By NICOLE van HEERDEN
The best parts of a holiday are often unplanned – and these things generally make for the best stories – and can also be occasions of unexpected grace.
In September and October, I travelled through Canada and the UK with my parents, mainly to visit family, and to see some of the places we’d dreamed about through the long Covid years. In Scotland and England, we worked out our schedule as we went, deciding each evening what we’d do the next day. As a result, the element of surprise was a regular feature of our trip, and it often took a Catholic or Christian form – an early morning prayer service in a silent and soaring York Minster; finding the church doors said to have inspired JRR Tolkien’s Doors of Moria; the Bible on which Charles I said his final confession; a second-hand book sale in the back of quaint St Peter’s in Upper Slaughter; and many more.
Two experiences in particular stand out for me as sort of unintended pilgrimages; holy and special places that we found by complete accident – or, perhaps, by grace.
The first happened on our last morning in Edinburgh. We made the 1-hour train journey to Abbotsford, Sir Walter Scott’s country manor, in the Scottish borders. After perusing the house and gardens – a dream for literary fanatics and history buffs – a guide asked if we’d seen the chapel, and pointed us to a narrow path leading around the side of the house. On entering, we found a glass cabinet, containing what are now holy relics of St John Henry Newman; his vestments, biretta, and missal. I was stunned. St John Henry Newman is a favourite saint in our family, and it turned out that we’d stumbled upon a chapel built by his close friend, James Robert Hope, who had married the granddaughter of Sir Walter Scott. St John Henry Newman had been a frequent visitor to the house, had celebrated Mass in the chapel and, with Abbotsford as a base, had helped to establish many chapels in the Scottish Borders.
What struck me, as I took a seat in the pale blue chapel, was how St John Henry Newman had managed to fit this great mission work into his lifetime, almost as a side project while visiting friends. It made me consider the importance of encouraging and fostering networks of faithful, of connecting Catholics across parishes and regions, and of the central importance of families in this kind of missionary work.
After Edinburgh, we caught the train to York. It was almost twilight by the time we headed out for a walk to the famous Shambles, a medieval street that once housed butcheries (a “shamel” being a bench for displaying meat). The street is now home to ghost tours, Harry Potter ephemera and fudge shops. Most shops had closed for the day, but one open doorway seemed to welcome us in. Two plaques to the side read, “The shrine of St Margaret Clitherow”, “Martyred in York, March 25th, 1586, Canonised October 25th, 1970”.
We walked into a low and crooked-ceilinged chapel, with bench pews, various framed histories and pictures on the walls, and an altar at the front with a statue of St Margaret to the left. A calligraphied sign explained that this was St Margaret Clitherow’s house. She had converted to Catholicism in the reign of Elizabeth I, when Catholic persecution in England was at its height. At great risk to her life, she ran a Catholic school and held regular Masses in her home, until she was discovered and put to death by crushing.
We lingered there for a while, the only visitors. It was a relief to have a moment’s calm in our tourist rush. It felt vulnerable leaving the chapel with its door open and nobody keeping an eye on visitors (a sign said CCTV was operating). But I considered the blessing of having this place to sit and to contemplate, free to enter, open to all – perhaps exactly what St Margaret would have wanted her home to be. And, as at Abbotsford, the theme seemed to be the importance of families of faith and the communities they enable to form around them, particularly in a non-Catholic society.
Travel is, of course, a perfect life-metaphor, and my parting thought is for the unintended pilgrimages in life; things we never saw coming; new paths that open before us, challenging our perceptions and our courage, inviting us to dig deeper into our beliefs, into what it means to be Catholic, what it means to have faith, and to truly put our trust in the Lord and the path he has given us to walk.
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