Our Lady of Walsingham
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Our Lady of Walsingham refers to the eleventh century English Marian apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the Saxon noblewoman, Richeldis de Faverches. Her husband, the Lord of the Manor of Walsingham Parva, died leaving her a young widow with a son named Geoffrey.
At this time there was a great deal of interest in the Holy Land and people undertook long and often dangerous pilgrimages there. Christian armies were soon to be engaged in a number of Crusades to liberate the holy sites from Muslim control and it is believed that Geoffrey eventually joined one of those Crusades as an expression of his Christian faith.
For Richeldis, however, the life of prayer and good works was rewarded by a vision in the year 1061. In this vision she was taken by Mary to be shown the house in Nazareth where Gabriel had announced the news of the birth of Jesus. Mary asked Richeldis to build an exact replica of that house in Walsingham. This is how Walsingham became known as England's Nazareth.
The vision was repeated three times, according to legend, and retold through a fifteenth century ballad. The materials given by Richeldis were finally constructed miraculously one night into the Holy House, while she kept a vigil of prayer.
Although we cannot be certain that this story represents all the details of historical fact, it is certain that in passing on his guardianship of the Holy House, Geoffrey de Faverches left instructions for the building of a Priory in Walsingham. The Priory passed into the care of Augustinian Canons sometime between 1146 and 1174.
It was this Priory, housing the simple wooden structure Richeldis had been asked to build, which became the focus of pilgrimage to Walsingham. Royal patronage helped the Shrine to grow in wealth and popularity, receiving visits from Henry III, Edward II, Edward III, Henry IV, Edward IV, Henry VII and Henry VIII, who finally brought about its destruction in 1538.
After nearly four hundred years, the 20th century saw the restoration of pilgrimage to Walsingham as a regular feature of Christian life in these islands, and indeed beyond.
In 1897 Pope Leo XIII reestablished the restored the 14th century Slipper Chapel as a Roman Catholic Shrine, now the centre of the Roman Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.
The Reverend Father Hope Patten, appointed as Anglican Vicar of Walsingham in 1921, ignited Anglican interest in the pre-Reformation pilgrimage. It was his idea to base a new statue of Our Lady of Walsingham on the image depicted on the seal of the medieval Priory.
In 1922, this statue was set up in the Parish Church of St. Mary, and regular pilgrimage devotion followed. From the first night that the statue was placed there, people gathered around it to pray, asking Mary to join her powerful prayer with theirs. Throughout the 1920's, the trickle of pilgrims became a flood of large numbers, for whom eventually a Pilgrim Hospice was opened (a hospice is technically the name of a place of hospitality for pilgrims) and in 1931, a new Holy House encased in a small pilgrimage church was dedicated, and the statue translated there with great solemnity. In 1938 that church was enlarged to form the Anglican Shrine, more or less as we know it today. Father Patten combined the posts of Vicar and Priest Administrator of the Anglican Shrine until his death in 1958.
Today there are two Shrines of Our Lady of Walsingham. The Catholic Shrine centered around the Slipper Chapel established by Leo XIII in 1897 and the Anglican Shrine centered around the rebuilt Holy House built in 1931 and expanded in 1938.
Feast day: September 24.
