Months of pilgrimage at Willesden

GOLD AND JEWELS FOR OUR LADY
`Catholic Herald' Reporter
FR. ALPHONSUS ARENDZEN. parish priest of the Church of AOur Lady of Willesden, told me when I visited the church this week that he has received gifts of gold weighing 20 ounces, together with pearls, diamonds, topaz, amethysts and sapphires for the two crowns which Cardinal Griffin will use in the Wembley arena—one for the Holy Child, the other for Our Lady.
Through the long, wide nave— it seats 1,000 people—we walked past men kneeling in prayer to the Lady Chapel where the carved black statue, three and a half feet high, is enshrined in a little apse surrounded by marble of green, gold and white under the triumphant inscription: "Imago per nefas anducta amore filiorum reducta"— Thy image, by wicked men looted, has been restored by the love of thy children, Cherished by the people of Willesden for well over 50 years, this is a copy of the black statue destroyed by Thomas Cromwell in A mass burning of holy images at Chelsea in the 16th century when England turned its hack on Mary and insulted her.
The modern statue was carved, at the instigation of Fr. George Cologam out of an oak tree overlooking the site of the traditional appearance of Our Lady to a medieval pilgrim.
Tremendous interest
Fr. Arend/en told me that since January. '18,000 or 19,000 of the faithful have come to the shrine in organised pilgrimages, apart from the unending stream of private pilgrimages by men and women in ones and twos and threes.
"They have shown tremendous interest and a real sense of piety." he said.
"Their fervour is overwhelmingly impressive. One gets the feeling that hey simply can't do enough. Even Americans with only a few days to .pare in London have gone out of heir way to come here and join in he special services we hold for the )agrims.
"On Saturdays and Sundays it toes on continuously—little groups tf people coming to talk with us and sk questions and pray at the shrine, "This newly awakened devotion to )ur Lady of Willesden has really one great good. It is all so utterly nontaneous.
"Our lady's Year has really caught on' in this country if one is to judge by this parish and the many pilgrims coming to the shrine. "It has definitely made people more pious. At our evening Masses on feasts of Our Lady—not hotydays of obligation—the church has been packed.
"And there are always people praying in the church at all hours. One notices in particular the devotion of the men," It is probably true to say that there has been a parish in Willesden for over 1,000 years. Certainly the Normans built a church there in 1170. Certain it is, too, that by the time of the Black Death in the 14th century the Shrine of Our Ladye of Wellesdone had already become famous.
St. Thomas More
A copy of a charter of King Aethelstan in the 10th century includes Willesden among a number of properties made over to the Canons of St, Paul's in the City of London. And to this day the Dean of St. Paul's is nominally the Rector of Willesden, eight of the prebendary stalls in his cathedral being named after various manors in the Willesden area. The "Holy Shrine" was the name by which the people of Middlesex knew the Church of Our Lady of Willesden. to whose intercession many miracles were attributed, The original black statue was frequently carried in great public processions, St. Thomas More, in his "Dialogue Concerning Heresies," refers to Our Lady under her Willesden title, and, as Fr. Arendzen recalls in his booklet on this history. William Tyndale, in writing to the saint, says : "Our Ladye of Wilsdon, pray for me; some which reckon themselves no small fools write them rolls on half an hour long to pray after that manner." When England had broken with the Holy See. .1 homas Cromwell was informed that at Willesden there was an "Image of Our Ladye, in robes of serum and with stones, with a vale withal of lace embroidered with Continued on page 8