After four days of pilgrimage from South Wales to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, Fr Dean reflects on the common ground we have shared and the community created.
It’s early morning. There is no sign or sound of another human being. A bee buzzes it’s way through the honeysuckle which climbs the wall of the house in which I have been staying. A collared dove flaps its paper wings, slaps them against the leaves, and then lifts itself to the roof. And then, quickly, it’s back again, flapping, slapping, cooing.
The road through the village is waking now as a car brushes past, moving on its way. Then another.
In the days before, this place has been filled with pilgrims from Wales before their departure gave way to others who will arrive today for the weekend pilgrimage, and who in turn will leave their own mark.
The Welsh pilgrimage is smaller than it was two decades ago when, in one year, we scheduled six coaches and managed to somehow squeeze 340 pilgrims into the Shrine Church.
These days, the pilgrimage is not so large, an experience reflected by so many other groups from across England and Wales and beyond.
This is the second pilgrimage since those Lockdown days, and over 120 pilgrims from across the Diocese of Llandaff and beyond made the journey here on Monday. Over half the Ministry Areas of the Diocese are represented here.
Some make this journey each year and have done so for decades, and then there are always the first time pilgrims, caught up in the joy and the peace, helping to create a diverse community of people who, for just a few days, share in each other’s lives.
Pilgrimage is not just about a journey, it is about community, for we travel together, touch each other’s lives, are touched by the faith of others, moved by the meaning each of us seeks, looking for miracles, hoping for more.
This place is not a perfect place. This shrine is not a release from the reality of life. This is evident by the prayers which pilgrims whisper to priests when they approach for the ministry of Laying on of Hands, and we watch their tears fall from their bowed heads. Or when you watch some people struggle to rise from their seat, lean into their walking stick to join the procession to receive that sweet Sacrament divine.
After four days of worship and prayer, laughter and tears, it’s always the last day – and the leaving – which leaves me more aware of what this pilgrimage means to people.
They emerge from the final Mass, and their faces somehow appear different and I don’t know how to describe it.
Perhaps they have been touched or filled by grace. Maybe they have found the meaning or the miracle, or had their life ever so slightly turned. Maybe their faces show what faith has done for them, or are these the faces of those who have known what it means to be loved. For some, perhaps loneliness has been lost by the community they have found. They have found that common ground which unites them.
As I write, the Angelus bells ring. The Memorial of the Incarnation. God’s love made flesh in human living.
As for me, I return home today, a day late. A small number have remained for just one day longer.
The collared doves are cooing for their lives, the road outside is gaining momentum, swifts dart across the sky, and others have woken now and are making their way into the Shrine church for the early morning Mass. The life of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham continues day by day, and God’s grace which has worked its strange way in the life of our Welsh pilgrims will continue too.
Here they have found common ground, and now they have returned to their own familiar places, their homes and communities, their churches and their own momentum of life
But perhaps life has changed for all of us now. Pilgrimage does that to you.
There is no going back, only a gentle and steady moving on.
Enter the Mystery 
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