National Pilgrimage 2025 Reflections: Charlotte Choley-Kovacevic

Charlotte Choley-Kovacevic (Fidelium comms and events)

I had been to Lourdes several times before, and I remain deeply grateful for the grace those visits offered. Yet something about Walsingham touched me more deeply, and more subtly, than any other place of pilgrimage I have known. Perhaps it is the peculiarly English landscape: modest in its holiness, gentle in its invitation to pray. Perhaps it is that Walsingham doesn’t try to dazzle or overwhelm, even on this busy day, but instead draws the heart inwards. Whatever it is, I left Walsingham changed.

One moment in particular has remained with me in the very marrow of my spiritual life. It came just after I had received communion, in the stillness that followed the great procession and the solemnity of the Mass. I sat down in the grass, the taste of the Sacrament still in my mouth, and something in me fell utterly still. Around me, the sounds of the day – the choir, the shuffle of footsteps, the babble of a baby – seemed to fade away. For a few precious moments, there was only birdsong and the wind moving through the trees.

It was in that moment that I felt the presence of God more strongly than I had in a long time. Nothing particularly dramatic happened, but it was unmistakable – and I felt it in my chest, in my breath, in the very air around me. My eyes welled up, even as I tried not to let them, as the depth of God’s love came into sudden, piercing focus: a love so total and so intimate that it would take on the full weight of my sin and not flinch. A love that would die for me. For me.

I do not often think of God’s love as particular; I find it easier to imagine it in the abstract, like a blanket of goodness stretched over the world. But in that moment, in Walsingham, it felt pointed and deliberate – the love of a God who sees me and still chooses to love me, even to death and beyond. And somehow, I felt that this love had willed this place to be holy: through his mother, through her yes, through her steadfastness. The ground beneath me, the ruins around me, seemed steeped in centuries of prayer, sorrow and longing, joy and the aching hope of countless pilgrims.

What struck me most about the day was how ordinary it all seemed in many ways: the hymns, the words of the liturgy, the people around me. And yet, it revealed the sacred more clearly than any vision or voice from heaven. But it was enough. I didn’t need to see anything extraordinary. I simply knew that God is real, that he loves me, and that this world – even with all its ruins – is still a place where that love abounds.

We often think of pilgrimage as a journey outward to a sacred site, a holy place. But Walsingham reminded me that it is just as much a journey inward: a return not only to a shrine, but to the self who is seen and loved by God. In Walsingham, the love of Our Lady is made closer as she walks beside you, as a mother, gently leading you to her son. Mary said yes without knowing where it would lead, and I think part of Walsingham’s gift is the way it gives us space to say yes again – quietly, honestly, even uncertainly – to whatever path God places before us. It teaches us that the ruins still hold beauty, and that God’s love, carried on the wind and echoed in birdsong, is still strong enough to carry us home to the one who made us to love us.

Fidelium is a lay-led network of young Anglo-Catholic Christians in London and beyond, under the patronage of the Bishop of Fulham
www.fideliumlondon.com