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

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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.