BUCKFAST ABBEY - true heroism

Until I began this blog to say Buckfast Abbey to me conjured up only thoughts of monks making wine and a famous Brother Adam who was a world renowned expert on bees. But now I realise there is something heroic about this monastery. There are the foundatrions of many monasteries that have been brought down still standing but only Buckfast can claim to have been restored on its very foundations in modern times. At the beginning of the 11th centurey the Benedictines were in the original monastry having cleared swamps and trees and made farming land and pastures for their livestock. It passed over to the Cistercians until Henry VIII knocked it down. In 1882 Benedictines came from France and bought the land where the Monastery had been and decided to rebuild it on its very foundatons. One snag was that they did not know where the foundations were until a monk digging in a garden found them. The great work then began and it was no mean feat. Monks had to climb 150ft on scaffolding at times bringing stones or equipment and the winds blew around them - there was no safety railings. One monk did fall but thankfully was not too badly injured. Just think then this was towards the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century. How did they manage in the early centuries? The mind boggles. Often when they were out of stone they would pray to Our Lady and always their prayers were answered. The whole enterprise they put into Our Lady`s hands. They found the base where the statue of Our Lady had been and bult onto that a modern statue of the Virgin. What a story! Buckfast in Devon is a wonderful place to visit and perhaps you will be forgiven if you buy a bottle of the famous wine and drink a toast - to Our Lady. And do not forget the honey. Our Lady of Buckfast, pray for us.

Our Lady of Walsingham

Around 1860 a woman called Charlotte Pearson Boyd who was an Anglican noticed in East Anglia a barn which had a design which reminded her of a medieval chapel. She was curious and started investigating the matter and found it had once been called the slipper chapel in what had once been a great shrine to Our Lady. Indeed Walsingham had been the fourth greatest shrine in Europe and in the middle ages people had travelled from the continent to this shrine just as today English people travel to Lourdes or Fatima. The story began in 1060 when a lady called Richeldis de Faverches had a recurring dream that Our Lady took her to the Holy House of Nazareth and asked her to have a replica of the house built in Walsingham. As a young man I had some trouble with this idea, as indeed with the story of the Holy House of Loretto. As a result of being married and watching my wife as she gives such love and devotion to our own humble abode I can now appreciate the love a woman gives to her home. Mary was after all a normal housewife so I can now accept such things can happen. Eventually the Holy House was built just prior to the Crusades and pilgrims hearing the story decided not to risk the Holy Land but come to England`s Nazareth instead. Many of our Kings and Queens visited the shrine including Henry VIII who visited in thanksgiving for the gift of a son, although this son was frail and sickly. There is no doubt that in his younger years Henry was devout and it is said that when he died he was heard saying a prayer to Our Lady of Walsingham. Yet it was Henry who completely destroyed the shrine and for four hundred years it was left abandoned and forgotten until Miss Boyd rediscovered it. Almost miraculously the shrine has become the great centre of pilgrimage again. Yet not just for Catholics. Other denominations Anglican, Methodist, Orthodox , have their own churches on the site and it seem like Mary is drawing her children around her again. It is now the National Shrine once more and has visitors by the thousands every year. Well if they travelled from Europe in times gone by when travel was so cumbersome and difficult what excuse have we for not going today. Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us.

Our Lady of Grace, Ipswich

In the Italian town of Nettuno there is a Church with a beautiful statue of Mary. The little saint Maria Gorretti used to visit the Church and often prayed to Mary befofe this statue. We now know that this was the orginal statue of Our Lady of Grace, Ipswich. It had been saved from Thomas Cromwell the iconoclast by being shipped to safety. Where its final destination was meant to be is not known but the ship carrying it was blown by a storm into Nettuno and could not leave because of succeeding storms until they understood the statue was meant for that town. The Church of Our Lady of Grace, Ipswich, was once a very important shrine. It was often a stopping place on the way to Wlasingham. Before the dissolution it is said there were 39 Curches in Ipswich and 4 religious foundations. The Church of Our Lady of Grace was the most important and was second only in importance in England to Our Lady of Walsingham. Again we know that St Thomas More, Queen Catherine of Aragon, and Edward 1 visited with his daughter Elizabeth for her marriage there. When the link between Nettuno and Ipswich was discovered there were pilgrims from Ipswich who went to Italy and were well received. A new statue has been sculptured and we hope it will increase devotion to Our Blessed Mother. Our Lady of Ipswich pray for us.

Our Lady of Willesden

When I was but a lad in the 1950`s I used to sing in my polyphonic Church choir the tenor part in the Mass of Our Lady of Willesden. I can still sing the Kyrie but have forgotten the rest. Unfortunately nobody had any knowledge of Willesden or what it had to do with Our Lady. Indeed it is only recently that the shrine again has come to my notice. The origins of the shrine are not clear. Pilgrims began going there in the early middle ages to visit two statues of Our Lady `The Black Madonna` Apparently a black madonna represents Our Lady of Sorrow. Willesden is Anglo-Saxon for Hill of the Well and many shrines to Our Lady were built beside them. What caused the place to become a plade of pilgrimage however is unclear. Willesden is now a built up area of London but at the time of St Thomas More, who used to visit the shire with his family, it was a country area and the Chruch of St Mary which contained the shrine was alone in the middle of the countryside. The statues were destroyed during the Reformation. With Catholic emancipation in the 19th century the Catholic Church bullt another Church to Our Lady of Willesden not far from the original St Mary`s now an Agnlican Church. A new statue was created from the oak trees in St Mary`s Churchyard. Recently the well was discovered underneath the Church of St Mary`s and one lady at least who was terminally ill in hospital had her vicar bring her water from the well. Suddenly she was seen crossing the road for more water at the well since Jesus had visited and cured her. The last I heard from the shrine was that Paul Day who is sculpturing the statue of Our Lady on the Chelsea embankment has been hired also to sculp a statue of Our Lady of Willesden. Indeed there is now renewed interest in the shrine. Perhaps Our Lady is at work. Certainly a Dr Crewkerne claimed at the Reformation that Our Lady had appeared to him and told her she still wished to be honoured at Ipswich and Willesden but the poor mand under the examination of Thomad Cranmer and his zealots soon recanted and denied the vision. But perhaps he was telling the truth. On my next visit to London I must get the undergound train to Willesden and find out what is happening there. Our Lady of Willesden pray for us.

Mary; not just another woman!

I was fascinated by a story in the Fatima Crusader. A Fr Tuckwell was talking to his parishioners about a six year old boy who had a catholic friend who used to recite the Hail Mary. The little boy loved what he heard and began to say the prayer with him. He told is mother about how beaufiful the prayer was but she replied "It is not biblical. It is catholic superstition. They worship idols and make her a Goddess"". The little boy stopped saying the prayer but some time later he was reading his bible and came upon St Luke. "Hail, full of grace the Lord is with Thee" and then St Elizabeth "Blessd art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of they womb" The boy ran to his mother. "Look, mother, it is biblical" He then started saying the Hail Mary again though his parents did not approve. When he was 14 there was a discussion again in his house in which Mary was described as a common woman like every other woman. He could take it no longer. "Mary is not like any other children of Adam stained with sin. No! The Angel called her full of grace and blessed among women. Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ and consequently the MOther of God. There is no higher dignity to which a creature can be raised. The Gospel says all generations shall call her blessed yet you are trying to despis her and look down on her. Your spirit is not the spirit of the Gospel nor the Bible which you claim to be the foundation of the Christian religion" So deep was the impression the boy made that his mother feared he was going to join the religion of the Popes. The boy eventually did. HIs sister hated him for changing his relgion but when her child fell ill the young man persuaded her to say the Hail Mary and if the child recovered study the Catholic Faith. The sister did so and the child recoverd and she became a catholic. It is a beautiful story and of course Fr Tuckwell admitted he was the boy. I have heard priests in their efforts to forward ecumenism say much the same thing. But Mary is `not just like us` She is our beautiful mother and can give us whatever we wish for the salvation of ourselves and for the salvation of others. Let us make her our Queen and restore our beautiful England to her care.

St Thomas More.

St Thomas More is probably the best known and loved of the many Martyrs of England. His life even attracted the film industry in `A Man for All Seasons`. That in Tudor England renowned for its corruption there should be a man renowned for his incorruption was almost unbelievable. But St Thomas More was a man devoted to God and as Chancellor of England he was exemplary. Although he had been a gret friend of the King things changed when Hernry decided that his marriage to Catherine of Aragon should be annulled and this request was refused by the Pope. Henry demaded an oath of allegiance to himself as Head of the Chruch in Englan and this More would not do. He died as he said "The Kings true friend, but God`s more" Many catholics like Norfok were happy to take the oath, and excusing themselves that what they said was not what was in their heart, but St Thomas could not lie to himself in this way. Today many catholics betray the Church by refusing to accept her teachings on contraception. Like Henry they rfuse her teaching and declare themselves as head of the Church or the only ones in the Church who matter. Rome is just as far away as it was in Henry`s time. If indeed the Authority of the Papacy is only in love and not authority, as I heard, and I am sure many others have heard representatives of the Bishops say, then St Thomas MOre would have died in vain and little wonder there is great unease aboout the Tyburn Walks. But St Thoma died for Papal Supremacy and Papal Authority. St Thomas lived with his family in a house on the Thames at what is now the Chelsea Embankment. At that sport a man called Thomas Cromwell collected statues of Our Lady from all parts of England and had them burned and thrown into the Thames. A great event is planned there this Septmember whn Paul Day a leading architiect will unveil a statue of Our Lady which at its base will show pictures of this iconoclasm and the persecution of the Martyrs. We pray that this will mark in some way the return of Mary to England. Pray for Paul Day that God will guide him in his worki.

What the Catholic Church did for England

Before the Middle ages much of England was swamp and forest but with the coming of the Benedictine Order these were cleared and turned into arable land where crops were gorwn and animals husbanded to feed the people. The landscape of many parts of England was transformed by their activities and people laboured in the fiels with them for a share in the food that was produced. Thus the great monasteries of England were built which also gave help to the poor and needy, and the vagrants who wandered throughout the contryside. They were also the stopping places for pilgrims on their way to the many Marian shrines of England. In Eeucation the Catholic Church started the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge and indeed many of he Universities throughout Europe. She was far from being an enemy of science and those who claim she was rely on one case, the case of Galileo, yet Galileo failed to prove the world moved round the sun relying on evidence like the movment of tides etc, which were unconvincing. It is interestng that the Church adopted the method used by Thomas Aquinas. You had to show what you intended to prove, you had to then give your thesis in proof, and you then had to meet every objection to your thesis before your point was proved. How much more tolerant the world would be if scholars had to examine all the objections to their ideas today. There would not be such a lack of lateral thinking and bias among the `educated`. Long vefore Florence Nightingale there were relgious orders dealing with sickness and disease and conforting the dying. So there we have it. Agriculture, education, care of the individual, not only in England but all over Europe. It is true to say that modern Europe was shaped by the Catholic Church. All that is good in her came from that Church. As Catholics in England we have much to be proud of and we should not fear any criticism.

"Jesu, Jesu, have mercy on me"

"Jesu, Jesu, have meecy on me" These were the dying words of St Margaret Clitherowe. She was not a bishop, nor a priest, nor a Ladh of court but just a simple wife and mother who was born in York and lived there all her life. Yet she gave this life for the Catholic Faith. She was born in the troubled days of Mary Tudor when an attempt was made to restore the Catholic Faith to England but to no avail. Elizabeth came to power and there was great persecution. Priests and seminarians from the Catholic Mission at Douay were especially hunted down and those who gave them shelter were also savagely imprisoned and executed. Yet it was at this time that Margaret converted to the Catholic Faith. Her house became a haven for these Jesuit priests and she was imprisoned and realeased several times. But she did not give up her `treasonable` activities. At last she was arrested and sentenced to death. She was in prison for a week and many people pleaded with her to save herself by changing her faith but she refused. She was put to death in a most brutal manner. She was laid on the ground and a door placed over her on which many weights were placed until the body underneath was crushed. What vile mind thought this up? Was this really about God and the Protestant faith? Margaret was heard pleading in her agony "Jesu, Jesu, have mercy on me". Margaret`s body we know was eventually recovered by her friends and was moved around from place to place for its safety. But such was the secrecy that eventually the place of the body was forgotten and we do not know where it is today. St Margaret`s only crime was her love of the Catholic Church and she gave her life for the Catholic Faith. We ow so much to these simple catholics. God bless her and may she help us in our endeavours to bring England back to the true Faith.

St John Fisher

John Fisher was the Nishop of Rochester. He became the Chancellor of Cambridge University and was once a tutor to Henry VIII when he was a boy. He was a renowned preacher and once gave a sermon against Martin Luther inside St Paul`s. When Henry tried to dissolve the marriage Fisher saw it as an attack on the indissolubility of marriage and was an outspoken opponent. When the matter reached the legate court he angered the King by speaking out in favour of Catherne of Aragon and against the divorce. He became her friend and most trusted adviser. Eventually the King had him arrested when he rufused to recognise him as the Head of the Church in England. At a court where the judge was Thomas Cromwell, the father of Anne Boleyn, so there is justice, he was condemend to be hung, drawn, and quartered. This evoked a public outcry so the sentence was reduced to beheading. He died like John the Baptist defending marriage against the manipulations of royalty. While he was in prison the Pope, trying to ease his situation, made him a Cardinal. This did not interest Henry. It is also believed that the `Defence of the Seven Sacraments` reputed to be writeen by Henry was actually written by Fisher, though there is no definite proof. St John Fisher was a man of courage. Pray that we may be as courageous as he was.