Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Walsingham

Today, finally, metaphorically travel stained and footsore - even if from not doing the last mile barefoot from the Slipper Chapel - the Pilgrimage and its pilgrims reaches Walsingham. Canon Stevenson’s route may be circuitous, and I have certainly compounded that with my own additions, so even without my own hospital detour for two and a half months, this year has been something of a trudge.

Nevertheless, thanks be to God and to Our Lady, we have reached, at least in our hearts and minds, the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, England’s Nazareth, and that in the year that its liturgical celebration on September 24th, has been raised to the level of a Feast in the Ordinary Form.

Thanks to the work of Edmund Waterton and Fr Bridgett in the nineteenth century, and the remarkable restoration of Walsingham as a great place of pilgrimage, initially by Anglicans led by the redoubtable Fr Hope-Patten, and then by the Roman Catholic hierarchy, Walsingham has received far more attention by historians than the vast majority of shrines we have virtually visited since we left Glastonbury. That said much remains obscure, not least its origins, about Walsingham, and that can be just as tantalising and mysterious as the experience of going there and seeking spiritual insight. 

My previous posts about the shrine can be accessed at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Walsingham 

There are as many Walsingham as there are pilgrims to it.  It is holy, it is graced, it is different - but so too once were many, doubtless in their own way, all of the shrines we have visited on this journey. Their destruction is summed up in the verses of A Lament for Our Lady’s Shrine at Walsingham, possibly by St Philip Howard. The text of the poem and a commentary can be read at Poem of the week: A Lament for Our Lady's Shrine at Walsingham

I would however dispute with the author of the article the identity of the ‘Prince of Walsingham’ - that must be Christ and not the self proclaimed Supreme Head.

This has been a journey through ruins and sites, and, very rarely, living shrines. Yet the last century of rebirth at Walsingham, so counter-cultural in Protestant or secular England, is incredibly moving. Someone once wrote in an article that Walsingham High Street is the only one in the country where it is easier to buy a rosary than a loaf of bread. In that is summed up the wondrous nature and quality, the quirkiness and the holiness, of Walsingham. It is a place where Our Lady does great things.

I find that writing this little article makes me emotional. I feel tearful. Tears of sorrow, tears of joy. That is what Walsingham does to you.

May Our Lady of Walsingham pray for The King and all the Royal Family and for us all