At Walsingham

A Survey Of The Year's Pilgrimages
By the Rev. Bruno S. James
The pilgrimage season at Walsingham is over once more; the crowds have departed and the little village has subsided back to its normal course of existence like a stream after the floods have caused it to overflow its banks.
There have not been wanting those who maintained that, after the novelty had worn off, Walsingham would subside into the oblivion to which the so-called Reformation had confined it; but the ever-increasing tide of pilgrims, the wonderful graces with which Our Blessed Lady has been pleased to reward the faith of those who honour her in this place of her choice, and the rapidly increasing devotion and interest of Catholics all over the world, has effectively given the lie to this idea.
Oscott's And Others
Certainly the past season has been one to gladden the hearts of those who firmly believe that the revival of the ancient shrine at Walsingham is intimately connected with the return of our country to the faith; for the number of pilgrims has vastly increased and the bookings for the coming season promise a yet further expansion. So great has been the number of pilgrimages since last March and so incessant the stream of pilgrims who come unconnected with any organised pilgrimage, that .anything like a detailed account of them all is impossible.
Two Welcome " Annuals"
The Westminster Pilgrimage and the Children's Pilgrimage are /low annual events, and the last season saw no diminution either in the numbers who came with them or in the devotion they evinced. These two are probably the most spectacular of all the pilgrimages, and the effect of colour which the banners of the Grail, and the vestments of the ministers, make as they wend their way along the green lane that leads from the village to the Slipper Chapel is an unforgettable sight.
Oscott Comes
Yet at the risk of seeming invidious in choosing one pilgrimage out of so many that were excellent, one cannot pass over the Oscott Pilgrimage without devoting some space to describing it, for this pilgrimage realised an ideal which one hopes will become more general as time goes on.
The pilgrimage consisted of twenty-six students and the Rector and all the Professors, and they came on a Wednesday and stayed in Walsingham till the following Monday. This stay which the pilgrims made enabled them to make their pilgrimage a real time of recollection and prayer in a way that is almost impossible for a pilgrimage which stays only a few hours.
The pilgrimage started off on Wednesday evening with a procession of the Blessed Sacrament from Walsingham to the Slipper Chapel, followed by Benediction and sung Compline. Each of the following days began with a High Mass in the Slipper Chapel, the unaccompanied singing at which was excellent, and closed by sung Compline and a conference given by Fr. Bruno James, the priest of Walsingham and custodian of the shrine.
The Night Watch On the last day there was a watch before the Blessed Sacrament exposed, in the Slipper Chapel, from seven in the evening until eight the next morning. Attendance was optional, but all the students and professors volunteered and watched the whole night; every hour a sequence or hymn was sung, and one could not but wonder at the fact that the voices of the students were as vigorous in the small hours of the morning as in the early evening. It was wonderful to see the hallowed and ancient Slipper Chapel ablaze all night with candles and colour, the Blessed Sacrament enthroned on the altar in a beautiful monstrance which was the gift of a generous donor, and all available space filled with the kneeling figures of men praying for the conversion of England to which they were to
devote their lives. Fr. Bruno James said the first Mass of the day at two in the morning. and the other Masses followed until eight o'clock.
Altogether, the whole pilgrimage, ending with this great demonstration of prayer and devotion, made an epoch in the wonderful history of the revival of the ancient devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham; nor does it seem unfitting that the professors and students of Our Lady's College at Oscott should by their generous devotion and fervour make history at Our Lady's Shrine at Walsingham.
What of the Future?
Having in mind the story of Walsingham's revival as the great national shrine of our Lady, the place where she herself chose to he honoured in England, one may not unreasonably ask oneself what the contribution of Walsingham is to be to the Catholic life of the country. For surely there ran hr few more wonderful stories in the annals of post-reformation Catholicism in England.
Will Walsingham become a second
Lourdes in an English garb? Perhaps: none can read the future or search the mind of Providence. One thing, however, would seem to he certain, and that is that what Walsingham was so will it be again, a great national sanctuary inseparably bound up with the religious life of the country, the "Holy Land of England " as it was known to our Catholic forefathers, where the devotion and prayer of Catholic will be focussed and revived.
But to us, living, as we do, on the spot, and witnessing the pilgrimages grow from almost nothing to their present proportions, it seems that Walsingham may well become a place of re-birth, the re-birth of the supernatural life and outlook which the materialistic atmosphere of our present time would
seek to suffocate. One would dream of Walsingham as a place where men can come apart from the hurry and headlong rush of modern times to possess themselves once more of that most treasured possession : silence; and to learn once more the art of keeping still, amidst the upheavals and turmoil of modern life: the silence and stillness in which is born the knowledge of God.
A Lesson to Learn To us it would seem that the knowledge of man and his misery has outstripped OUT knowledge of God and His mercy, and so has been born the black demon of despair in the hearts of men. It would look as if the spectacle of man's material misery has blinded us to the more terrible sight of his spiritual indigence and to the fact that it is not on bread alone that man lives, but on that Word which proceeded from the Father in eternal silence before the ages when time was yet in the womb of things to be.
Peace too: that peace for which we sigh and scheme, perhaps it will be at the feet of the Queen of Peace that we shall learn that the peace of Christ must come from within, and it is in vain that we seek a material peace until we have learnt to rise above the things of time and set our peace on the enduring things of eternity.
For that peace which we seek so feverishly ao encompass by material means can be but the fruit of the peace of Christ which the world cannot give and which, we may thank God, the world cannot take away.
The Place of Suffering But be this all as it may, one thing remains certain. Nothing will be accomplished at Walsingham except through suffering. Much has assuredly been done, but much yet remains to do; and if we would win back our heritage at Walsingham that our forefathers lost during the Reformation, a heavy price must be paid, for such has been the law and condition of all supernatural achievement from calvary to our present day. No matter how great the material aspects of it all may be, no matter how fine the material buildings we raise in stone and mortar, and how great the number of pilgrims, if there should be lacking the salt of suffering and prayer it will all come to nothing, for we will be building on the shifting sands of human emotion and not on Calvary. If we restore the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and do not restore the reign of her Son in our lives, our labour will be in vain—we shall have achieved nothing.