THE P
RTAL
Mgr Andrew Writes
‘ May is Mary ’ s month ’ wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins , a Jesuit and himself a Victorian convert to Catholicism . The May Magnificat goes on to say ‘ But the Lady Month , May , why fasten that upon her , With a feasting in her honour ?’ Hopkins suggests that we ask Mary herself the question . She in turn asks us a question ‘ What is Spring ?’ To which the answer Hopkins gives is ‘ Growth in everything ’.
It is no accident that Eastertime and Mary ’ s month of May come together . Each , in a different way , is about ‘ growth in everything ’. The one is growth in the Risen Life of Christ . The other is about the life of Christ growing within Mary and within us .
Our relationship with Walsingham has shifted
But there is a special reason to be attentive to Mary ’ s month this year . For those now joining the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham this May will be different from previous ones . Our relationship with Walsingham has suddenly shifted and it will take time to work through this .
The Anglican ‘ National ’ in May is how we used to do things . The pilgrimage the Ordinary is leading this July is the way we are doing things this year . But we are on a journey of exploration , exploring a new relationship with the Holy Mother and a new relationship with Holy Mother Church .
Many of us have lived through the modern history of the Anglican Shrine . Fifty years ago ‘ National ’ pilgrims could all gather round the Halifax altar . More recently numbers swelled and declined and we have processed to the Abbey grounds . Under inspired leadership , the development of the Anglican complex has turned Walsingham into an all-year-round place of pilgrimage .
Finding ourselves at a little distance from all that , and celebrating this year the 950 th anniversary of the vision that the Lady Richeldis saw , we shall need to recover a much stronger sense of what Walsingham has been : what it was five hundred and more years ago and what it has been more recently for our Catholic brothers and sisters .
Outside the village
I think we may need to admit that it will be hard to look to the Slipper Chapel as our own national
May 2011 Page 9
shrine . For one thing , it is outside the village , a point of departure historically and not a point of arrival . But much is a question of what we are used to . The most moving experience I have had at Walsingham was in the Catholic Shrine . It was an outdoor congregation of the Union of Catholic Mothers , the cousin of the Mothers ’ Union .
During Latin Benediction the Norfolk air crackled with the electricity of God . And when , years later , the Anglican Youth Pilgrimage – and we shall miss that too – camped out near the Catholic Shrine , we began to feel more at home there , simply because it was there , next door to us .
Mother with her Child
The image of Our Lady of Walsingham , as Sarah Jane Boss has remarked , is particularly powerful because it is an image of a Mother with her Child . In her expression , and in his , in how she is seated and how he is seated , in what she carries and in what he carries , there is much spirituality and much theology .
It is that spirituality and theology which inspires our missionary task , the task of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham , in communion with the Catholic Church throughout the ages and throughout the world . ‘ For he that is mighty hath magnified me : and holy is his name .’
Mgr Andrew Burnham