Groups and Activities
| Groups and Activities | Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament | Mothers Union | Society of Our Lady of Walsingham |
This parish has had for so many years an association with Walsingham. So many of our people and priests have made and continue to make pilgrimage there.
The Society of Our Lady of Walsingham keeps us in touch with the happenings at Walsingham, through prayer and sharing information. Members of SOLW undertake to pray for the work and witness of the Shrine each day. A group of Society members may form a CELL - this provides an opportunity to regularly pray together for the Shrine and encourage Pilgrimage to Walsingham. There has been a CELL at St. Martin’s for a number of years.
At St Martin’s the Cell meet each month to pray the Rosary, a much loved way of prayer and intercession. We each make small subscription and in return we receive three mailings a year, two of which contain the magazine of the Society, The Walsingham Review. Most pilgrim priests choose to become Priest Associate of the Holy House and offer Mass each month for the good of the Shrine.
All members of the SOLW are asked to pray the Angelus each day and the Regina Caeli during the 50 days of Easter. To join in praying the Rosary with the Cell when we meet through the year. To be present at Mass on the feasts Our Lady
We are asked to remember each day in our prayers the work and witness of the Shrine at Walsingham, the members of SOLW throughout the world.
To venerate the Icon of Mary the Mother of God of Walsingham which we have at St. Martin’s and to ask Our Lady’s intercession.
Pilgrimage to Walsingham dates back to the 1061. The Lady Richeldis of Faverche experienced a vision in which she saw in detail the house in Nazareth where Mary received the Angel’s message at the Annunciation and gave her life in obedience to God. Richeldis built a replica of that house on a spot marked by the appearance of a Well. And by the fifteenth century Walsingham was the most significant place of pilgrimage in England.
Christians believe that God calls us to know and him and love in this world and to enjoy him for ever in the world to come. We know that God’s calls us to experience his love and presence in many ways as we live the Christian life. One such way has been in and through the act of making a Pilgrimage to a particular place, such as Walsingham. Such a journey can be seen as a microcosm of our Christian Life. We often speak as this life as a pilgrimage and ourselves as pilgrims ever journeying toward the fullness of life in Christ. This journey comprises of a series of moments of conversion, times of when we commit our lives afresh to Christ. Pilgrimage, is about the whole of our life, the social and spiritual sides of our nature are involved. Going on ‘pilgrimage’ is very different to making a ‘retreat’. It’s social and communal dimensions are very important. We recreate and worship with other people; interaction with God and other pilgrims is an important part of the way of Christian life and pilgrimage.
One of the most important parts of Pilgrimage is the return journey home, because we are challenged to bring back into the reality of our daily lives and situations something of the experience of time on pilgrimage. People come to Walsingham for many different reasons. For some of us it has been a place we have visited over most of our Christian lives. It remains a place that is both old and new, a place of peace and natural beauty. It is also a place where perhaps we have found the veil between heaven and earth so very thin.
The particular emphasis on Walsingham is concerned with the Incarnation of the Word. This central Christian belief celebrates that at a particular point in history and at a particular place God became man and was born of the Virgin Mary. Today, we still encounter God in the particular, in the Sacraments, in Prayer and worship, in other human beings and in a variety of human situations. Walsingham remains one particular place of encounter.
It's a place that celebrates the Incarnation, a real place, a physical place, reminding us and helping us ponder how God breaks into the most ordinary lives in the most extra-ordinary ways and raises up people to new life and ways of life.
The Blessed Virgin Mary was central to the mystery of the Incarnation and she holds a place of special honour in the life of the Christian. We are always challenged to say YES to God as she was. Walsingham also celebrates her willing and obedient co-operation with the Divine will. Her image has a place on honour in the Shrine Church. Across the centuries Christians have united their prayers with hers, have asked her intercession as our sister in faith. Mary the faithful daughter of Israel, Mary the Mother of God, Mary the Mother of all Christians. It is with Mary of Walsingham that we seek to love and serve God, singing with her our own magnificat as the Holy Spirit inspired and leads us to do so.
For more information on the Shrine at Walsingham, visit it's web site