Origins and images

On Thursday afternoon I collected the book “Pilgrim Cross – Vezelay Peace Pilgrimage) which was published by Blackfriars Publications in 1946, shortly after the peace pilgrimage took place.

I am on my third reading of the text and once my useless printer starts working I will scan it in (HP printers are the pits, folks, this one wants to update the drivers every day and re-install on a very regular basis, grrr).

Printer problems aside, this book is fantastic. It tells the story of the British contingent of that amazing pilgrimage to Vezelay and of what happened when everyone arrived. It is a truly moving story and the sermon by the author and instigator of the British element, Fr Gerald Vann, O.P., is also very good. The photos just knock you over as they are both extremely evocative of the time and event and are so redolent with the experience of Student Cross even today. Certainly, the pattern and experience of pilgrimage on Student Cross is directly inherited from this event.

I have a lot to reflect on and write about as a result of this but for the moment it has placed one particular dilemma in my path. The pilgrims walked from Dieppe to Vezelay taking a longer and slower path than Alison and I intend to take. However, it may be possible for us to follow part of their route and so I am about to re-assess where we are planning to walk and see how it might be changed.

Of course, if it means adding days to our route it will be difficult to justify – we have a limited time frame for all of this – but we will certainly give it a try.

Also, I must share with you this revised image of the pilgrimage. I imagined (romantically, I must admit) them emerging from the mist to see Vezelay for the first time in the morning sun. Well, they certainly entered Vezelay for the first time in the morning but my romaticism did not even come close to the real story!

This is how it happened - all of the 14 groups arrived there on the 19th July 1946 and were led to spots on the hills within sight of Vezelay. So they settled down for the night in a ring of small camps around the town. Each could see the basilica perched on the top of the hill and each waited as darkness fell. Silently, they gathered wood for a beacon fire and waited. As they held their vigil a summer storm began to gather and lightning flickered and lit up the sky. Then, at 10 pm the basilica bells rang out, a rocket was fired from the roof of the church and the building was lit up with lights and one at a time, each group fired off their rocket and lit their beacon fire. Everyone in the church and in each camp sang together the plain chant Vexilla Regis, then silence again as the lights in the church were extinguished and each group was left to spend the last night praying together on the hillside by their dying fire and their cross.

Well, what an image to deal with! What an amazing thing to have experienced!

I will stop there and get on with my work! Cheers!