PILGRIMAGES

Certain places in the world are very special for Christians. Some are places where Jesus lived, such as Nazareth. Other places are special because a holy person is buried there. St Thomas Becket was buried in Canterbury Cathedral over 800
years ago. It is still the most popular place of pilgrimage in Britain.

There is also a third group of places which are special because something happened there. Probably the most famous of these is a French town called Lourdes.

Back in 1858, a teenage girl called Bernadette had a series of visions in a grotto there. She claimed she saw the Virgin Mary, dressed in white. During the ninth vision, she found a small spring in the cave.

People were soon going there to pray. The Emperor's sick son was sprinled with water from the spring and got better. a number of pilgrims claimed they had been cured, too. Soon, people were turning up at Lourdes in their thousands. Today, it has over five million visitors a year.

But these people are not just tourists. They go to Lourdes because it is a holy place for them. They are making aholy journey. We call them 'pilgrims' and their journey is a 'pilgrimage.'

They do not have to do this; there is nothing in the Bible which tells Christians that they must make pilgrimages. It is their own choice.Many are ill and hope to be cured. But others go for the same reasons that they go to church. They might want to:

      say sorry for doing something and

      ask for forgiveness

      gain strength to face the future

      ask for help for someone else

      feel at peace

      show their faith in God

Many sick people claim that they are cured after going to Lourdes. The Catholic Church says that, up to 1979, only 65 of these were miracles.

Before deciding if a cure was a miracle, the Church asls these questions:

      was the disease serious?

      was the cure sudden and unexpected?

      was it a complete cure?

      did it last at least three years?

      was it tested by X-rays, etc?

      did any medical treatment help the cure?

Andrea Jackson was badly injured when she was eight. She was taken to hospital in a critical condition. Her parents tell the story:

' They told us that Andrea wasn't expected to live the night. She had major surgery where they'd removed the biggest part of the left-hand side of her skull. After we'd had a discussion with the surgeon, we told him that, if Andrea had to live by machine, we wanted it turned off. We wouldn't allow her to be kept on the machine. After they brought Andrea out of surgery, we were prepared for the worst.'

Then, at the Anglican shrine at Walsingham in Norfolk, another girl was anointed at the Holy Well. Meanwhile, holy water was sprinkled on Andrea herself in hospital. Andrea had known nothing about the shrine. This is what happened next:

' They brought her round. When they took the tubes out of her nose and throat, she just looked around and said, "I've been to Walsingham." We stood back in amazement. She'd been unconscious for most of the week. We couldn't understand why she should say such a thing. We feel we owe Walsingham some-thing. We believe that Andrea was made better through the prayers of our Lady of Walsingham.'

BBC Television: England's Nazareth