There is something about the story of Our Lady of Walsingham that has always moved me.
Perhaps it is because the story does not begin with something grand.
There is no enormous basilica.
No great cathedral.
No throne room.
It begins with a house.
A little house.
And not just any house.
The little house at Nazareth.
I think that detail matters more than we sometimes realize.
According to the ancient tradition preserved today by the Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, in 1061 an English noblewoman and widow named Richeldis de Faverches prayed that she might perform some special work in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In response to that prayer, Our Lady led Richeldis in spirit to Nazareth and showed her the house where the Annunciation had taken place.
Then Mary asked her to build a replica of that house in Walsingham as a lasting memorial of the Annunciation.
And so began one of the great stories of Christian England.
Walsingham eventually became known as England’s Nazareth.
I cannot think of a more beautiful name.
Because at the center of Walsingham is not really a building.
It is a mystery.
The mystery that God came into a house.
God Came Into a House
We have a tendency to make Christianity complicated.
We write theological books, hold councils and build universities and cathedrals. Doctrines are debated and we spend entire lifetimes attempting to understand mysteries that will always remain larger than we are.
There is nothing wrong with any of that.
I have spent a good portion of my own life studying theology.
But sometimes I think we need to go back to Nazareth.
Because Christianity begins with something astonishingly small.
A young woman.
An angel.
A question.
An answer.
And a house.
The eternal Word through whom the universe was made entered human history inside an ordinary home.
Mary said yes.
And suddenly God was extraordinarily close.
The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter describes the spirituality of Walsingham beautifully: “through the Incarnation, the infinite God entered the particular circumstances of an ordinary house in Nazareth.”
That is what I love about this devotion.
Our Lady of Walsingham does not point us toward abstraction.
She points us toward a house.
Toward Nazareth.
Toward Jesus.
Why I Keep Returning to Our Lady
My understanding of devotion to Our Lady has changed as I have grown older.
When I was younger, Marian devotion probably meant mostly prayers to me.
The Rosary.
The Hail Mary.
May crownings.
Statues.
Holy cards.
Feast days.
All of those things remain precious.
But over time I have come to understand Mary differently.
Mary accompanies, she waits, and she remembers.
And Mary points.
Always toward Jesus.
That is perhaps one of the most important things to understand about genuine Catholic devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
It never really ends with Mary.
Mary takes us by the hand and leads us somewhere.
She leads us to Christ.
She did it at Bethlehem when shepherds found the Child with His mother.
And again at Cana when she told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
She did it beneath the Cross when almost everyone else had fled.
And she continues to do it in the life of the Church.
That is why the story of Our Lady of Walsingham speaks so powerfully to me.
Mary leads Richeldis to Nazareth.
She shows her the house.
Then she essentially says:
Remember this place.
Build this house.
Bring people here.
Because this is where her Son came into the world.
England’s Nazareth
The little Holy House at Walsingham eventually became one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in medieval Europe.
Kings came.
Commoners came.
The sick came.
The grieving came.
People who were thankful came.
People who had nothing left except prayer came.
Pilgrims traveled those difficult medieval roads because they wanted to arrive at Nazareth.
Not the geographical Nazareth of the Holy Land, but a little Nazareth planted in England.
Then came the Reformation.
In 1538 the original shrine was destroyed, and pilgrimage to Walsingham effectively disappeared. The Holy House itself was lost. The famous image of Our Lady was taken away, and the great pilgrimage center fell silent.
Centuries later, Catholic pilgrimage was restored, and the surviving Slipper Chapel eventually became the heart of the restored Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham.
That history itself feels almost like a parable.
Something sacred was built.
Something sacred was destroyed.
And somehow something sacred returned.
I suspect many of us understand that pattern better than we would like.
Perhaps something in your own life has been broken.
A relationship.
A dream.
Your health.
A career.
A friendship.
A future you once assumed was certain.
Sometimes we find ourselves standing among the ruins of a life we thought we understood and wondering whether God could possibly make anything holy out of what remains.
Walsingham offers a quiet answer.
The story may not be finished.
That is something I return to often in my reflections here at Food For The Way.
Grace has a strange habit of appearing in places we had already declared ruined.
The Holiness of the Little House
Perhaps what attracts me most to Nazareth is its ordinariness.
Think about the hidden life of Jesus.
The overwhelming majority of His earthly life was not spent preaching to thousands.
He was not walking on water, multiplying loaves, or raising Lazarus.
He was at home.
There were meals.
Continue the Journey
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Conversations.
Work.
Bread.
Wood shavings.
Doors opening and closing.
Neighbors passing outside.
Mary preparing food.
Joseph working with his hands.
A young Jesus growing into manhood.
The Son of God spent roughly thirty years sanctifying ordinary human life simply by living it.
That realization becomes more important to me the older I get.
We spend so much of our lives waiting for something important to happen.
We imagine significance living somewhere in the future.
After the promotion, after the children grow up, and we retire.
When the book is finished and we have enough money.
After we finally accomplish whatever goal has been sitting somewhere on the horizon.
Nazareth tells us something radically different.
God is already here.
The kitchen and the dinner table matter.
The workshop matters.
The conversation you had this morning with the person sitting beside you matters.
Ordinary life is not the interruption before spiritual life begins.
Ordinary life is often precisely where God chooses to meet us.
It is a theme I return to again and again in the reflections at Food For The Way.
So much of faith consists simply of learning to recognize the holiness that was already present.
Why I Wrote Nazareth in England
That fascination with Walsingham eventually became something I wanted to explore more deeply.
It became my new book, Nazareth in England.
The book contains fourteen meditations centered upon Our Lady of Walsingham, Mary, the Annunciation, the Incarnation, and the strange beauty of that little house at Nazareth.
But underneath all fourteen reflections is really one question:
What happens when we allow Mary to lead us back into the house?
Not merely historically.
Spiritually.
What if we entered Nazareth again and listened?
If we stood quietly near Mary at the Annunciation and heard Gabriel’s greeting?
What if we waited through that extraordinary silence before Mary’s answer?
And what if we heard her say:
“Be it done unto me according to thy word.”
What if those words were no longer merely Mary’s words?
What if they became ours?
That is really the journey I hoped to capture in Nazareth in England.
It is not simply a book about a shrine in Norfolk.
It is a book about learning how to say yes.
About discovering God in ordinary places.
About allowing Mary to accompany us through uncertainty.
And ultimately about following her toward Jesus.
If devotion to Our Lady has ever meant something to you—or if you are simply searching for a way to draw closer to Christ through the spirituality of Nazareth—I hope you will consider reading it.
Read Nazareth in England on Amazon →
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mary Always Leads Us Home
There is an old instinct within Christianity that connects pilgrimage with homecoming.
At first that seems contradictory.
Pilgrimage means leaving home.
You pack a bag.
Walk a road.
Travel somewhere unfamiliar.
Yet the deeper purpose of Christian pilgrimage is to discover where home truly is.
That is what makes Walsingham so compelling.
Mary does not simply invite us toward a shrine.
She invites us home.
Back to Nazareth and the little house; back to the place where the Word became flesh.
And from there she points toward our final home with her Son.
Perhaps that is why we need Our Lady so much.
The road becomes confusing.
There are stretches when we forget where we are going.
There are losses we never expected.
Detours we would never have chosen.
Crosses we certainly did not ask to carry.
And somewhere along that road stands Mary.
Not demanding that we stop and look at her.
Simply pointing.
There.
My Son is there.
Keep going.
Come Back to Nazareth
Sometimes when I imagine Nazareth, I do not picture anything spectacular.
I imagine evening.
A lamp burning.
Bread on a table.
Joseph putting away his tools.
Mary moving quietly through the house.
Jesus nearby.
The ordinary holiness of a family together.
Perhaps that is enough.
Perhaps one of the great lessons of Our Lady of Walsingham is that God does not always meet us in the spectacular.
Sometimes He is waiting inside the little house.
Sometimes Mary simply opens the door.
And sometimes faith means trusting her enough to walk inside.
More than nine centuries ago, pilgrims began traveling to a little corner of England because they believed Mary had asked that Nazareth be remembered there.
They called it England’s Nazareth.
I think we still need Nazareth.
Maybe now more than ever.
A place of quiet surrender, where heaven comes close to earth and ordinary life becomes holy.
A place where Mary whispers the words that changed the history of the world:
“Be it done unto me according to thy word.”
And a place where she continues to do what she has always done.
Lead us home to Jesus.
Continue the Journey
If this reflection spoke to you, I invite you to explore more reflections on faith, memory, family, suffering, grace, and the quiet places where God meets us at Food For The Way.
You can also learn more about the history and continuing devotion to Our Lady at the Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham or read more about the spirituality of Walsingham through the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter.
And if you would like to journey more deeply into the little house at Nazareth:
Get Nazareth in England on Amazon →
Fourteen meditations on Our Lady of Walsingham, the Annunciation, Nazareth, Mary’s fiat, and her timeless invitation to lead us closer to Jesus Christ.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
