National Pilgrimage 2025 Reflections: Simon Bland

Simon Bland (Fidelium rep for St Pancras Old Church)

Fifteen or so desert-wandering years had passed between my previous participation in the National Pilgrimage and my return this year. Fidelium, which is the See of Fulham’s lay-led network for young Anglo-Catholic Christians (the age bracket of which still just about allows me to claim membership), had been encouraging attendance, and a few of us were keen to promote the group to young adults country-wide. The promise of luxury travel in the All Saints, Margaret Street megabus sealed the deal, and just after 7.30 am on a bright Bank Holiday Monday, dozens of us from parishes across central London set off for rural North Norfolk.

All pilgrimages are, in one sense, a homecoming – and I will not be alone in sensing this to be particularly true of the place that, as England’s Nazareth, sees Mary beckon us into her house to find a place of rest and encounter with her and her Son. So too, all ‘returning’ brings the present into a dialogue of sorts with the past. As memories of the city receded and the narrowing lanes drew us nearer to our destination, I became acutely aware of my younger self: the teenager who had discovered something distinct at Walsingham, not fully replicated elsewhere, where a conversation with Mary had begun that I knew then would last a lifetime.

We arrived in good time and walked into the ancient Abbey grounds to see a large congregation preparing for Mass. Seeing the proud banners and assemblies of parish churches from North, South, East (just about), and West proved a good reminder that the faith we proclaim, and the movement to which we belong, is faithfully and joyfully inhabited in communities across the nation. Aptly summarised in the words of the opening hymn, we were reminded that we, who belong to Mary’s ‘ancient dowry’, have arrived in the spot where no pilgrim kneels in vain, and know ourselves to be present to God who is the ‘source of our Hope, our Life, our Joy’.

As Fidelium reps, some of us used the lunch break to speak to young adults from across the country to increase awareness of our activities in and around London and online (shout-out for the beautiful monthly online Rosary group!), and to listen to some of the fantastic stories of work for and with young adults elsewhere. We came away really heartened and encouraged by what we had heard and seen, not least by the large number of young people present at Walsingham that day. The conversations also allowed me to sample a good number of other people’s picnics: some genuinely sumptuous, occasionally intriguing, always delicious feasts!

After lunch, we listened to the sermon delivered by the Dean of Windsor, which offered an insightful and inspiring call to the Church to live out its Nicene faith in this 1700th anniversary of the ecumenical council. It was profoundly moving to follow that by praying the Rosary in procession, to sing with vigour the great Walsingham hymn, and so to give thanks for the innumerable, unsurpassable blessings that pilgrims have received there, and to commend to Mary the future of the Church, the peoples of our land, and the peace of the world. Reminded that our whole life flows from and goes back to God, we finished the day kneeling in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, and it was a particular silence that marked that moment in the presence of so many hundreds of others and one I shall not easily forget.

A few of us had time to visit the Shrine Church before the end of the day, which even with such a large crowd of pilgrims retains an amazingly serene air, and – though we hadn’t realised it before it happened – an essential coda to the day came in sampling the special ‘Ale Mary’ in the Shrine’s beer tent. I departed with such great love and hope for our movement and its people, and with gratitude to Mary Most Holy – our accompanier in the Faith – for bringing us together to that place of many wonders and for my own, very joyful, return. To be homeward bound from Walsingham is to know that she accompanies us into life in the city: she who helps keep open the doors of our hearts and the activity of our lives, ever expanding the horizons of each to the continually operating, abundant grace of the Holy Spirit.

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