St. Luke Anglican Catholic Church

Thank you, Anglican Parishes Association. St. Luke, Augusta looks forward to putting this to good use. Soli Deo Gloria!

ALMIGHTY God, who didst inspire thy servant Saint Luke the Physician, to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of thy Son; Manifest in thy Church the like power and love, to the healing of our bodies and our souls; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(From the Anglican Breviary) Almighty Father, whose holy Son Jesus Christ was born of a pure and Sinless Virgin, grant that like as we do pray once more for the... renewal and conversion of England, so may she whose dowry England is, provide her intercession with thy son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham was the most renowned sanctuary of Mary in the whole England. It sprang into fame, in the year of Our Lord 1061, upon the report that the Mother of God had appeared to the Lady Richeldis, an inhabitant of the Manor of Walsingham, belonging at that time to Saint Edward the Confessor. Richeldis, Lady of the Manor, received a vision in the fields near her home. The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to her and carried her in spirit to Nazareth. There, Our Lady showed her the little house where the Annunciation took place, and directed her to construct an exact copy. In confirmation of this vision, a spring of water suddenly appeared at Richeldis’ feet. The Lady Richeldis obeyed, and so a chapel, after the model of the Holy House at Nazareth, was built beside the spring in honor of the mystery of the Incarnation. Here was enshrined the venerable image of Our Lady of Walsingham. By God’s blessing Walsingham grew into a great center of prayer. Pilgrims came not only from distant parts of England or Scotland but from all over Europe, to pray before the venerable image of God’s Mother in the Holy House, and to drink from the waters of the spring. England’s Nazareth, as it was called, became famous for miracles of healing. In 1538, at the beginning of the English Reformation under King Henry VIII, the Shrine was closed by force and destroyed. The image of Our Lady was publicly burnt and the Holy Well blocked up with rubbish. The Shrine Church disappeared so completely that its exact site was forgotten. But although the miraculous Image of Our Lady was burnt, and the buildings all razed to the ground, the devotion could not be wholly stamped out. The faithful continued to visit Walsingham, even in the darkest days. Then, after four centuries of neglect, the Shrine at Walsingham was restored once more, largely through the dedicated efforts of the Anglican Vicar of Walsingham, Father Alfred Hope Patten. In 1922 a reproduction of the ancient Image from the medieval seal of the Priory was made and set up in the Parish Church, and the first public pilgrimage since the sixteenth century came to the Shrine and the Holy Places. Ten years later a piece of land was acquired in the village, and the Holy House was rebuilt. When the workmen were clearing the ground for the foundations, they unearthed an ancient well, together with some medieval foundations, corresponding closely to the measurements of the Holy House built by Richeldis. Thus, it seems that Father Hope Patten and his helpers were guided by God to rebuild the Holy House on exactly the same spot as that on which it once stood. On October 15, 1931 the image of the Mother of God was transferred from the parish church to the restored Holy House, and there it has since remained. In 1938, the Shrine Church was greatly enlarged. Since then an ever-increasing number of pilgrims Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox seek this ‘Holy Land of Walsingham'.