Pilgrimage
- A Reflection by Michael Bennett
It
was a cold wet day, not like June, though perhaps we can say it might be typical
of a British summer. I was
sitting on a seat outside the shrine church at Pennant
Melangell in Powys some twenty miles from Oswestry.
It didn’t matter that the wind was cold or that there were frequent
showers somehow I didn’t feel the cold or the wet, but I felt the presence of
God.
There
would seem to be some places where heaven and earth seem to meet.
They are places of prayer and pilgrimage and it seemed that St.
Melangell’s prayers were still being answered after fourteen hundred years.
She was a woman of great holiness who lived as a hermit at the top of the
Tanat valley. It is said that
she was the daughter of
an Irish chieftain who left Ireland
to escape an arranged marriage. She
lived in a cave and devoted her life to prayer.
One day the local prince Blochwel was
out hunting and a hare ran and hid under Melangell’s robe
It is said that when the hounds saw Melangell they turned and ran and
that the huntsman was unable to blow his horn. The prince seeing
that he was in the presence of a very holy lady promised to protect her and gave
her the top of the valley as a
sanctuary. She
gathered other women around her and formed a community.
After her death Pennant Melangell
became a place of pilgrimage until the shrine
was destroyed at the Reformation.
In recent years the shrine has been
restored and Pennant Melangell is once again a place of Pilgrimage.
Another ancient place of Pilgrimage
which has been restored in the last hundred years is Walsingham in Norfolk.
At
this point those of you who are convinced evangelicals, may be having a few
doubts about what I am going to say.
John Wycliffe, a noted forerunner of the Reformation had no time for
Walsingham or what went on there, but I suspect that this was because of the
abuses so often associated with the medieval Church. I believe that the Restoration
of these shrines is part of the renewing hand of the Holy Spirit as
people are being led to a new understanding of God and His ways.
Pilgrimages are very valuable, but I would be the last one to say that
they should be a compulsory part of
our religious devotion or that going on a pilgrimage conveys any kind of merit
in getting into heaven. What it does do so often is to strengthen faith.
Some years
ago I was in Walsingham and I prayed
that I might understand how the Virgin Mary fitted into the scheme of things.
I felt the Lord say to me not to worry about some of the more exotic
things I might see, the important thing was that He loved His
mother and wanted me to love her too.
Love I believe is what pilgrims should
experience. I have been
to Fatima, Lourdes, Medugorje, Częstochowa
and the Holy land on
pilgrimage. All
the time in these places I am reminded of the Lord’s love for His people.
We may not feel that we can agree with a particular
theological viewpoint and Protestant Christians may well have problems
about appearances of the Virgin
Mary, but when I see the love for the sick at Lourdes, my heart is very moved.
It is a very special place, one feels the love of God.
There are many other places
around Britain and the world, some of which I hope I might visit before the
greatest pilgrimage of all, to the Kingdom of Heaven.
There is no doubt that there were
abuses which led the Reformers to
destroy shrines and discourage pilgrimages
but in our own time God is doing a new thing in showing us the real
meaning of these things. Shrines
can point us to the love of God and in pilgrimage we can experience His love and
hear His voice more clearly.
Pilgrimage to shrines has certainly
helped me greatly and I trust that a journey to a shrine may
help you on your earthly pilgrimage.