TIMOTHY RADCLIFFE, O.P. “The World Shall Come to Walsingham”, in Sacred Space: House of God, Gate of Heaven, ed. John North and Philip North, Continuum Books

“Every Christmas we sing the genealogy of Christ. It goes on and on. I find myself counting on my fingers, to see how many more begettings there must be before Jesus arrives. Will it never be over? But it took all that time for there to be a language in which the Word could be made flesh. It took centuries of people struggling to put into word praise and dejection, victories and defeats, liberation and exile, before the language was ready to receive the Worde made flesh. It took all those prophets and scribes, soldiers and farmers, husbands and wives before the language was ready to be fertilized by the Spirit. There were generations of unknown people, borrowing words from foreigners, from Egyptians and Canaanites, Babylonians and Persians, Greeks and Romans, reshaping them from Israel’s faith. Jesus could no more have been born earlier than one could expect a baby Shakespeare to write Hamlet. (italics mine). The gestation of the Word took centuries. And the Incarnation is not the end of the story. We are still learning how to be at home in God’s Word. It is still stretching open our language, so that it may be capacious enough for God. God became flesh in our words, and we are still learning how to be at home in his Word"  

Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham