The Walsingham Pilgrimage
Walsingham has been a favorite destination for Roman Catholics pilgrims in England. The devout traveled long distances to visit the location where the Virgin Mary appeared to the land owner in 1061 who reportedly heard Mary say, “Whoever seeks my help there will not go away empty-handed.” In 1153 the Augustinian Canons founded a priory on the site to care for the spiritual needs of the pilgrims, and by the time of Henry VIII it had grown from a simple wooden building to a very ornate and opulent church, that housed a replica of the home of the holy family from Nazareth (“England’s Nazareth”), and a famous wooden carved statue of the Virgin Mary holding her child Jesus. Erasmus, the Dutch humanist scholar, visited Walsingham in 1513 and remarked that “so brilliantly does it shine with gems, gold and silver.” In 1340 the Slipper Chapel was built a mile outside Walsingham. This was the final station chapel on the way to Walsingham that acquired its name because it was there that pilgrims removed their shoes and walked the final ‘Holy Mile’ to the shrine barefoot (Henry VIII famously did this in 1511 in thanksgiving for the birth of his son Prince Henry, who died soon thereafter). Every year nearly 250,000 people still make their way to the remains of Walsingham Priory in Norfolk, many of them still hoping to gain God’s favor for healing and special provision.
On August 4, 1538, the priory of Walsingham was dissolved in Henry VIII’s campaign to destroy hundreds of Roman Catholic shrines and monasteries after his break with Rome. The inordinate political, religious, and financial influence housed in those properties controlled by the pope was an obvious threat to the autonomy of the Church of England. Henry used the treasures of the shrines to enrich his personal lifestyle and to finance England’s army. Walsingham remained silent until the 1830s when the ruins of the wayside Slipper Chapel was restored for Catholic use. New Year’s Day 2012 Pope Benedict XVI established the Ordinariate for Anglicans and Episcopalians who had become or were in preparation for becoming Roman Catholic. The Blessed Mother, under the title of Our Lady of Walsingham, is the patron of the Ordinariate.
Anglicans and Romans Catholics approach God differently and it is not hard to see why the 16th century English reformers were not heartbroken about the dissolution of monasteries and shrines. Catholics, generally speaking, see the Christian life as a pilgrimage, a journey that Catholics make towards God by participating in the sacraments and working the spiritual disciplines so as to acquire more and more grace in order to make moral progress (what “we” do climbing Jacob's ladder!). This view banks on the hope that they will eventually be innately righteousness enough for heaven and union with God, if not in this life, then through the purgation of sin in Purgatory. In its plainest form, this is “salvation by sanctification” that the 16th century Reformers called Pelagianism (“as the Pelagians do vainly talk,” Thirty-nine Articles, Article 9).
Anglicans and Protestants begin with the understanding that no one is righteous, not even one (Rom 3:10) - not in this life or by anything we do - and that our only hope is for a righteousness outside of ourselves. We don’t see the Christian life as a pilgrimage to something out there on the horizon, but as a gift of God’s own righteousness accounted to undeserving sinners (Phil 3:9). Protestants don’t focus as much on what we can and should do for God, but rather on what God in his Son has already done for us - for our salvation and sanctification. The journey that makes for our union with Christ is not “us to him,” but rather Jesus’ journey from heaven to rescue us - the Incarnation.
When we know what God has done for us, and understand that the righteousness that saves and sanctifies is God’s very own and a gift of unconditional love, then the sacraments are full of renewing power in the Holy Spirit, and the spiritual disciplines breath with a newness to bring us more fully into awareness and gratitude for God’s transforming love.
“We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy...”