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Christianity is currently undergoing a resurgence in the West: a trend so pronounced, even the secular commentariat has taken note – albeit if only to lament, downplay or deny what is unfolding before their doubtful eyes.
Really though, this trend should come as no surprise – the Church has spent two millennia burying its undertakers. This is, after all, a religion predicated on Resurrection.
Those prone to incredulity are invited to poke around the numbers, including a study published by the Bible Society in April , and the rise in adult baptism inFrance at Easter.
It is not difficult to see why this might be happening: in an age of relativism, moral confusion, iconoclasm, the breakdown of traditional values and institutions, and social atomisation, it is little wonder that more and more people are seeking the certainty, beauty and permanence of the Faith.
Many are discovering that most clearly in the traditional liturgy of the Catholic Church.
This reality was manifestly on display over the recent Bank Holiday weekend, during the Latin Mass Society’s annual pilgrimage to Walsingham. Now in its fifteenth year, the event has become one of the most vibrant expressions of the traditionalist Catholic revival in England.
Numbers have soared: this year, over two hundred pilgrims undertook the three-day, 57-mile walk from Ely to Our Lady’s Shrine at Walsingham – a joint record for the Society, up from a mere dozen on the inaugural trek a decade and a half ago.
The intention of the pilgrimage has remained the same over the years: the conversion of England. Certainly a goal lofty and ambitious enough to motivate not just the pilgrims from Ely, but those who set forth from even further afield in Cambridge (an 80-mile journey), and a small but hardy contingent who walked all the way from south London, covering some 180 miles.
Spirits were kept high along the road through the singing of the Rosary, hymns and litanies, with prayer and song woven into the cadence of footsteps.
Each day High Mass was offered in the Traditional Rite, accompanied by Gregorian Chant that fortified pilgrims along the winding lanes of bucolic East Anglia. Meanwhile, a tireless support team ensured that weary walkers were nourished in body as well as in soul with hot evening meals.
One pilgrim I spoke to – Henry – encapsulated the upbeat sentiment towards the challenge, and the pilgrims’ determination to sublimate the trials faced along the way: “I had blisters on my feet from practically the moment I set off, so there were many opportunities to offer up suffering. That, for me, is definitely the highlight of the pilgrimage.”
Of course, as Henry explained to me, this being a Catholic event, the commitment to penance need not do away with conviviality entirely, despite the risk that the two can become linked.
Henry said: “As Fr Henry – one of the many priests escorting the pilgrims – wisely said at the start of the pilgrimage: ‘You’re here to do penance for your sins, not to add to them.’ So this is a message I’ve heeded with caution at every pub stop along the way!”
When asked what drew him most deeply to the pilgrimage, Henry was quick to highlight the numinous quality of the Roman Rite:
“The Traditional Mass is the Mass of my grandparents and great-grandparents. It goes all the way back to the Fathers of the Church," he explained. "At Mass I feel a direct connection to Calvary and the Last Supper. It is a participation in eternity.”
That participation in eternity is expressed not only through ritual but also through the language of the liturgy itself. Latin, consecrated at Calvary by its very presence on the titulus of the Cross, has carried the Church’s worship throughout the centuries as a sacred vehicle for the conveyance of truth.
Just as relics are sanctified through physical contact with holiness, so too is Latin imbued with sanctity, solemnity and permanence through its proximity to the Sacred over the ages. To pray in that language is, therefore, not an exercise in archaism but an act of closeness and continuity: it is a means of participating in a rite which has blessed and sustained generations.
That continuity was heightened further this year by the presence of a Relic of the True Cross throughout the pilgrimage, as part of its nationwide tour to celebrate the Latin Mass Society’s 60th anniversary year.
The Relic was present during High Mass at the Basilica on the concluding Sunday, and afterwards accompanied pilgrims in a procession along the Holy Mile to the site of the Medieval replica of the Holy House, among the priory ruins.
One pilgrim beside me on that walk voiced what many evidently felt: “This is the Mass that has produced saints for centuries. It is the Mass of Padre Pio, of the mystics and martyrs. It unites us with them.”
As the imposing gate of the priory ruins came into view, as hymns and chants arose in the clearing which hosted "England’s Nazareth" until the Dissolution, and as the smell of incense grew thick and fragrant in the still summer air, I was struck by the congruency of this sentiment.
The Traditional Roman Rite and its close cousins among the English liturgical usages of the Middle Ages would have been familiar to the Augustinian Canons who lived in the priory before its destruction. It would have been familiar, indeed, to Lady Richeldis de Faverches, who founded the Shrine after her Marian apparition in the 11th Century. And despite the vicissitudes of time, it is – Deo gratias – still with us today.
In this period of revival of the Faith, as ever more young Catholics discover the richness of their patrimony, hope grows again that England, the Dowry of Our Lady, may yet return to Walsingham.
Until that day, the Latin Mass Society will continue to guide faithful pilgrims along those same ancient roads, working to keep alive both memory and promise.
Photo: Latin Mass Society pilgrimage to Walsingham. (Credit: Latin Mass Society at facebook.com/latinmassuk.)
Daniel Beurthe is the press and publicity officer for the Latin Mass Society.
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