Why we're in Walsingham : England's Nazareth

By Nicky Lynas 

Last weekend was the first Youth 2000 team retreat in Walsingham, our new HQ. That's right, if you hadn't already heard, our offices have moved from London to England's national shrine! You'll probably also be aware that Walsingham is also where Youth 2000 has held it's summer prayer festival for many years now, so it has always been a special place for us.

So why Walsingham? And why has it always been so close to the mission of Youth 2000? We thought we'd pose these questions to Walsingham Development Coordinator and Youth 2000 employee, Nicky Lynas. Nicky is one of the three staff members that moved to Walsingham this October, and this is what she had to say.

A little bit of History 

First of all I just want to talk a bit about the history of Walsingham, which has been a bit of a baptism of fire for me over the last week! I've already learned so much and it’s just been a huge privilege to be here. Everyday, I’m waking up thinking ‘how did I get to be here in this place of grace’. It’s just phenomenal, and you realise what’s gone before and what’s still to come. 

In 1061, Lady Richeldis de Faverches, the wife of a Norman lord, prayed to Our Lady that she wanted to build something in honour of her. Richeldis then was taken in spirit to the holy house of Nazareth, after which, Mary asked Richeldis to build a replica of Jesus's family home, in England. That way, people could make this pilgrimage to Nazareth in England (hence 'England's Nazareth'). 

Soon, Walsingham became famous, with pilgrims coming from all over Europe, Edward the Confessor and Richard the Lionheart to name a few. Something interesting that I found out is that Walsingham became so busy with pilgrims at its peak, just before the reformation, that people renamed the Milky Way the Walsingham Way. The Milky Way (the star constellation), because the myriad of stars that went with it was like the myriad of people that were travelling to Walsingham. 

Walsingham became one of the four major sites of pilgrimage, so it was up there with Rome, Jerusalem and Compostela. It was one of the few pilgrimage sites in England that people from abroad would come to, especially when the wars were going on in the Holy Land, people would instead pilgrimage to Walsingham. Suffice to say, it was a big deal.

The Holy House was what people came to see, but unfortunately it was destroyed in the reformation in 1538. The shrine was then restored in 1896.

Pilgrimage

‘The pilgrim’s journey is long, and begins with a parting. 

He leaves his home, his everyday life, forgets all his unimportant and trivial cares, 

and then sets off courageously. 

And so prayer makes its way to God more easily. 

The company of other pilgrims increases the ardour of his soul, 

and gives rise to prayer in common: singing, exchange of thoughts and feelings. 

It culminates in restrained exaltation, when at the altar, Christ offered in sacrifice, 

comes with his body to strengthen the Christian on the way to God.’

Pope Pius XII

There was a time during the middle ages when people wanted to go on pilgrimage so badly, that they actually started to have to go to their bishop to get permission to go on pilgrimage so that there were still enough people left in the village to work. Often men were asked to write their wills before they left. People were desperate to come, they felt moved to leave everything behind and to make this pilgrimage. 

I love that idea of letting go of everything, and you very much do that on pilgrimage. You have to turn your phone off, and just leave all your worries at home, and in leaving them and the people that you’re worrying about, you have to entrust them to God again and just say ‘right, they’re in your hands, I can’t do anything right now for them’. So it requires trust to be on pilgrimage. 

In the modern day it takes more effort to make that disconnect and to make that time sacred, but perhaps then it is even more worthwhile. A place of pilgrimage also unites us with the Church in heaven. When we look to them, we remember what our pilgrim journey is really aiming for.

The message of Walsingham

The message here, is that Our Lady was completely emptied and able to surrender to God’s will fully. To say yes. Her fiat. And so when we make our journey here on pilgrimage, that should be one of the main things that we bring: that desire to empty ourselves of our own will, and the courage to ask God to lead us completely.

That message of surrender keeps hitting me.

All the major grace that I’ve received in my life, was through the lesson of surrender, through stopping myself from trying to do it all through my own strength. Of course we have the idea of grace in nature, but when I actually just stopped and surrendered, when I put everything to the side and acknowledged that it was going to have to be grace in me, that changed things. Allowing that to take place is when I received conversion. 

I guess that’s what we’re all aiming for, continual conversion. So whatever it is you need to empty yourself of, ask Our Lady to help you in that, and ask for that grace to surrender to God’s will more and more.  

We're all really excited as a team for what's happening in Walsingham right now, and this move really seems to mark a new chapter in Youth 2000's history. Do keep this venture and the Walsingham office team in your prayers! But for now, it's with pride that we can tell you that this is where you can find us: 

Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us.

The Advent Challenge : A People of Hope

By Eleanor Hill

My birthday falls on February 9^th, which means one thing: on February 10^th my Christmas countdown begins (322 days to be precise).

I LOVE Christmas. Today tears fell from my eyes as I listened to Matt Redman’s new Christmas album, I was so excited. It means Home Alone, unlimited board games, Winter Wonderland, Christmas carols, chocolate, Mum’s homemade mince pies, mulled wine, GLITTER, tinsel, family, hilarious Christmas jumpers and The Vicar of Dibley Christmas special. What more could you want? 

Oh yeah, and the small matter of Jesus being born!

But Advent? 

I don’t know about you, but Advent always kind of passes me by. I’ve seen it as a countdown to Christmas day, as a time to decorate the house and a time of having emotional Christmas adverts on the TV. But this year, I want Advent to be different. I really want to try and value these next few weeks, to realise why God is giving us this time to prepare, and most importantly, to discover how this season is relevant to my life right now. As I sat and prayed about all this, I realised what an amazing this time could be, how much it could impact my relationship with God, if I let it.

This Advent, Jesus is inviting us to start again.

Recently, my prayer life hasn’t been as frequent as it should be, I haven’t been to confession in a while and I really feel like my relationship with God isn’t where I’d like it to be. But the beautiful thing about Advent, is that the church gives us a new season. We’re acknowledging change and therefore Jesus is inviting us to go into a new season spiritually. 

Jesus is reminding me that his mercy is new every morning, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1) and that as soon as I decide that I want to get back on track with where I’d like to be in my faith, he’ll be there to meet me. 

So, this Advent I’m going to start again. I'm going to go to confession and make small acts that will lead me back to God, to increase my prayer life by a few minutes a day, to try and read a bible verse each day or even just to acknowledge him more throughout the day, rather than just before I'm going to sleep. Jesus is giving us this time of Advent to refocus on him, and to have a deeper revelation of his love.

This Advent Jesus is inviting us to be patient and to long for him.

Though our minds may instinctively turn to the gifts we will unwrap on Christmas day, do we ever think of the gifts that God has in store for us in the days of Advent? Advent is a time of waiting. It's here that we can evoke a sense of longing for Jesus. 2000 years ago, when people were waiting for the Messiah, their waiting didn’t mean just sitting around doing nothing, but instead they journeyed towards him. They were proactive in their actions, they prayed and they surrender themselves. 

Let's be like the wise men. Sure, we're not be going on a psychical journey towards Bethlehem, but we can begin our spiritual journey towards him, through prayer, through being generous and showing acts of mercy. We may be waiting for God to answer that all important prayer, but let us be patient and assured knowing he’s already come, he’s already with us, and in his perfect time he will answer us.

This Advent, Jesus is inviting us, to renew our hope

To be really honest, at the moment, my life couldn’t be further from hopeful. My uni work is never ending, my health is rough to say the least, and at the moment I feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders. But this season calls upon everyone to renew their hopefulness. How?

At the end of Advent, we know that there is hope, light and joy, but sometimes in our live’s we can have uncertainty, and we don’t know what’s around the corner. This Advent, Jesus is inviting us to hold on to his word, and we don't need to look any further than the prophecy of the birth of Christ to begin to grow this hope in ourselves again. Just as the Old Testament was fulfilled, so will God’s promises be for you.

“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; 

there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. 

There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” 

(Revelation 21:4) 

This Advent, is our calling to hope. 

This Advent is our calling to remember that Jesus does not disappoint. 

This Advent is our calling to strive to be close to the Emmanuel, as he chose to became so near to us. 

'I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment,

to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, 

or at least an openness to letting him encounter them.' 

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium 

Why not make this your challenge this Advent? 

This Advent I'm going to try and live in the present, to not wish this season of waiting away. To do a random act of kindness each day and most importantly to slow down, and prepare. If you let him, God wants to use this Advent to fill you with peace, but also to call you higher: to be a witness to true hope. 

Will you let him?

Evangelisation: a lifestyle

By Kirsten Brown

Most of us have heard this: Evangelisation is ‘proclaiming the joy of the Gospel’, but what does this really mean? Well, I looked up the definition of the word ‘proclaim’ and two entries came up. The first, I think, is what we usually associate evangelisation with:

“to announce officially, to declare, to say.”

This, I think, the idea of being preachers, is sometimes what we associate with evangelising. The second entry (for proclaim) was:

“to indicate clearly, to demonstrate, to reveal.”

This I found interesting because you can see that it’s about action, teaching through action, it’s showing an intention. But even before we can do that, in order to demonstrate — if you are to demonstrate correctly — you have to ‘know’ what it is you’re demonstrating, you have to know your intentions. So if ‘proclaim the joy of the Gospel’ is action through demonstration, then we have to ask ourselves what the intentions of our actions are...

I was coming out of the chapel the other day and saw these lovely little postcards that read: ‘proclaim the joy of LOVE’ — which I think captures the excitement and the spirit of this. When we feel the love of God in our lives, this is one way we ‘know him’. St John tells us ‘whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.’ (1 John 4:8). So to know Joy is to know God and to know God is to know Love — this is our faith.

When the gift of Joy invades our lives we start to respond with our words and our actions. You could go on retreats, programmes, or find yourself standing outside in neon yellow Newman house T-shirts... it can also be talking to a stranger about your faith, talking to groups of Catholics like you, really listening to the homily at Mass and chatting over cake, afterwards. The way we speak and see the world in our everyday lives changes completely because we start — consciously or unconsciously — to share what has been shown to us. We start to ‘proclaim joy’ in small ways, at first. Then it can become so much more, if we really open ourselves to this joy. When we choose to live it, evangelisation becomes a lifestyle, a way of living the joy of God’s love.

But at the foundation of all these actions, when we go right back to basics, when we strip everything down, is our relationship with God and our relationships with others - essentially: friendship.

Friendship is what changes hearts.

 

Your offer of genuine friendship, born out of an authentic love for the other person is absolutely what this is about — that is how we spread joy. If you imagine you’re holding a ball of fire in your hands, that is the ‘fire of your faith’. Our job is not so much to give someone faith, only the Holy Spirit can do that. Our job is to share the light that our fire casts with others and to lead them to understand/search for their own light, in the hope that they would come to know the joy of Jesus’s love through witnessing our relationship with him.

Okay, so this can seem a bit abstract. Sure it’s nice to think of being authentic, and loving in friendship, but how do we put this into practise? I want to introduce you to the idea of the three main ‘Agendas of Love’, which I think are just important generally, because they are all elements of a healthy friendship. These are:

1. The Compassion of the Father. ‘When He saw the crowds, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.’ (Matthew 9:36). When we meet people who don’t know Jesus, or are suffering, our hearts should be moved with compassion. Because we want to help show them God’s love in any way we can. They are our brothers and sisters and they are infinitely loved by God. It is more than kindness — it is willingly turning towards the other and trying to help.

2. The vulnerability of the Son. There’s this amazing talk by a psychologist called Brene Brown on the power of vulnerability (go watch it). She says that: “We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known”. Can you imagine any friendship in which we didn’t open up? Vulnerability is not telling someone your whole life story or your biggest secrets, but it is humbly and honestly speaking about how Christ has touched your life, your joys, and your difficulties. Faith is not easy, it is not always clear, we are imperfect yet God manages to work through this – and others need to know that. That they are enough, that they can come to God as they are.

3. Finally, the Wisdom of the Spirit. In all things, we absolutely must be praying for wisdom. There will be moments when you’re asked something you can’t answer or that is sensitive, and we should be a bit discerning with how we respond, so that we are seeking what is true and good.

So, when people see you serving food, taking time to lead groups, speaking with non-Catholic friends or strangers about faith, approaching people with understanding, then they’ll start to ask ‘why?’ And then when you answer, they’ll listen because you have treated them as friends. Not with judgment or forcing, and not with pride or offence, but taking the time to really listen to them, to know them first. If we come in with only our message, not caring who the person is, as St. Paul says, we are like a ‘clanging cymbal’ (1 Corinthians 13:1).

‘No longer do I call you servants, 
for the servant does not know what his master is doing; 
but I have called you friends, 
for all that I have heard from my Father 
I have made known to you.’

John 15:15

P.S. this was really inspired by Sycamore, a great evangelisation resource! Check them out at sycamore.fm

9 Ways of Praying

The Rotherham Retreat : Light Up the Sky

By Isaac Withers

Last Friday, the Youth 2000 team arrived on site at St. Bernard’s Catholic High School, Rotherham, for the first Youth 2000 retreat since Conquerors at Walsingham. There was a lot of unique things about this retreat, new things that we were excited about:

• This was a brand new location, Youth 2000 returning to the Hallam diocese after many years.
• It was the first retreat lead by the new leadership team dedicated to this year 'commissioned' at Walsingham.
• This was also the first time we’d ever streamed any of a retreat live to the internet (and even live, nothing went wrong!)

So there was a lot of new, and we were all kind of excited about it. Over the course of the weekend 183 people were with us and from day one the tone was great. Maybe there’s just something about the hospitality of the North…