Listening
to a directee talk of their recent pilgrimage to Walsingham and the way they
were touched by the altar of the Annunciation and Holy House caused me to
realise the way in which both of these speak powerfully of God’s invitation
into an ever deepening relationship; with Him.
The Annunciation reminds us that God
is constantly and graciously calling us to say ‘yes’ to his invitation that we
should give birth to the image of him within us. The movement, then, from that
altar at Walsingham into the Holy House is a symbolic movement into the inner
room where the Divine presence of Jesus and Mary dwell. The House is our Heart
and we enter it through an ever-open door to give attention to him who is enthroned
there. Teresa of Avila, of course, expounds this journey in her book The Interior Castle where she writes that
the entrance into this ‘Castle’ or ‘Mansion’ is through interior prayer
(meditation) and how the person who responds to God’s invitation into the
Castle by needs to be cleansed of sin and practice humility. In the same way,
the entrance into the Basilica of the Incarnation in Bethlehem is through a low
door which requires the pilgrim to bend low in order to pass through. One moves
further into the Castle through deepening prayer and a growth of loving desire
for God, something of which the pilgrim seeking God in the Holy House will be
deeply aware. There are further rooms which are accessed by an increase of this
love until ‘betrothal’ occurs in the final room, or Mansion.
All this is symbolic of the way the
Heart is to be that Interior Castle in which God abides in Christ. If we give real
attention to the Heart then that Divine Love will gradually melt our defences and
draw us more deeply into union with the One who is always present to us. The
Heart is, if you like, the locus of God’s hospitality.
‘O
come to my Heart Lord Jesus, there is room in my Heart for Thee.’
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https://www.walsinghamanglican.org.uk/
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