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