Our Lady of Walsingham and the Spirit of Christmas

Thomas of Celano, the earliest biographer of St. Francis of Assisi, described the principal reason why St. Francis desired to create the first Christmas Crib scene: He said that the “love of God had grown cold” in the people of the time, and so Francis wanted to give them a powerful reminder of the Incarnation; to be able to see and feel the immense and gratuitous love of God made man.

The reality of the Incarnation, the “Word” becoming flesh, is at the very heart of the Christian faith, in fact, it is truly the unique claim of Christianity; Christ is not a prophet as Islam would teach – a false prophet or certainly not the Messiah, as Orthodox Judaism would hold, and He is not, as so many fellow travellers might say today, a righteous man and great spiritual teacher. As C.S. Lewis so memorably put it, He is “the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” The truth of the Incarnation is why we genuflect during the Creed on Christmas Day and, of course, on March 25th, the Feast of the Annunciation, the first flowering of the Incarnation in Mary’s Fiat. The Incarnation is the stupendous core of the Gospel, the heart of the Good News. God, as St. John says, “so loved the world” that He became man: the Babe of Bethlehem and the Man of Sorrows hanging on the Cross is God.

Hardness or coldness of heart towards the love of God is invariably a sign of lack of belief in the mystery of the Incarnation. This, perhaps, is the reason why, at certain points in history, the “Holy House” has appeared, most notably in Loreto and at England’s Nazareth, the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. The Holy House is a shrine of the Incarnation. In brick and stone it reminds cold hearts that God became man and lived with a real family in a real house. Whether at Loreto or Walsingham, the Holy House is, as it were, sacramental, testifying to the reality of God’s presence in the world. The Holy House of Loreto, believed by many to have been transported to Loreto from the Holy Land in 1294, either by angels, or Angles, or, indeed, the Angeli family, is reputed to be the actual house of the Holy Family of Nazareth. No such claim surrounds the Shrine of Walsingham, but it could be argued that the small Norfolk town, which became one of the greatest pilgrimage sites of the Middle Ages, until the tyrant Henry VIII destroyed the Shrine, has an even greater pedigree: the desire of the Mother of God Herself that a Holy House should be built.

Pious belief holds that, in 1061, the Blessed Virgin Mary took the Lady Richeldis, of the Manor of Walsingham, “in spirit” to Nazareth, and showed her the Holy House. Our Lady asked that a replica be built and that it become a place of prayer and pilgrimage. She promised that all who came in prayer and supplication would not go unanswered. England, since Anglo-Saxon times, had the unique title in the Church as the “Dowry of Mary,” from the Latin “dos,” meaning gift. The belief grew that, in some way, England had been “given” to Our Lady, as a bridal dowry, and set apart for Her special care and attention. The creation of the Holy House, and the promise of Her special blessing upon pilgrims to Walsingham could only be interpreted as a confirmation of England’s blessed status. The destruction of the Shrine during the “catastrophe,” as Belloc always and accurately described the Reformation, and the burning of the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, shows that the ancient enemy feared the special devotion the English people had for the Virgin, and the gift that English Catholicism was for the Church.

Chesterton, before the full horrors of atheistic Communism and the Nazis had been revealed, said that the “world stands at the same stage as it did at the beginning of the Dark Ages.” One wonders what he would make of contemporary society which calls the murder of the unborn “reproductive freedom,” denies the reality of gender and calls Christian teaching on marriage and human sexuality “bigoted.” As the West becomes ever more secular, a stultifying indifference towards the things of God is metamorphosing into active hostility. As in the time of Francis of Assisi, the love of God has “grown cold” in the hearts of men. The “New Evangelisation” needs to find ever ancient and ever new ways to proclaim the truth of the Gospel. A dispirited age, which only seems to feel God’s absence, desperately needs the joyful confirmation, not only of the reality of His presence, but the reasonableness of the Faith.

A lovely 15th Century carol, called “Marvel Nothing, Joseph,” with typically English bluntness says:

For God made man above all reasons

of slimy earth most wild;

Wherefore, Joseph, marvel not

though Mary be with child.

Next year, England will be re-dedicated as the Dowry of Mary and, in preparation of this momentous event, the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham is being taken to every English cathedral for devotion and veneration. Is it too much to hope that, not only will Faith be revived, but that Our Lady will present Her Dowry to Her Son, and cold hearts will be warmed by the sign of God’s love.