular world view, and the idea that there is no eternal life to win. These false shepherds over-emphasises stardom and glamour over ordinariness, making money out of the inevitably incoherent and unrealistic dreams of youth. These false shepherds seduce them into thinking that freedom comes in having a multiplicity of choices that demand everything but commitment. They make them overly aware and anxious about their sexual identity by either a reductionist understanding of the beauty and purpose of sexual attraction and the body, or in order to encourage them into a consumer frenzy in the hope that they will be noticed, attractive and accepted. Such shepherds can easily overwhelm local influences, reducing young peoples understanding of life and themselves. It is thin and restless and inevitably drains the life and vitality from them if only because it blinds them to the hope of the more that the real life of faith offers.
Tragically as I speak of these dangers for young people, here I am at 53 still at least a little bit distracted by the same things, but just without the same energy to pursue them!
As occasionally I meditate on those young feet in the chapel of St Thomas, Christ teaches, and so must the Church teach not that their life can be, but is in reality, profound, mysterious, and of eternal value, just because they are. And if by his incarnation, Christ teaches, so must the Church teach that material things are to be reverenced, they are to see beyond them to the one who brings all things into being, and even look to the day when they will need to leave go of them, for a greater life. And Christ teaches, and so must the Church, that true joy is discovered in fighting for the rights of others, rather than demanding your own. And Christ teaches, and so must the Church teach and demonstrate that their secret hope for love and acceptance is not misplaced. And if the Church must do these things, then you, who claim its privileges must so do, and so must this Mother’s Shrine.
Just this last week, we welcomed a group of fifteen or so young people from Sweden. They were wonderfully ordinary fifteen year olds. They are to be confirmed next Sunday. Strange to us, but it is still the case that some 30% of Swedish teenagers get confirmed whether they go to Church or not, indeed whether they believe or not. It is true that they had had a long journey, but when I bounced into the green room to welcome them with one of my winning smiles, they were seriously underwhelmed. Slouched in chairs normally reserved for our generally elderly but expectant midweek pilgrims, they seemed a Swedish cross between ‘yeah, but no, but, yeah but no but’ and ‘Am I bovvered?’. Their three priests admitted their own nervousness about the visit, and listed the catalogue of ‘isms and behavioural syndromes from which the key players in the group suffered.
Something happened while they were here. By the third day they didn’t really want to leave. I think it’s fair to say that the boy who surprised his priests by volunteering to carry the image of Our Lady around the shrine grounds during the Wednesday procession, would not have had the task as the first thing on his ‘how to be cool’ list.
The superficial indulgent yet merciless tarmac world of secularism had been replaced even for a few days with the soft ground for the Lord which for all its faults , is this Sanctuary. These young people did not have to earn our respect or admiration or prove anything, and we told them so lest they were in any doubt. Our frail but sincere, almost naive fraternal and properly disinterested love and attention was theirs from the moment they arrived, because that is God’s way and we try to live God’s way here. Walsingham is not an indulgent place. We take sin seriously, but it is a merciful place. They began to believe it. I hope they come back.
We will be designating the chapel of the Finding in the temple with the youthful feet of Jesus a particular place of prayer for young people, that like him they may ‘grow and become strong, and filled with wisdom, and have the favour of God upon them’.
And now the second pair of feet.
Better known I think. Indeed more than once have visitors to the Shrine asked me the way to the chapel of the Ascension where the feet poke out of the cloud. One lady who had brought her husband specifically to see the feet told me she was sure that the last time she came there had been more leg dangling and we must have changed it. I’m told that once a visitor asked if they could go upstairs to see the rest of the body!
It’s fair to say that as a piece of ecclesiastical art it’s not in the top league, and if it is intended to lead people to serious reflection it doesn’t do so immediately; rather a smile or a snigger. Their most important point easily missed. They contrast with the feet of the near teenage Jesus of a couple of chapels away, for much had ensued in the twenty or so years, but not just the usual wear and tear, the more pronounced veins and callouses of adulthood.
The feet have lost their innocence.
They bear the tell tale marks of lostness, not his, but yours. They bear the marks of our lost innocence; innocence lost in the deliberate turning away from God that is as old as Adam himself. And even if you don’t always turn away from God, you do, perhaps even despite of you best intentions.
I’m talking about the wounds from the nails on the feet of the one who is ascending to the highest place. The bit of doctrine to be learnt from those slashed yet propelling feet in the Shrine Church is not simply the taking of humanity into heaven and the wonderful future it represents for us, but the cost of that exaltation, the cost of that future: the death of the Lord. The taking of ourselves as we are into the heavenly places would be a violating intrusion into its unutterable beauty and perfection and harmony and glory. Instead the innocent one who belongs there embraces the sin, if Paul is right, becomes sin and does so as a fragrant offering to the Father. That part of us that is so at odds with his divinity is welcomed by him on the cross because before he sees the sin, or rather beyond the sin he sees the person made in the divine image. He recognises himself in us, the pearl that is tarnished, the treasure buried. He must cleanse us and if that means paying the price of sin, pay it he will. And the ancient hymn, the Te Deum, rightly translated says, ‘When thou tookest upon thee man, to deliver him’ reminding us that this ransoming takes place within the very being of God himself.
And while all this should lead you to a right and realistic sense of your sin, and deliver us from an improperly overoptimistic view of ourselves, it is above all to lead us to bless God for his mercy, to understand his longing to forgive even that which sears his heart with sorrow and pain, and even justifies his anger. We do not get what we deserve! He does. By simply having faith in him, we receive the benefits of his wounds and find our life in them. Even now, if the Bible is true God the Son is living to pray for you to the Father, as it were reminding the Father of the wounds of sacrifice and propitiation that were his own idea.
So the wounds, however crassly presented in a couple of feet surrounded by a cloud in a corridor like chapel in the Shrine Church are a beautiful reminder of the unbounded mercy of God. Innocence restored by the self offering of the one named Jesus who is the second Adam.
You don’t have to fully understand it, how could you? But you do have to remember it, and you do have to bless God for it.
There is a beautiful new hymn that sings this:
Oh, to see my name
Written in the wounds,
For through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death,
Life is mine to live,
Won through Your selfless love
This, the power of the Cross
Son of God slain for us.
What a love! What a cost!
We stand forgiven at the cross.
Next time you pass by the chapel of the Ascension, and see the feet, smile by all means, but do so with joy. See not only a fairly bad bit of art, but see the wounds, and not only the wounds, but your own name written there, and if written there, then know you are saved, and work out your salvation with fear and trembling and joy!
And now let us use our feet to walk in procession to the Shrine grounds and to Benediction, with Mary who no doubt caressed even those wounded feet, knowing that to journey with him will always, always end in blessing.
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Bishop
Lindsay (pictured right) whose
sermon can be found below, took the feet of Christ as his
theme as depicted in two pieces of art in the Shrine, those
of Jesus at twelve years of age in the chapel of the Finding
in the Temple, and those of the ascending Christ in the
chapel of St Francis and St Clare.
With
a wonderful fanfare and to the strains of sea shanties, it
was named the ‘Brandie Gate’ in honour of the ministry of
Canon Beaumont Brandie, a lifelong pilgrim, a member of the
Order of Our Lady of Walsingham and for over twenty five
years at the heart of the organisation of the national
pilgrimage. Canon Brandie and his team of sea cadets from
Brighton are a much loved part of the pilgrimage and
essential to its smooth running. 
