 Well, it's lovely to be back and be able to speak to you again and thank you for that So what I want to speak to you about is about the theme of the conference and Mary as the model of authentic accompaniment So Just to really give you a sense. It's a very simple talk in this sense. I'm not trying to get across many things The first one is Mary is the absolute key person To whom we need to refer in the Christian life as the one who will always accompany us That's that's kind of message number one So how she accompanies us Secondly then as a catechist as somebody in ministry We will learn from her everything we need to know about the accompaniment of other people and I just want to try and get some of those lessons out and I want to I'm just going to focus on one very short passage You know there was a verse we put underneath the title and Mary remained with her Which is from the visitation So it's a it's a quite an interesting the visitation begins with a Mary went forth in haste So it's got a kind of whole sense of the spring in the step a Movement and going the journey and she's very anxious to join Elizabeth and then Mary remains with her as the final verse of that of that sequence So what she's really about in terms of Moving fast is precisely so that she can remain with her Yeah, so I just want to look at that as well today Exactly this day last year was the day I was whisked off in a helicopter So this is it was on our Lady of Mount Carmel if there's one message if you like I want to give It is our Lady's faithfulness Our Lady's utter faithfulness So I was taken in the helicopter on the Feast of Mount Carmel My operation was on the assumption of our Lady and then I left the hospital on the Queenship of our Lady and Talk about our Lady accompanies you she is the utterly faithful person Who we can look to all the time in our lives. So that's if you like that's the one message I want you to get Mary's faithfulness to us and therefore How she's faithful to every other person we ever give ministry to and How we can rely upon her and help other people to do so and let's look at how she does that I'll just start with a story about accompaniment from my own life Just so that you can In a way you start learning about this very very early on as a fundamental human reality So in the early years of Catherine and my marriage our first child is called Karris And I'd say between it where you know the first children are sent to train their parents Essentially they are sent as the sort of the advanced elite corps to get their parents sorted so that they can then bring up children properly So Karris between probably the ages of I'm trying to work out when it was but they say six months to two years She had the most amazing training regime. She put us through Which was basically how do you find time ever to sleep? Was that was that was the main thing she wanted to teach us? One of the thing about Karris was a very very friendly gregarious sunny disposition of a child and As long as you were with her and holding her She was absolutely wonderful and she would smile at you and smile at everybody else. She'd be no bother as Soon as she thought there was any sense of being left at all by you It was tears abandonment frustration You know my parents have left me forever was the kind of the theme and so every single evening The training was how to get Karris to go to sleep so we could leave her for a short period so you'd carry her around and You'd sing to her and she'd begin to doze and she'd look up at you with beautiful eyes and Then she'd close her eyes and then you would slowly decide it was probably safe to try to put her down If she felt herself leaving your body at all I would say she was like an angel in the sense that you know, they are wide-eyed before the throne of God So Karris was wide-eyed immediately. Something's happening. She became angel mode So you had to lean over gently into strange Contortions never letting any gap get between your body and hers because if she felt that she immediately wake up And smile at you and if you then continued it fear Trauma abandonment tears and you just put her back and I wasn't really doing anything and you just carry on singing to her and Then eventually maybe after about an hour you try to put her into her bed and You try and make the mattress feel like your hand By pressing down into the mattress so that it was indistinguishable from your hands and Then you take the one out very quickly and then you'd slowly push down and take the other out quickly And then you'd stand there because if you moved she'd wake up. So you'd stand there Maybe for a minute not breathing and Then you'd slowly try to retreat and then she woke up with her and she smiled at you and if you moved It was tears of abandonment So this this was of course It was a tough trading regime the one way we found we could ever get Karis to sleep Which she absolutely loved was going for a car ride She really loved just a sense of movement of being in a car So after a while Catherine and I knew nine o'clock car time So you take her out you put her in a car seat and off you'd go you drive You'd use up a lot of gas and you would basically see places you'd never seen before While she slowly was chirpy in the back and then he got quieter and quieter until eventually she fell asleep And that really worked. It just is extremely expensive So we we did that we did that as I say felt like for months and months, you know just thinking when will this ever end I Remember one night. I was out with her. She strapped in the car seat behind and I was just driving and you know mine in my own business and it was quite late at night Sort of about half 10 at night 11 o'clock suddenly out of nowhere a car just pulled out of a side road Almost went into the side of me and then just shot off into the distance. I'm extremely mild mannered So I didn't say anything I Just accelerated and I just in my mind. I just thought the man will have to die That's all I thought I can remember just thinking it's it has to be death Because I mean, you know, he could have killed Karris. It could have any way. He was a lunatic on the road and I now became law and order. I was gonna Track him down. He would not get away tonight and that was it. So my fury was just expressed in acceleration We were just going faster and faster through these streets for quite a while taking corners fast And anyway, we were just going on and then this little voice in the back of the car spoke to me and he just said this He didn't mean to daddy Anyway at that moment. It was as though the spell broke Suddenly I don't know what it was about how she said it what he said Suddenly I was at the foot of the cross Suddenly I was there with Christ saying father forgive them Let them just go it was for me just okay, just let him go off into the darkness Let him go. Don't pursue him with your law and order. Don't try and track him down and smash him off the road just let him go and That was just that little voice And I was I was thinking of that because it affected me a lot at the time because I am prone to a little bit of wordless acceleration fury in my life and As I reflected on that I thought do you know Karris what she did she accompanied me In the funny bit of training for me Because she was there stratted to a seat. She was there. She was gonna stay with me That's the first point about accompaniment you stay with the person second thing was She kept me safe and You know when you accompany anybody in the Christian life and when Mary accompanies us in the Christian life She basically is trying to keep us safe She's trying to protect us and Karris did that just by that little phrase Thirdly third thing she did She led me to Christ Whatever she said and how she said it. I was there with Christ and That's the third thing we have to do in accompaniment We have to stay with people Keep them safe Lead them to Christ And the fourth thing she did really was she reminded me of God's providence that God uses his creatures to look after us and that God himself Never leaves us and always accompanies us and Our lady is the creature. He's given to do that for us in our life and she reminded me of that as well So that was a little model for us And as I thought about this and I thought about the importance of our lady and I have come to this late in my life One of the low points in our marriage which I Caused was I can remember because I'm a convert from being a Baptist I Can remember the time early in our marriage when I was Sitting down looking at our mantelpiece and there was a statue of our lady there on the mantelpiece and I thought It's got to go and I can remember taking it off So I've come a long way From thinking that our lady was the distraction to Christ to our lady is the route to Christ That's been a big long journey An amazing her faithfulness in taking care of somebody like me who took a statue off the mantelpiece It's pretty amazing Let me give you an image for our lady. I'm hoping to let you stay with one image from this talk and It's one I found in one of the Medieval books about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table Don't know how many of you are King Arthur fans Yep, that's good. Okay, so this is this is a this is one of the works. It's called sir Gawain and the Green Knight Now in the early stories about King Arthur The key knight isn't Sir Lancelot of the lake he later on becomes the key knight It's always sir Gawain and he is the one who represents what it is to be Christian what it is to be a Christian man what it is to be a knight for Christ and This book really is how do you become the man the chivalrous? man for Christ and There's a passage in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight where it describes Him receiving his shield for his quest Now the shield with the emblem on the shield represents his life. It's this is what your life is for and It describes the shield in beautiful detail. First of all, it's a five pointed star I have to say something about this because it's a really important point for us That has been taken over as an occult symbol and it's a Christian symbol and it is the symbol Sir Gawain uses as the point on his shield So sometimes you have to reclaim from culture a Christian meaning To something that's been lost. It is not an occult symbol in itself. It is a Christian one and The book goes on to describe What these five points are first of all it says it's because you use your five fingers and your hand for Christ in every way and Secondly it represents the five senses and each of your senses must be purified for Christ so that you honor him through each sense and Then it stands for the five wounds of the Lord and that's what you live for and Finally it stands for the five joys of our lady So I'll just read you the passage. It's a it's the most beautiful one as he's being given his shield It just describes Sir Gawain First he was found faultless in his five senses Everything is a litteration by the way in these poems Next his five fingers never failed the night and all his trust on earth Was in the five wounds which came to Christ on the cross as the creed tells and Whenever the bold man was busy on the battlefield Through all other things he thought on this that his prowess all depended on The five pure joys that the holy Queen of heaven had of her child accordingly the courteous night Had that Queen's image Etched on the inside of his armored shield So that when he beheld her his courage would not fail Now that's the image I want to leave with you leave with you at the moment is the shield How does our lady accompany us? You've got the shield the outside of the shield tells you what your life is about Okay, it's the purification of your senses It's living and doing things for Christ its belief in his five wounds and the five joys of Mary then inside the shield Which you can see? So that your courage does not fail You have the image of our lady So you go through life Totally looking at the image of our lady as you walk That is what holds you firm through every single part of your life and your ministry the image on the inside And there's several things that this image really helps us to see then the first is our lady is there for protection Right. She's the inside of a shield That's the first thing the very Oldest prayer to our lady. It's called the sub two and presidium Under your protection and Presidium is the Latin word for a garrison So our lady is like a garrison around us protecting us You know the prayer don't you we fly to thy protection our holy mother of God Despise not our prayers and our necessities, but deliver us from every danger Whoever glorious and blessed virgin, right? That's the sub two and presidium. It's the oldest prayer We have to our lady and she is the defense She's the protection. She's the one you look at because you can rely on her always to protect you That's the first point second point is It's the importance of the image and I think this is an important point maybe for us as catechus because Often we need to teach somebody something But there's another way you can help a person you're in ministry to and that is you show them something very beautiful What you do is you refresh the spirit of the other person with beauty His courage did not fail because he's looking at something incredibly beautiful Now our lady. This is again one of her titles Is the all-beautiful one in the chapel where I used to work at Mary Vale in Etched around the top above the altar was tota pulchra as Maria All beautiful is Mary She's called the beautiful gate. Isn't she it's one of her titles All beautiful is Mary. It's a phrase that comes from some Bridget of Sweden Who when there was rioting in the streets? talked about the beauty of Mary and quelled the riots and that became a famous phrase from some Bridget of Sweden in the medieval period and It was amazing that we had Bridgeteens who came to the chapel and lived and worshipped there and they were so amazed to see their own foundresses Saying on the top, but all beautiful is Maria one of the stories again from the scriptures you might like to link to that is the The beggar sitting at the beautiful gate because that is think of that as the image of our lady Where does the beggar sit? He sits at the beautiful gate begging and Remember what happens when Peter and John come along? They say we have neither gold nor silver, but what we have we give you and They give them Jesus Christ and healing the place where the healing takes place is The beautiful gate of Mary that's where people go they sit they beg and they can go into the temple She's the beautiful gate. We sit out So she's not only the protectorist. She's also the image of beauty a Third thing I think it's really important as well is not only the image. It says though Sir Gawain is going to look at his life through Mary When he goes through his Christian life, he's going to be looking at her all the time He's going to understand everything that happens to him in and through her Does this make sense? Because that's what he's looking at his Christian life is the other side of that It's like a window really through which he looks That's the idea of the consecration as well, right? We go to Jesus through Mary He goes to the front of his shield through the image He sees everything through her. That's why consecration is so important So we've got this amazing sense then of this image of our lady We can hold on our shield Who accompanies us through our life? Does that make sense to you? Okay, let's look at the word accompaniments now and just how that helps us understand our lady as well So accompaniment First point really is accompaniment is like a journey So the idea of accompanying somebody Mary went with haste She's going somewhere Accompaniment is going to another place So when we talk about accompanying people and when we talk about our lady accompanying us It's basically on a journey Now I was raised on a place called Pilgrims Lane That was the name of the road I used to live on Because it was the ancient road that led to Canterbury Where there was the shrine of Thomas a Becket And so this is the road the ancient pilgrims would have walked on If any of you know Chaucer's Canterbury tales all of the pilgrims were following the pilgrims way And that was the way so we had a house on the way and it's a beautiful The south downs which come all the way from London all the way down to Canterbury to the shrine And because of that and I think because we live there My parents always used to teach us about the importance of the pilgrims And the pilgrims there were the pilgrims there were And I just want to share with you something which is Very close to me because my mother's almost her favorite book was Pilgrims Progress And maybe it's partly because we lived on pilgrims way And I don't know whether any of you have read John Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress. You probably know of it It's a basically an allegory of the Christian life And you have Pilgrim who represents the Christian And he's trying to progress to heaven And he's on the pilgrimage and he meets all sorts of different people during the pilgrimage who need to assist him So again, this is a great image for us of accompaniment. It is basically a pilgrimage We're on and we're accompanying people on that pilgrimage And my mother loved that so much that she decided because she was a very organized woman She decided for her funeral And she died last year For her funeral, she would like a reading from the Pilgrims Progress And there were two figures in Pilgrims Progress. She particularly loved One was called Mr. Standfast Mr. Standfast was the person who on your pilgrimage made sure you never deviated from the way in terms of your faith That's a very important accompanying kind of person And the other person was called Mr. Valiant for Truth And my mother loved Mr. Valiant for Truth. In other words, that's the other thing She used to say to me there were four lines of a poem She would always say to me even when she began to get mild dementia at the end of her life She would always say to me remember Man with his burning soul Has but an hour of life To build a ship of truth To sail the sea of death Man with his burning soul Has but an hour of life To build a ship of truth To sail the sea of death And she would love saying that to me Mr. Valiant for Truth, so she chose This passage which we actually put on prayer cards for her funeral And I want to mention this because these two figures are really important of how Mary accompanies us Standfast and Valiant for Truth They're two of the key people Who represent features of our Lady So this is this is what Valiant for Truth says as he's dying Then said he I am going to my father's And though with great difficulty I've got hither Yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage My courage and skill I give to him who can get it My marks and scars I carry with me To be a witness for me that I have fought his battles Who will now be my rewarder That's Mr. Valiant for Truth that he goes down into the water And all the angels cheer on the other as he comes out the other side That is Valiant for Truth with all his scars He's come to the end if you like he's carried his shield He's made it to the end And Pilgrim has watched people like this Pilgrim knows Valiant for Truth is how he should live Pilgrim knows Mr. Standfast is crucial for his life And the Pilgrim needs those people And of course our Lady is Our Virgin Mary Standfast and Valiant for Truth more than anybody else The church calls her the Great Pilgrim So one of the titles for Mary I'll just read you this it's from The Second Vatican Council This is from Lumen Gentium document on the church chapter 8 And that's what we really need to read to understand who our Lady is for us And it describes her there as the Great Pilgrim of faith Thus the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith And faithfully persevered in her union with her son unto the cross Right she's the Great Pilgrim who stays with him right to the end Then he goes on She now shines forth on earth because she's now Mr. Valiant for Truth out the other side She now shines forth on earth until the day of the Lord shall come A sign of certain hope And comfort to the Pilgrim people of God So our Lady is The one who's like Paul said I fight the good fight right and I haven't yet reached the goal our Lady's reached the goal So she now shines forth as the point of reference for us at the other side One of the things just to say about then Mr. Valiant for Truth I miss the standfast It's incredibly important if we're to help anybody move in life at all That we provide stability for moving Nobody moves at all in a good direction without there being some stability to be able to move from Yeah, so I'm just trying to remember. Okay The Great Commission Which we all know very well The Great Commission where Christ sends his people out which is go which is mission How does that Great Commission end? It ends with and lo I am with you always until the end of time In other words Christ sends his mission his disciples on mission And they go why because of the stability of his presence with them? So it's providing the presence For people it's by being Mr. Standfast for them That we give them as well the courage to move on It's our Lady managing to stay with us through our pilgrimage that enables us to move in the Christian life It's not a matter of just moving with the person It's a matter of staying faithful to what God wants for that person It's valiant for truth and standfast for the person so they can move Once people have the goal clear Once they know where they're going and once they have the stability of the presence with them They can make a move Right, you can only move one foot if one is settled You can't move unless something is stable. You can't take a step And one of the things we do in accompaniment is we provide the stability So that the person can take the step And the stability is ultimately the spiritual stability of truth Which we will never deviate from If we ever deviate from the stability of truth Nobody can take the step because there's no sure footing to take the step from You can only make that move Only move in hope When you're faithfully grounded That's what mr. Standfast. That's what mr valiant for truth. That's what they teach us That's what our lady teaches us By being the faithful pilgrim unto the cross That's what the great commission teaches us Christ will be with us. That's why we go to the Eucharist. He will be with us always And never Change from accompanying us Neither will he ever change in himself Right, remember my squiggly lying going across the island. He's with me I follow the Eucharist and he will never leave my side He will follow my squiggles, but he will not change That is my stability He will not change He will be faithful The book of revelation describes him as the true and faithful one Right, that's so important for any form of accompaniment So that's the first meaning if you like the pilgrim side of accompaniment Trying to help people move on the journey towards the goal The second meaning of accompaniment I just want to to pull out is in actually it's in the word itself And many of you will know this but actually lip. What does the word literally mean accompaniment? It literally means come with Pan is bread Okay with bread It's the one who gives bread On the journey Who gives bread on the journey? We know the answer, don't we? Okay, the living bread accompaniment Is helping the living bread christ to join us on the journey Now this is important for our little phrase about our lady going as the visitation When she runs to see elizabeth with haste and when she remains with her Who is our lady? At that point Now our lady is This is how she's described in that passage. She's actually described as the ark of the covenant Now we know this for a number of reasons And I and I would recommend you brand petri's latest book the jewish roots of our of mary If you just want to read a few chapters on this But when the holy spirit overshadows mary at the enunciation The greek word used is a very precise one which is used for the holy spirit Overshadowing the tabernacle in which there's the ark of the covenants And where mary goes with haste Into the hill country to be with elizabeth That is exactly how it's described of the ark of the covenants going In the second book of samuel chapter six into the hill country Now remember the ark of the covenants is that which accompanies the people In the old testament to be their protection So the ark of the covenants as long as god's ark is with you in the old testament you're protected That's what they believed the ark accompanied them into battle because of that And our lady goes with haste into the hill country Remaining for three months is another reference to how long the ark remained in the hill country The baby leaping in the womb is exactly the same word as david dancing before the ark And when elizabeth says How is it that the mother of my lord should should come to me It's referencing david saying how is it that the ark should come to me So our lady is the ark of the covenants So when we we need to think about this when our lady accompanies us in life And everybody She does so as the ark of the covenants So what's inside the ark? What's the ark for? In the ark of the covenants as you probably know we get it in the book of hebrus There's three things isn't there? There's the tablets of the law There's the staff of erin the high priest which is budded And then there are the golden bowls containing the manner So what what does mary bring with her? She's bringing the eucharistic christ with her Jesus is the fulfillment of the priesthood the high priest Obviously of the living bread and of the life which god gives us which the the 10 commandments are out He's the completion of the covenants So our lady Runs with haste to elizabeth To bring her the living bread of christ That's what the ark is Mary's role if you like is to make sure that we receive the bread of life That is how she remains with us That is her role Entirely to bring us to her son Who shares the bread of life with us? So the word remained The word remained in that is a really important word as well It's used again at the end of luke's gospel. It's used at the beginning here. It's mino in greek. It's used at the end When the disciples asked jesus on the road to Emmaus to stay with them remain with us For it is evening And so jesus it says jesus went in and remained with them It's the same word We have our lady bringing the bread of life So that jesus can remain with his disciples Right, that's how luke has constructed the whole thing Isn't that amazing That word remain is also used in john's gospel a lot in john chapter 15 And again, this just helps us think how to accompany other people John's chapter 15 is the the true vine Where jesus says i am the true vine and you are the branches Ten times in that passage He uses the one word remain If you remain in me and i in you you will bear fruit If you do not remain in me right he continues The key word in the whole of that passage is remain And again, what this shows us and what our lady teaches us through all of this is that It's a kind of a principle you get in catechetics called the principle of double faithfulness So the principle of double faithfulness is described in the general directory of catechesis as faithfulness to god and faithfulness to the human person Whenever we catechize on wherever we're in ministry. It says you have to exercise a double faithfulness faithfulness to god and faithfulness to the human person And they are not two equal things There is a priority and an order in that In other words, if you are faithful to god You can practice faithfulness to the human person We cannot be let loose in ministry without faithfulness to god Because we cannot be faithful Then to the human person There's a line in a poem called the hound of heaven By francis thompson and it's the same line all over at the end of each stanza All things betray you if you betray me All things will betray you if you betray me The only point of faithfulness we have to ensure is the faithfulness to god Remain in me abide in me And that enables accompaniment faithfulness to the other person So we've got the idea of the two feet walking We're enabling the other person to move forward And that happens through faithfulness So our lady's the model of all of this That quotation I read you about Mary's faithfulness ends at the cross, doesn't it? We call her the starboard martyr the one who stands Yeah, the one who stands at the cross as well I just want you to see the image behind me Of the sandameano cross because this is really important For understanding how our lady remains with us As so often in these beautiful Pieces of work works of art The artist has managed to pick up An incredible truth in the way that the cross is depicted So you have Christ on the cross And then I hope the camera will pick it up in due course there we are. Thank you so much for that You can see there at the side of the cross There's the beloved disciple and there's our lady the starboard martyr the one standing And you can see possibly the blood of Christ dropping down on her head And the blood of Christ coming from the side his side upon The beloved disciple Now what's Mary doing standing at the cross because one of the things I had to really work on for this talk Is working out for myself how I really understood this idea of faithfulness And standing and remaining so it's not just something passive It's something incredibly important that our lady has to do for us What is Mary doing standing at the cross is my question Well first of all She is standing there receiving Christ as her savior The teaching of the church on the immaculate conception Is not that Mary because she was immaculately conceived Was without a need for redemption Mary was redeemed by her son As much as you or I and in fact even more perfectly redeemed by her son Because her son saved her from every personal sin And original sin he saved her so completely That the redemption he gave her was the most perfect redemption there could be And Mary depends entirely upon her son for receiving her redemption Now we just have to think about this I'm not a mother It's very hard to watch anybody you love suffer What's particularly challenging is when somebody is suffering for you That becomes something incredibly difficult Somebody whom you love now suffers because of you And Mary had to receive Christ as the one who would suffer and die for her At that point I can remember when One of our children at one point I found out was sleeping on the floor And when I asked why he was sleeping on the floor it was doing penance for me When somebody in other words whom you really love Loves you so much that they suffer for you That changes the heart I don't know if any of you know the the book joes boys If any of you read that one it's little women joes boys Anywhere there's there's a beautiful character in there the professor professor beer He and joe run this orphanage for children together And the he's a very loved person in the orphanage The boys are boys and they're often disobedience. They're often bad They often do things and they won't reform And so he decided that whenever anybody did anything wrong Their punishment would be they had to beat him So the boy every time he did something would come and beat the professor And because they love the professor the boys reformed Our lady is not only standing by the cross. She's receiving She is receiving the one she loves most And the one who loves her most And she is receiving redemption for her And what she's doing in the sandameano cross or so Is she's not just standing there. She's pushing the beloved disciple Against the figure of Christ And you might like to come and see how that is so that the contour of the beloved disciple Is actually right into Christ's side. So he is now molded by Christ's sacrifice So what she does in other words Is she is teaching us because she learned this herself When Mary accompanies us She leads us faithfully to Christ She's accompanying us to the cross So that we can receive redemption from him And what she wants us to see You can imagine Christ from the cross Don't look at my pain Look at the love I'm showing Don't look at my pain You know what it is like when you really love someone And you're doing something for them You're sacrificing for them And it's painful Don't look at my pain Don't look at my pain Look at my love And the mother is there who's receiving that love Receiving Christ as her savior And helping us to stand at the cross and do that You remember at the last supper Jesus tries to help the disciples understand this is what they have to do He tries to wash their feet And you remember Peter Lord you will never wash my feet And then Christ says if I do not wash you You have no part in me I think one of the hardest things for us truly in the Christian life Is you look at that figure And you ask him to be your savior And you gaze on the look of love And not on the pain And you learn to receive the redemption He longs to give And who teaches us that most is our lady Who teaches us that most in every situation That's what it means to be the starboard martyr The mother standing Not passively standing to receive Christ's love In the fullest way With a full awareness of the cost it is to him But an even fuller awareness of the love which he has for each of us That idea of standing then That's when we stand with people When we remain with them in accompaniment When that's our role to stay with them What are we doing? We are begging our lady to lean up against them And press them against the side of Christ So that they can receive him as their savior Because he can save every person He loves every person with an infinite love And that's what we want The idea of standing firm is um It's really illustrated But there was only the last time England got invaded was in 1066 Right? Almost a thousand years ago And the reason England got invaded was because they did not stand firm The Saxons who were defending Had a very classic form of defense It was called the shield wall So the way Saxons always defended themselves against anybody was All of you lined up, you had a shield in front You put another shield up here You all stood behind it and it was impregnable Nobody could ever break through that Remember Sir Gawain, right? You stand firm, Mr. Standfast You stay with Christ They were Christians And when the Normans came and attacked the shield wall of the Saxons in 1066 They could not break it down And it looked as though the Normans, the invading troops, would never conquer Britain And then some of the Saxons decided the victory was theirs And they pursued the Normans down the hill and the shield wall broke And it was finished Mr. Standfast moved on that day And if you if we stay with Christ with our Lady When Moses is at the Red Sea And all the Egyptians are galloping towards them What does Moses say? Stand firm, do not move, and you will see the salvation of God We have in ministry, we have to make a basic choice Do we trust that God acts or don't we? Often our movement is because we no longer trust that he will do something So we have to move and sort things out The way our Lady accompanies us is to say, remain close to my Son Never move from that If you can do that for somebody, you've given them the faithfulness they need And all the ability to move themselves By being faithful to them Do not leave the side of Christ Keep the shield in front of you Look up near my image Remain with my beauty See everything through Remember how I stood at the cross You stand there for that person Stand there at the cross interceding for that person Begging Christ's mercy for them But do not move Do not run away Do not pursue things Do not break ranks Remember my faithfulness and his I want to leave you with one final thought This is, I'm going to try and memorise it Okay, this is a poem I'm going to leave you with a final thought about a pilgrim And I hope this is kind of a beautiful thing as well It's a short poem by Yates Any of you, oh we've got some Irish here W.B. Yates Thank you Father You probably know this poem And it's basically about loving the pilgrim's soul And being faithful to the pilgrim's soul When you are old and gray and full of sleep And Yates wrote this to a woman he loved When you are old and gray and full of sleep And nodding by the fire Take down this book and slowly read And dream of the soft look your eyes had once And of their shadows deep How many loved your moments of fair grace And loved your beauty With a love false or true But one man Loved the pilgrim's soul in you And loved the sorrows of your changing face Now what Yates has given us in that beautiful love poem To the person he loved so much Just think of our lady The one who loves the sorrows of our changing face The one who loves the pilgrim's soul in us Because she is such a pilgrim Shall we just end in prayer to her To this great pilgrim who accompanies us Mary we just want to thank you for this We want to thank you for your accompaniment of us We want to really thank you Mary For the way in which you love our pilgrim's soul Because you're the great pilgrim And how you are the one who's stable in our lives You're the one who gives us the protection of the shield You're like a garrison around us Mary And above all Mary from the great love you have of your son From that love which experienced the sorrow of the sword in your heart by the great pain But also experienced even more the love he has for you And for each person so that you could become our mother and teach us this Mary we ask you to press us into the side of Christ We ask you Mary Be with us stay with us Remain with us as that faithful witness And lead us to Christ your son Who is the bread of life We ask all this Mary in the name of your son Jesus our lord Amen