These reflections are prompted by my recent visit to the shrine of Our Lady of Fernyhalgh, near Preston, in the county of Lancashire in North-West England. Tucked away in the midst of fields, one gets a sense of just how remote this place would have been in its day, though the constant whooshing—faint but audible—of the nearby motorway reminds one that, in Western Europe, it is almost impossible to escape modernity altogether.

To go to Lancashire is to go to a place abundantly blessed in its rugged and rolling hills and in the—still today—cheerfulness and warmth of its people, and this despite the dourness and decline of many of its towns. Though it lacks the majesty of the Lake District to its north and the Peak District to its east, it is still a charming county with charming scenery and folk. It might be “grim ‘oop North” on a rainy day, but the Lancastrians can usually laugh it off with a jolly chortle. And I like to think—but I am a Catholic priest, so assume I’m biased—that this cheerfulness has something to do with the region’s history of Catholic faith, first through many brave souls who stood firm in their beliefs in hard times and then through the Irish immigrants who flocked to the county in the 19^th Century.

Fernyhalgh—also known as Ladyewell—is a witness to this fidelity. It is an ancient centre of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, much loved by Catholics in these northern climes. If Lud’s Church spoke to me of fear, defiance and dissent (which, as I wrote in my previous post, also have positive sides to them), Fernyhalgh breathes a different atmosphere. One can still sense in its tranquil serenity something of the faith and courage of those Lancastrian Catholics who continued to go to pray at the shrine even in the worst years of persecution in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries. Bear in mind that at this time Catholics risked being hung, drawn and quartered (only look up what this means if you are not squeamish) for celebrating Mass (if priests) or staying loyal to the Pope and Church of Rome. To go to Ladyewell was, therefore, to risk being fined, imprisoned and even potentially killed. But go they did. All for the love of a woman, Mary, the Mother of God, as Catholics revere her.

What is amazing about the faith of these people was their devotion to a rite which many modern Catholics find boring and invent all sorts of excuses to avoid: I mean the Mass. This Catholic sacrament had been outlawed by the government and replaced by a new Communion rite based on a more Protestant theology. But many Catholics were determined to keep attending it and did so in secret sites up and down the land. Numerous country houses, run then by Catholic gentry, bear witness to this, with the hidden chapels and hiding holes for priests in case of a raid by government agents. Scores of young men went abroad to train for the priesthood and returned in disguise to minister to the clandestine Catholics, knowing it was only a question of time before they would be arrested and executed. Ordinary lay people—men and women, like St Margaret Clitherow, a butcher’s wife in York—risked and finally gave their lives to hide these priests. All for love of the Mass. Fernyhalgh has numerous relics of these martyrs.

Of course, if one really believed what the Mass is, one would not be surprised at this. For us Catholics the Mass is the re-living, the making present each day, of Jesus’ death on the Cross and his rising from the dead. When, at the Last Supper, he showed bread and wine and said “this is my body which is given for you” and “this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many”, and added “Do this in memory of me”, he was instituting the Mass. The Mass makes present Jesus’ giving and pouring out of his body and blood on Calvary Hill, anticipated in that supper and then re-enacted through this sacrament. If you truly believe that this is God in human form offering his life and whole self to you, then risking your life for him is no longer such a big thing.

I appreciate that all I have said thus far could appear to some readers as a form of Catholic triumphalism, basking in the glory of these illustrious past co-religionists. While I think that anyone who actually checked the facts of what I have written would find them to be correct, I certainly sympathize with this concern in that it is also true that we should never travel to blame others. To travel to fuel prejudice is almost the antithesis of the purpose of traveling. To travel is to open one’s mind, not to close it. While it is perfectly valid to travel in order to grow in faith—which is precisely the point of that particular genre of traveling we call “pilgrimage”—we should remember that faith must never become fanaticism. It should be a journey to a new place, not a return to old grievances. A pilgrimage should aim at the conversion of heart, not its hardening.

And so while I go to Fernyhalgh to be inspired by the bravery of these ancestors in religion—to try to live my faith today with the same courage they showed then—I also realize that I must not go to nurture a grudge or a victim complex. Besides, I am fully aware—to my shame—that while many Catholics have suffered great brutality in history, not a few have inflicted it on others. Thus, living faith should never be fostering resentment. As much as one might have suffered, collectively or even personally, the only way forward is to seek one’s own conversion, and not spend one’s life expecting others to say sorry. If we turn to God and virtue ourselves, others might in time follow our example. This “turning” is why we go on pilgrimage.

So, let me finish these reflections with some words from an ancient Christian writing attributed to a certain St Dorotheus. Put simply, the text’s advice is: blame yourself, not others, a self-blaming which, I would add, is an absolutely essential way forward in any ecumenical or inter-religious dialogue. In what way do I need to change to overcome the pride, greed, insecurity, bitter zeal or narrow rigidity which might lead me to mistreat others, in the name of religion or any other apparently noble cause?

But let the text speak for itself: “The reason for all disturbance, if we look to its roots, is that no one finds fault with himself. This is the reason why we become angry and upset, why we sometimes have no peace in our soul … We hope or even believe that we are on the right path even when we are irritated by everything and cannot bear to accept any blame ourselves. This is the way things are. However many virtues a man may have … if he has left the path of self-accusation he will never have peace: he will be afflicted by others or he will be an affliction to them, and all his efforts will be wasted.”

Suggested next reading: Questions You Need To Ask Yourself Before Traveling

The post How Travel Can Help Us Move Past Prejudice, Pain & Resentment appeared first on Modern Trekker.

Lud’s Church—which is anything but a church, but more on that later—is part of the Roaches escarpment in Staffordshire, in the West Midlands of England, and is geologically speaking a “chasm”. It’s a splendidly atmospheric slice into the Millstone Grit rock of the area, with sheer walls covered, to quote the site, in “algae, mosses and ferns in varying shades of vivid green, all dripping with moisture in this perfect, damp micro-climate.” If you visit it alone on a rainy day, it’s also a bit spooky with a sense of the secret sect which used to meet there in bygone days.

Secret sect! What’s all that about? Now it’s getting interesting, and maybe that’s why it’s called a church. When one goes there, one feels dissent and fear and can imagine people watching nervously at either end of the chasm while surreptitious worship took place in its depths. And that indeed is what appears to have happened.

It would seem that a 15^th Century heretical group known as the Lollards used to meet here for their services, led, according to some accounts, by a certain Walter de Lud-Auk (which might explain the place’s name: Lud’s Church). Followers of John Wycliffe—a Protestant avant la lettre (to put it pretentiously)—and persecuted by the authorities, the Lollards came here for their illegal gatherings. Wycliffe (ca. 1320-1384) was the driving force of a translation of the Bible into English, a revolutionary move at a time when reading Scripture in the vernacular was not encouraged. He also criticised wealth and worldliness in the Church (which at that time in England was uniquely Catholic) and he attacked both monastic life and the papacy. Thus, in every way he appears a forerunner of Martin Luther, except that he wasn’t as well-known or successful as his German counterpart (had you heard of him before now?) He eventually died of a sudden stroke, though his body was posthumously dug up and burned by Church authorities in 1428.

You might wonder why I, a very non-dissenting Catholic priest, like to come to this spot. The answer is certainly firstly for its natural beauty. But the second reason is to drink in something of that mix of fear and defiance which must have gripped these religious rebels as they stood confined by these damp and narrow walls hidden high up in the Peaks. What was actually going on here?

Simplistic analyses are not helpful in these cases. A black and white reading—with no real knowledge of the historical period—of Wycliffe’s life as a tale of a brave rebel fighting a corrupt institutional Church would do no service to the truth. No doubt there were faults on both sides. For all his valid points, Wycliffe was very extreme in a number of his positions and appears to have been used by the powerful nobleman John of Gaunt as an unwitting tool in the latter’s self-interested fight against Church authorities.

Nor we can we necessarily call this a period of religious decline with, therefore, Wycliffe as the unique luminary. Indeed, it was in many ways one of fervor in the Catholic Church. Great spiritual figures like Julian of Norwich, an Englishwoman despite her name; the mystic and Church reformer St. Catherine of Siena; and the now-classic writer Thomas a Kempis, were all on the planet at around the same time as Wycliffe, as was his fellow rebel in Bohemia, Jan Hus, who largely followed Wycliffe’s ideas. None of them were blind to problems within the Church but whereas the former three believed passionately in spiritual reform from within, the latter two favored more open opposition. Were these right for being so radical? Given what I am, you won’t be surprised to hear me suggest they might not have been, but I willingly recognize that they raised important questions and had these been answered in their time, the later split into Catholics and Protestants might never have happened.

But were our Lud’s Church Lollards heroes or villains, enlightened or dupes? We must have someone to accuse: either them or the authority which persecuted them. No doubt, there are numerous secret sects today which we would probably all agree are harmful to society and are best repressed—or “made illegal”, as we’d now put it (though most of us, I hope, would not favor burning their members, alive or dead, as the means to do so!) If you disagree with what I have just written, try substituting the word “sect” by “cult” and see if your opinion stays the same.

And as for the Lollards being “heretical”, what does it mean to be a “heretic” anyway? Today’s heretics are sometimes tomorrow’s heroes. When is a heretic a courageous revolutionary and when is he a blind and stubborn fanatic? Or he might be a bit of both. It’s also a striking thought (it strikes me at least) that whereas in the past a heretic was someone who denied specifically defined doctrines, a heretic today could simply be someone who stands against fashionable opinions. So I could be a heretic, a deviant from the “norm”, simply by upholding traditional moral values which have enjoyed universal acceptance for centuries but which no longer suit contemporary palates. A heretic in the past was someone opposed to what was considered objective truth. A heretic today is someone who dares to claim that objective truth might still exist and require our consent.

I come here to Lud’s Church to grapple with all these questions and to try to learn a bit of subtlety. Yes, to be challenged by “heresy”, the frequent daring of its proponents and the validity of many of their claims, but to learn also that there are usually two sides to every argument and the underdog is not necessarily the innocent victim. Might is most certainly not always right, but nor is it always wrong. Too easily we have a prejudice against “the institution”. I am perfectly prepared to believe that individual bishops could have dealt heavy-handily with this or similar situations (the Catholic Church can be as incompetent as any other organisation), but I will not condemn them simply for seeking to check the Lollards’ doctrines if they genuinely believed they represented a threat to the people under their charge and to society’s stability as they saw it. Yet it is also the case that while, as a Catholic priest, I believe in and seek to be deeply loyal to my Church, I have come to appreciate that we have a lot to learn from those who oppose it, also from within. They too may well have a valid point to make.

The place certainly speaks to me of fear more than faith. Were these Lollards theologically literate dissidents—I think, unlikely—or were they hoodwinked in their turn by somebody, perhaps the above-mentioned Walter de Lud-Auk, who wanted to enjoy religious authority over them? We will only find out in the next life. And yet, these clandestine worshippers were in their own way brave people who were ready to take significant risks for what they thought they believed in. I doubt that anybody went to Lud’s Church for earthly gain, and they probably had a lot to lose. So, questions abound and, in part, we travel to prompt ever further questions, constantly challenged by what we see and experience.

So, leaving open the question as to whether this really is a holy site or not, I think we should always be open to the possibility that places can be sacred. We can visit them to feel faith in the stones around us. For someone with religious sensitivity, spiritual grace can be touched in the very rocks.

Numerous fantastic stories have attached themselves to Lud’s Church. Some claim that it was used by Robin Hood and Bonnie Prince Charlie or was the site the anonymous author had in mind for the final showdown in the 14^th Century poem “Sir Gawain and The Green Knight”.  Today, there are not a few people who would see religion as just one more fantasy tale. But places like Lud’s Church call on us not to be so simplistic. First of all, some study is required to know the facts; how ignorant we can be of what we blithely disregard. Then one needs at least some sensitivity to sacred sites, which have spoken to many people throughout the centuries and surely not all of them were complete fools. And finally one must be ready to be challenged by the convictions of others, whatever you might believe—or not.

Suggested next reading: Discovering Beauty In Liverpool: A Gallery Definitely Worth Seeing

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The Walker Gallery is very impressive indeed. It takes you—free of charge—through various centuries of art history within a dozen or so large sections featuring works by many of Europe’s best-known painters: Murillo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Poussin, Gainsborough…They’re all there. Wikipedia says it contains “one of the largest art collections in England, outside London”, which seemed about right to me.

You might think that as a priest, I would have liked the religious paintings best of all. There certainly is a lot of great faith-inspired art in Liverpool—yet another reminder of how much Christianity has enriched our culture—but truth be told, it wasn’t a religious work which most caught my attention. If I had to pick one single painting in the gallery which struck me, it was John Everett Millais’ Isabella (also known as Lorenzo and Isabella).

Emerging from the dull 18th-century section—an abundance of slightly tedious portraits of aristocrats and equally uninspiring landscapes (may the specialists have mercy on me!)—it was a breath of fresh air to plunge into the bright color and wild imagination of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Pride of place among them was Isabella, which is Millais’ 1849 masterpiece based on a story in Boccaccio’s Decameron and taken up later in a poem of John Keats. In the right-hand foreground (as one looks at the work) you have the two young lovers who only have eyes for each other, tragically so as this will soon lead to their undoing. The problem is that Lorenzo is only an employee and Isabella’s family, whose business is struggling, have her ear-marked for a marriage to a rich nobleman. Lorenzo will be killed by them but the rebellious Isabella will dig up his body to cut off and keep his head, burying it in a pot of basil which she then waters with her tears.

The painting shows the moment when the rest of the family seem to realize that love is in the air. I say “seem” because the artist brilliantly shows everyone doing their utmost not to let on that they have noticed. And it’s as if they have all telepathically agreed on their murderous resolve. It is extraordinary how Millais portrays their hypocritical propriety with such dramatic intensity. The elderly mother, sitting to the left of Lorenzo, does everything she can not to turn her head but is clearly aware of all that is going on. To her left, the father wipes his mouth with his napkin in an exemplary show of etiquette which only makes his ruthless intentions all the more dreadful. One brother swigs down his wine, another examines it. All have food but it hardly seems to matter to them. They are cramped together with other siblings, but in perfect order, in a way which further intensifies their ill-intentioned constraint. Only a brother in the foreground, with his splendidly muscular thigh in white stockings matching the equally white tablecloth, gives us a glimpse of the family’s real evil. The white represents their impeccable external correctness, but this same youth is leaning forward on his stool to kick the dog whose head is resting on Isabella’s lap. There is nothing white about their hearts. He appears to be concentrating on a nut-cracker as if to show his determination to crack this unfortunate liaison. The scene captures the split-second before his foot will make contact with the hound and so upset its peace and disturb the passionate encounter of the two lovers.

My friend and I left the gallery to head towards the docks. After a brief visit to the Liverpool central library, a successful combination of the best of modern and Victorian architecture full of busy youths swatting for exams, we stopped briefly in the next door museum and joined a minute of silence for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster. Outside a small crowd had gathered by a memorial and sang tunelessly but passionately “You’ll never walk alone”. As both a southerner and (for historical family reasons) an Everton fan, I was happy that I could join this tribute by authentically Scouse Liverpool supporters. A city that still gathers to remember its dead almost 30 years down the line is a city with a heart—and therefore a future.

Our journey to the docks took us past the Blessed Sacrament shine, next to a bus terminal and in the middle of a rather soulless shopping district. But there people were praying. Christ still finds His way into the heart of human journeying—and even human business.

Returning from Albert Docks (nice but somewhat commercial), we got into our car and drove to the cathedrals. The parking ticket was a wound but the Anglican temple is a majestic monument which proclaims itself to be a cathedral simply by its size and spaciousness. It’s a beautiful brown-stone building and I have to confess that, as a Catholic, I can’t help wishing it were ours! But as it’s post-Reformation by a number of centuries, I have no grounds for complaint this time.

Then to the Catholic cathedral…The crown of thorns tower is striking, the stained glass creates a powerful interior atmosphere and there is much within it that is very worthy. But the biggest disappointment was the altar-piece in the Blessed Sacrament chapel. In what should be the most beautiful chapel in the cathedral (following what we Catholics claim to believe: that Jesus Christ, God made man, is truly inside that box we call a tabernacle, under the form of bread), the painting was an abstract effort in yellow and white diagonal stripes which would mean very little to anyone. My only hope is that the forthcoming National Eucharistic Congress will inspire someone to put something better there, something, please God, with both the imagination and technical expertise of Isabella.

And this perhaps is the point I began with, and with which I end. The greatness of Millais’ work is that it tells a recognizable story and captures human feelings and passions in a discernible but imaginative manner. You know what is going on and you are brought into the scene and challenged. For this 19^th-century gem is very far from being a staid re-working of what has gone before. Millais provokes and unsettles us (the work certainly did in its time). For all its daring, the artist—like other great pre-Raphaelites—shows a technical mastery which matches that of any contemporary painter of the period. It is worth going to see this work because it has taken art forward. And watching the painting, and numerous other works in the Walker Gallery (the best place for art in Liverpool), one is taken forward oneself, entering into the vision and creativity of great artists of the past to grow in both in the present. Through this experience of beauty, one deepens in one’s understanding of the human condition. It is a journey—at least a small step—out of one’s own limitations into a far greater imaginative and psychological world. If that is not traveling, I don’t know what is.

Suggested next reading: Why You Need To Ditch The Noise & Escape Into Silence ASAP

The post Discovering Beauty In Liverpool: A Gallery Definitely Worth Seeing appeared first on Modern Trekker.

I am here to do a retreat. But isn’t it curious that we talk of this most spiritual of activities—in my case, five days of silent prayer guided by a priest preaching to us—as a “retreat”? I thought the whole purpose of prayer was to take us up and forward, not back, which is what the word “retreat” implies. It is usually a defeated or at least an unsuccessful army which retreats, not a victorious one. But silence is a form of retreat and, in fact, to advance one needs retreat. One needs to step back from one’s daily activity and all its hustle and bustle to try to discover the meaning of it all. Only in silence can one discern the sense of so much noise which our everyday duties require from us, and very often the more you try to live for others, the more you must immerse yourself in their noise. Mothers of small children will know all about this.

Though I have spent numerous hours in the house chapel praying before the Blessed Eucharist, I have also enjoyed long walks in this God-blessed countryside with the South Downs as backdrop and nature all around me bursting back into life after its long repression by winter. Walking, I am convinced, is a way to God. As a Christian—and so a firm believer in Jesus Christ as truly God made man—it matters a lot to me that my Lord Jesus actually walked on human feet and made long journeys over very real, and no doubt very dusty, dirt tracks. Journeying was an important part of God’s way to men. And so my retreat has included walking. It is also, of course, by walking that one actually makes contact with nature which so dynamically and powerfully reveals God and his beauty to us. So, you see, I started talking of an interior journey and have slid into a physical one, be it simply my daily two-hour strolls in or near Ashdown Forest. It is a virtuous circle, as it always is. Exterior and interior movement must flow into each other and then into God, who, as the psalm puts it so beautifully in its Latin form, “ascensiones in corde disposuit”. He has put into our hearts a desire to ascend, to go up.

I enter into myself to discover the still, silent voice of the Holy Spirit: God is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves, as St Augustine so memorably put it. Silence settles on me like soft rain on dry ground. I pray with Scripture: “Pour down, oh heavens, from above!” “My soul longs for you like a dry, weary land in which there is no water.” This hardly applies to the squidgy, muddy soil I have been treading over, but it does apply to my spiritual state. May the rain of your grace journey down and into me, o God.

Silence involves listening, which means accepting that I don’t have all the answers, there is a wisdom beyond mine, there are parts of the picture I failed to see. Listening to God might lead us to realize we have to listen more to others: we have too casually, too stubbornly disregarded their opinion. I have been blind—and deaf. Silence involves overcoming the interior monologue, the interior accuser who wastes his or her energies on blaming others. Ultimately, I must change, not they. Accepting this is a big step forward on my journey.

Silence includes taking the risk that in response to your silence you find…silence. Your silence is met by what seems an even greater silence. Your efforts to pray draw an apparent blank. But if we persevere in that silence, some form of answer makes itself heard, a glimmer of light in the cloud. Gradually something like a way forward begins to appear. God’s touch makes itself felt, so incredibly gentle but unmistakable.

Where do you want to take me, Lord? There might be doors we don’t want him to open, with goods behind them we don’t want to surrender, comforts we don’t want to relinquish, vices we don’t want to abandon. Pope Francis has put it beautifully in his recent exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate, using also the journey metaphor. He writes:

“When, in God’s presence, we examine our life’s journey, no areas can be off limits. In all aspects of life we can continue to grow and offer something greater to God, even in those areas we find most difficult. We need, though, to ask the Holy Spirit to liberate us and to expel the fear that makes us ban him from certain parts of our lives. God asks everything of us, yet he also gives everything to us. He does not want to enter our lives to cripple or diminish them, but to bring them to fulfilment.”

He talks of “an authentic process of leaving ourselves behind in order to approach the mystery of God”, and I would add to this, in order likewise to approach the mystery of others. Seeking God has traditionally been described as going up a mountain, either metaphorically or at times in the Bible very literally. Yet, as we all know, you can’t climb a mountain dragging a treasure trove. The view we attain, however, the beauty we discover, are worth far more than all those bits of metal and stone. My strolls in Ashdown Forest were hardly mountaineering but in the silence of the countryside and of the chapel, I like to believe I edged a bit closer to God and to some form of personal and spiritual growth. Journeying requires leaving a lot behind in order to gain even more. The journey into silence, for those brave enough to undertake it, teaches us this.

The post Why You Need To Ditch The Noise & Escape Into Silence ASAP appeared first on Modern Trekker.

Wherever we go or stay, we travel—that is, if we do so as rational and sensitive human beings. Why waste money on flights—and give one’s country a bad name—if it’s just to drink abroad. To travel is to look, to wonder, to contemplate, to ask why, to be challenged, to convert. You will be affirmed by or made grateful about some aspect of your life. You will feel the need to change others. A man or woman who cannot appreciate the beauty of a local pond or wood doesn’t deserve to travel. If you haven’t rejoiced over sunrays sparkling softly on a local river, don’t bother adding to your carbon footprint. When you can begin to enjoy beauty around you, you might start to value it abroad. When you begin to be curious about the cultural diversity in your neighborhood, you might have some hope of understanding something about a culture across the sea.

How deeply do I consider the world around me? How much do I notice? What questions do I ask myself? To travel is to go out of oneself, to go beyond one’s confines, to break out of one’s prejudices. But to do that one must have something to go out of, some substance of personality, some depth of thought, some firmly held values to question. A cloud does not go out of itself. It simply forms or dissipates under the wind’s influence. An empty person does not really journey, he is merely blown about by advertising or peer pressure. Only by knowing where you stand—culturally, morally, socially—can you take a significant step to move somewhere else.

Wherever we go, we travel. A deep person doesn’t need to go far to go a long way in exploring life’s mystery. Then the further such a person might travel abroad, the more he or she will advance inside. A shallow person might fly to the furthest extremes and go through life like a Neanderthal knuckle-scraping the narrow stretch of land he dare not go beyond. The real journey is inside. Ultimately, the question is not how far you want to go but how deep.

The post Questions You Need To Ask Yourself Before Traveling appeared first on Modern Trekker.