To the Ordinariate-The Glastonbury Connection

Best wishes and prayers to the five Bishops who have declared their departure to set up the Ordinariate. These sentiments will come from all of us who have benefitted from their pastoral and sacramental care over many years. It can not have gone un-noticed that the Glastonbury Pilgrimage Association has been a great influence and grace to orthodox Anglicans in recent years, remembering as we do the soul of the late Bp. John Richards, a former chairman of the GPA, at this time. Glastonbury has been one of the few places where those of like-minded views and theology have until now been able to worship, pray and adore the Lord Jesus Christ in the Anglican patrimony reflecting the Universal and undivided Church. Bp. David Silk was our recent Chairman. All those Bishops and many of the faithful have made their annual pilgrimage to seek the power and the guidance of the Holy Spirit in challenging times. These prayers and the grace of God have, I believe, helped to bring things to this natural new starting point for mission and evangelisation, enabled of course by the amazing and empowering establishment of Anglicanorum coetibus by Pope Benedict XVI. The prayers, outreach and care generated by all of these Fathers in God have enriched the Anglican Church and the mission and witness of Christianity to the world. This witness has been in the best spirit and vocation of all Bishops, who are supposed to be guardians of the faith. In this these five deserve our gratitude, admiration and ongoing support. Over the years we have met at the Abbey there together for fellowship, guidance, worship and for working out a vision for the future. Never have I thought that the pilgrimage regardless of changing numbers was anything other than a great grace and vehicle for oecumenical advance overseen by the souls and prayers of those Abbots and Religious who continue to drench those old stones with their prayers and make them Holy in the apparent ruins and the destruction of that Abbey Church. May it ever continue to bring catholic Anglicans to share in the riches of the faith we share with the whole Church although it will be a shadow now in size since the departure of it's most influential members. May we also pray for a swelling in the ranks of the Ordinariate from those Bishops clergy and faithful, as yet not sure, and who have until now shared in the same fellowship and vision of unity of Christ's church in the journey of true pilgrimage.