Saturday, September 7, 2019

Pilgrimage - Saint Chad, Bishop of Lichfield

Travelling west out of Wales, I was due to spend a few days with my dear friend Fr. Ian McCormack in Nottingham. On my way, there were a couple of places I wanted to stop.

First I spent the night in Shrewsbury. Although I know that Br. Cadfael is in fact a fictional character, having read (I think) all 21 novels, I thought that a stop in Shrewsbury would be an appropriate addition to the pilgrimage. Shrewbury Abbey was also the original site of the shrine of St. Winifred (see A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters). I was able to stop by the abbey, now a parish church, just before Morning Prayer. One of the kind folks at the parish explained that the high altar is where the shrine would have been. The choir and the shrine were destroyed in the Reformation, so the church is about half the size it was originally. This kind gentleman also encouraged me to visit Pennant Melangell, and I told him I had been there the day before!

The other stop was in Lichfield to visit the Shrine of St. Chad. Ever since I visited Lastingham about ten years ago, I've had a great desire to visit St. Chad. Unfortunately, I made a key mistake in my planning which you can hear about in the video below:



Asking prayers from St. Chad

Holy Chad, pray for us that God might give us the humility to find in disappointment on opportunity to serve God in new ways.

Collect for St. Chad

Almighty God, you raised up your servant Chad to help bring unity to a divided Church; help us, with his prayers, to live more and more as one Church to better show your love to a divided world. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amn

Friday, August 9, 2019

Victims of Gun Violence - July 1 - July 31

Rest eternal grant unto them,
And let light perpetual shine upon them.
May they rest in peace.

Pilgrimage - Saint Melangell, Patron Saint of Hares

This particular shrine was completely unexpected. I needed to get from Caernarfon eventually to Nottingham where I was staying with an old friend. So I looked around for pilgrimage sites along the way and stumbled on this place. It turned out to be one of the absolute highlights of the whole pilgrimage. The drive to get there was pretty crazy itself. The route took me all the way through Snowdonia National Park which was absolutely stunning. The weather that day was spectacular which didn't hurt at all.

Pheasants
There were many things that made this stop so memorable. One of them was that I had to make the last part of the journey on foot. As I was driving up from the little village, I actually had to stop the car and pull off the road by a little sheep gate. The road had become impassible. There was a commercial pheasant farm and the road was completely covered in pheasants. They could fly, but they simply refused. After about twenty minutes of driving at pheasant pace, I gave up and parked the car.

So I had to walk about a mile and and half up to the shrine.





Asking prayer from Saint Melangell

Holy Melangell, your love for creation inspired you to protect one of God's most vulnerable creatures; pray that God will grant us the courage to place ourselves between the vulnerable and those who would do them harm.

Collect for Saint Melangell

Holy God, in the beginning, you created the world, blessed it, and called it good; strengthen the heart of your Church that, through the intercession of Holy Melangell, we might work to protect the creation entrusted to us and preserve its goodness for those who will come after us. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Victims of Gun Violence - November 1 - November 30

Rest eternal grant unto them, And let light perpetual shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Click here for a link to the list of n...