ESBVM

A report on the recent ESBVM conference – United with Mary in Prayer: Ecumenism and the Mother of God – held at Aylesford Priory is available here.

On 4 December, in the Upper Room of St Thomas, Canterbury, Mrs Tina Hamilton spoke about apparitions of Our Lady and Pilgrimages. She spoke about her own experiences of pilgrimage, including in her presentation Aylesford (where one of our own members had been privileged to see an apparition of our Lady in 2005), Walsingham and Banneux in Belgium where, in 1933, our Lady appeared to Mariette Beco. On a very cold January day, Our Lady asked Mariette to wash in the spring, to say the Rosary and to have a small chapel built. The spring is said to have healing powers. Tina also talked about Assisi, Fatima and Paris, where St Catherine Laboure received several apparitions. Tina’s talk was given with great enthusiasm.

At our February 2007 meeting, Miss Jennifer Forster spoke about her pilgrimage to Turkey in a group led by the Bishop of Dover. After flying to Istanbul, they went to Kayseri in Cappadocia and visited the rock churches and monasteries. They also went to Myra, birth place of St Nicholas (Santa Claus!) and then back to Istanbul to see Hagia Sophia, the great basilica built by Constantine and rebuilt by Justinian. Every church visited had icons of the mother of the Lord.

At our March meeting, on 26, Fr. Tony Cassidy gave a profound talk about the celebration of the Annunciation. He stressed the significance of the Visitation which brought together the two mothers of the two special babies. Mary did not visit Elizabeth just to care for her in her pregnancy but to confirm the coming miracle of the birth of God’s Son. Fr. Tony then stressed that, according to Scripture, the true relatives of Jesus are all those who hear and do God’s word. Mary thus becomes the model disciple as well as the model human mother.