We are being flexible with our plans given the fullness of our agenda and the idiosyncracies of winter transportation. Today we completed our touring and visiting in London. After a tour of the city from the upper deck of a double-decker bus, we paid a visit to St. Margaret's Church and toured Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London and the Sherlock Holmes Museum.
Seeing shrines to Our Lady in London is made especially difficult by the rampant secularization of British culture and the ever hovering black shadow of the Reformation. Even chapels dedicated to Our Lady lack a quiet place to light a candle and pray. Sadly signs point to where and how prayers once were said more often than where one might pray.
The highlight of the visit to London for me was arriving at the tomb of St. Edward the Confessor, who commissioned the building of the Abbey and seems to have been a good and holy man, just in time to join a small group of pilgrims invited to pray in the shrine where his tomb and that of his wife lie. This shrine is the oldest and most fragile part of the Abbey and is off limits to tourists. An Anglican priest led us in a centuries old litany of prayer for Christian unity and the protection of the Christian leaders of all nations, most especially her majesty the Queen.
This pause for prayer seemed especially meaningful as the tomb where Queen Elizabeth I and her sister Queen Mary are buried side by side was just across the aisle. In front of their elaborate sarcophagi was a vault marker enjoining travelers to remember those who suffered and died for the sake of their conscience and love of Christ under the division caused by the Reformation of the Church in England.
I took time to remember too our political rivalries at home in the US and how that division damages our vitality as a nation. I prayed for the primary in my home state of New Hampshire and for a worthy opponent to emerge so that fruitful debate of the issues needing discussion can take place and move us closer to real freedom and democracy.
Later I prayed at the tombs of Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey in the royal chapel of St. Paul ad Vincula in the Tower of London.
I lit a candle for you at the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Abbey where I found a beautiful alabaster image of Our Lady. This translucent Madonna was carved by an unnamed English nun in 1973 and placed in a niche where the outline of an ancient image can still be seen behind her.
Before this image of the New Mary in the Old Mary's arms I prayed for the Blessed Mother's special protection over the Order and our Congregation to be vouchsafed and passed on to the next generation. I prayed for God to bless my research in his Mother's honor and to bless each of you as you stand behind one another and inspire each other to good works of praise.
