The Meekness of GK Chesterton Pilgrims

               Arriving at St George’s Anglican Church on Campden Hill, Kensington, can be a little daunting as one looks around to see if anyone else has turned up to join the annual Gilbert Keith Chesterton Pilgrimage from the very start: this church, the site of Chesterton’s baptism. This time I felt the fear especially as, unusually, I was to be the one leading the pilgrims on their route along rolling English roads all the way to Beaconsfield, Chesterton’s last earthly home. My promotion was not for merit or for service in the field especially, but because my father, who typically lands the job, had injured his back and would not be able to walk any of the 27-mile trek.

                Thus it was that I looked around to see if I would be marching alone this year and was relieved to find a little crowd of four or five people gathered outside the church. This did double or triple over the next few minutes as we waited for more people to arrive. After hearing a passage from Chesterton’s autobiography about his baptism, read by veteran pilgrim Malcolm, we headed off.

                After picking up a few more pilgrims in Ealing, we made our way to the Grand Union Canal, which we walked along for much of the morning. Here people spread out into groups, some praying, some talking, and a few loners enjoying the silence and beauty of the canalside. After a much-needed rest and drink at The Malt Shovel pub in Uxbridge, we continued to Mass at the Bridgettine Convent in Iver, at which Fr. Neil Brett preached an excellent sermon on the joyful spirit of Gilbert, and we concluded by singing Chesterton’s own rousing hymn “O God of Earth and Altar”, after which both walking pilgrims and pilgrims who had just come for Mass, had some tea, coffee, and lunch amongst the Bridgettine Sisters’ beautiful grounds.

By this point, we were well into the last stretch of the walk. These last six miles become a pleasant stroll through the countryside and so many more pilgrims joined us for this part, including some families. At last we arrived in Beaconsfield and went to the Chesterton’s graveside, where we said the Prayer for the Beatification of GKC. We concluded the day by sitting down in The White Horse, a pub in the town, which even had a couple of pictures of Chesterton inside!

                Numbers were reasonable this year, not the most we have had, nor the least, but solid throughout, and the weather was ideal, especially considering the humidity and intense heat of the week before. Even the very little rain we had was a gentle shower, and was, if anything, cooling.

                    It was a pleasure to lead the pilgrimage for the first time, but the credit for the overall management should most thoroughly go to my father Stuart, who did a fantastic job pulling everything together, even though he wasn’t able to walk the pilgrimage himself! Other mentions should go to my mother Clare, for running the tea and coffee and organizing the visit to the White Horse pub, as well as Fr Brett for saying the Mass, and the sisters for allowing us to have Mass at their convent.

                    Congratulations to all those who walked any parts of the pilgrimage, especially those who walked all 27 miles, such as M’Aibh, who joins the ranks of the few under-18s to walk the whole day, Benjamin, who served the Mass as well as doing most of the pilgrimage, and Angeline, who continued to walk along the canal for some time even after hurting her foot!

                   I have no doubt that Mr Chesterton (and Mrs Chesterton, for that matter) approves very much, though I expect he chuckles to watch these modern poetic lunatics who think it worth walking 27 miles just to see his grave.

Report by Nathanael T. McCullough

From "GK's Meekly" VOL. IIII. No. 1. To recieve GK's Meekly free of change send any email to catholicgkcsociety@yahoo.co.uk

Fr Brett's Sermon On The 12th Annual GK Chesterton Pilgrimage

 

Chesterton wrote Heretics (1905) and Orthodoxy (1908) long before he was Received into the Church on July 30th 1922, 100 years’ ago. Truth, orthodoxy, excludes error. There is no room for half-truths in Chesterton:

“There is something to be said very error, but whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.” (Orthodoxy).

The great encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis was published in 1907, On The Doctrines of The Modernists: “the synthesis of all heresies” as St Pius X summed up Modernism. It was promulgated between Heresy and Orthodoxy. Loisy was perfectly clear: a Modernist "is ruled by the single wish to be one with Christians and Catholics who live in harmony with the spirit of age". 

Chesterton wrote: “It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own.” How much longer are we going to allow this age to have it's head? When a blasphemous parody of the prayer Our Saviour gave us can be taken into the intimacy of our very schools to groom our Catholic children to perversity and the sin that cries out for vengeance. 

When “practising Catholic” political leaders can promise to reverse the first victor over the evil of abortion which the US has seen in 50 years. When the Church in Germany, amidst the roar departing adherents, desperately offers Modernists everything they want of the spirit of the age. When the beauty of the traditional Mass is supressed despite those words: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sac and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.”

What scope for t pen of Chesterton, incisive, thrusting between chromosome and cross-dressing! Not wielded with the intent of cancelling person but of cancelling the cancer of error. 

“It is easy to be a modernist; as easy to be a snob. To have fallen in those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the path of Christendom – it would indeed be simple. It is always simple to fall: there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.”

Chesterton looked deep into the history of this country to inspire us to fight the pagan onslaught. He went back to 878: the struggle of Albert the Great against the Danes. He locates it, with poetic licence, in the valley of the White Horse, focused on a fork in the road, a place of decision and fate. Things go badly, the mighty Guthrum routs the men of Wessex. With many stout warriors slain, Albert survives the rout to witness the enemy confident in victory:

“On a dark horse at the double way

He saw great Guthrum ride,

Heard roar of brass and ring of steel,

The laughter and the trumpet peal,

The pagan in his pride.” 

We too know the pagan in his Pride. The message of the Battle of Ethandune is that victory can be won from the jaws of defeat. That is the way of the Cross. 

“… Alfred in the fern hard by

Set horn to mouth and blew.”

The men of Wessex found new heart, and in the carnage which followed, Guthrum was humbled. And an even greater miracle occurs: his conversion:

“In Wessex in the forest,

In the breaking of the spears,

We set a sign on Guthrum

To blaze a thousand years.

Far out to the winding river

The blood ran down for days

When we put the cross on Guthrum

In the parting of the ways.”

Just when the new pagans think they have it all on their side, and can relax in their Pride, then the Church will muster once more. Respond to the call. In the contradiction of the Cross which is at the core of all the paradoxes which Chesterton made his hallmark.

How will victory look? The conversion of the human heart. One by one. That’s always the battle. The recognition of sin, the need for repentance. It will be the blood of Christ which will bring cleansing from sin, healing and new life.

May Chesterton be our inspiration. No half-truths here, in the parting of the ways: “there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.” We stand at the angle of the Cross. 

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Sponsorship over the years, of some of those walking 27 miles on the GK Chesterton Pilgrimage has raised over £20,000 for the Pro-Life work of The GoodCounsel Network. You can donate to support them here, www.justgiving.com/fundraising/gkcwalk22

Find the GK Chesterton Prayer in over twenty languages on our website. CatholicGKChestertonSociety.co.uk

Email CatholicGKCSocety@yahoo.co.uk to recieve a copy of GK's Meekly which will contain a full report of the Pilgrimage itself.