The reading from the handbook today reminded me of a story.
Towards the end of the eleventh century, a Norman nobleman left his homeland in
northern England to make his way to the Holy Land to fight in the armies of the
First Crusade. This nobleman, Geoffrey de Faverches was killed in battle just
days before the Christian armies took the Holy City of Jerusalem in 1099. Less
than a fortnight later, his pregnant wife gave birth to his son back on their
estate in Northumbria. She named him Geoffrey, the same as his father. She, now
a widow, dedicated herself to the upbringing and education of her son, the sole
heir of their noble house.
Well, this noble widow, a very devout woman named Richeldis
de Faverches, began to have a series of visions of the Most Holy Mother of God.
At the culmination of these visions, Richeldis was picked up by angels and
transported to Nazareth in Galilee. There, she was shown the Holy House of the
Annunciation, which was also the home in which our Lord Jesus Christ grew up.
The Mother of God told her to carefully remember the exact appearance of the
Holy House and to build a copy of it on her lands in England. The Mother of God
told her that that Holy House would be a shrine of pilgrimage and that no one,
who came to honor her in her shrine would go away empty handed. The exact
location of the Holy House on her property had been revealed by Heaven.
Therefore, she hired workmen and bought materials and had them placed at the
location. The workmen however rejected the location on the grounds that there
was a spring there. The water coming up from the ground would undermine the
foundation and cause the walls to collapse. Therefore, the workmen proposed an
alternative site some distance away. Reluctantly, Richeldis agreed to the
workmen’s assessment. Forthwith, the materials were moved to the new site and
work began. At the end of day, the workmen left the site for the night. In the
morning, they went to the building site to continue their work, only to find
that there was no trace of any of the work that they had done the night before
and the materials were gone. After a short search, they found the piles of
materials back at the original location. Confused and annoyed, they moved the
materials again and began to work, but they had lost so much of the day already
that they accomplished very little before sunset. The next day, they came again
and found no trace of the materials at the building site. Returning to the
original site near the manor house, they found all of them there, just as on
the previous day. Even more angry and determined to blame Richeldis herself for
frustrating their work, they moved the materials once again to the agreed-upon
building site. Sunset came that day amid an atmosphere of enormous tension
between Richeldis and the hired workmen. They all left the estate for the night
and Richeldis breathed a sigh of temporary relief, but remained apprehensive
about what might happen in the morning. Then, in the middle of the night,
Richeldis and her son were awakened by the sound of beautiful singing. They
went outside the manor house and found that the Holy House had been completed
on the original location. Richeldis and her son arrived at the spot just in
time to see the last of the shrine’s angelic workmen going up back into Heaven.
When the earthly workmen came the next morning, they were stunned to find the
House complete, built with a level of workmanship that none of them had ever
seen. And, the spring, far from undermining the shrine’s foundation and walls,
was skillfully incorporated into the House as a source of miraculous water.
Immediately, after the completion of the Holy House, it
became a site of pilgrimage for all of England and eventually the whole of
Europe, becoming widely known under the titles of Our Lady of Walsingham and
England’s Nazareth. After his mother’s death, when Geoffrey de Faverches was
preparing to join the armies of the Second Crusade, following in the footsteps
of his father, he left all his property along with the Holy House to the
Augustinian Order with the understanding that they would build a monastery there
and offer Masses for his soul. In accordance with his premonition, he died
without any heirs in the Holy Land a few years later.
The handbook exhorts us to regard the praesidium meeting as
the Holy House of Nazareth, having a special reverence for everything
associated with it, as being the furniture and implements of the Holy Family
themselves. In line with this exhortation, I would like to suggest that we
should keep the story of the England’s Holy House in mind as well. The story of
the Holy House at Walsingham teaches us the importance of exact conformity to
God’s Will. We must often put aside our own thoughts and expectations, even in
areas where we may believe that we have some experience and expertise and
accept instead what Heaven has decreed. We should expect to be astounded when
we see things that we thought were impossible come to pass. According to the
ways of human prudence, certain works take years to accomplish, only hard,
trudging labor eventually comes to fruition. Nevertheless, Heaven can
accomplish the same work overnight and in a way that is perfectly inexplicable
to our minds. What the Holy Family was doing in the Holy House of Nazareth was
simple, hidden and unassuming, but it was already the first act in the
Redemption of the world. In just the same way, our work in the praesidium has
to be simple, hidden within the Legion and unassuming. Heaven brings to pass
what it wills, while we are instruments of that will.
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