August is thought of as a holiday month. A good many offices seem to close down and people, thankfully, seem less keen to hold meetings. We here in ‘Way-on-High’ country are in a popular holiday spot meaning that several of us will be busy with customers and visitors. The two annual pilgrimages held during August, these being the one for Our Lady on the river Wye, and the Father Ignatius Memorial Trust Pilgrimage at the end of the month, bring visiting pilgrims to our area.

John Betjeman, who attended Mass in Hay S. Mary’s when visiting the area, for this is where his wife Penelope moved to in later life, wrote the following when aged 13:

Whatever will rhyme with summer?

There is only ‘plumber’ and ‘drummer’:

Why! The cleverest bard

Would find it quite hard

To connect with the summer – a plumber!

It is amusing and irreverent. Our pilgrimages are solemn and have deep meaning, but this does not mean that they must be sombre. A pilgrimage is a time for joy and a time to appear, in the eyes of some, as ridiculous. The Catholic faith is one which has much joy and feasting. Hopefully we can share some of this joy with those who visit our area this summer. We can happily appear, to quote S. Paul, as ‘fools for Christ’ as we confidently process Our Lady through the town and row her along the Wye, or as we happily walk in song between Little S. Mary’s, Capel-y-Ffin and the ruins of Fr. Ignatius’ monastic Church. And why? Well to quote from Betjeman again, and this time from a poem he wrote for S. Saviour’s Church in Highgate:

Wonder beyond Time’s wonders, that Bread so white and small

Veiled in golden curtains, too mighty for men to see,

Is the Power which send the shadows up this polychrome wall,

Is God who created the present, the chain-smoking millions and me;

Beyond the throb of engines is the throbbing heart of all –

Christ, at this Highbury Altar, I offer myself to Thee.

 

Please God, let it be that the Blessed Saints, most particularly Our Lady, continue to pray for us!