Pilgrim Ways

no casual acquaintance, but a friendship which lead Joseph to take greater risks than anyone else caught up in the events of the Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection.

There has always been a tradition that the child and the merchant uncle had travelled together, and it is easy to see how the legend grew. Whether the boy came or not, the persistent story that Joseph knew these parts and regarded them as a quiet safe sanctuary in those dangerous times is a compelling one - though clearly neither provable or essential to more fundamental questions of faith. For the pilgrim coming to Glastonbury, if it is a story which takes the heart and the soul back to the Cross and Resurrection then it more than serves its purpose.

In his book The Drama of the Lost Disciples, 1961, Covenant Publishing Co Ltd, (a secondhand copy of which I purchased in a Glastonbury bookshop, and which, at times, does tend towards flight of fancy), George F.Jowett quotes a former curator of the Vatican Library, Cardinal Baronius, writing in his Ecclesiastical Annals as saying: “In that year (AD36) the party mentioned was exposed to the sea in a vessel without sails or oars. The vessel drifted finally to Marseilles and they were saved. From Marseilles Joseph and his company passed into Britain and after preaching the Gospel there, died.”

Centuries later, St.Augustine wrote to Pope Gregory (Epistolas ad Gregorium Papam) confirming the tradition of a wattle altar said to have been built by Jesus at Glastonbury and he stated that the altar still existed. He continued: “In the Western confines of Britain there is a certain royal island of large extent, surrounded by water, abounding in all the beauties of nature and necessaries of life. In it the first Neophytes of Catholic Law, God beforehand acquainting them, found a church constructed by no human art, but divinely constructed, or by the hands of Christ Himself, for the salvation of His people. The Almighty has made it manifest by many miracles and mysterious visitations that He continues to watch over it as sacred to Himself, and to Mary, the Mother of God.” It is from this association, and from an ancient inscription on a Glastonbury stone which simply refers to “Jesus - Mary”, that England became known as Our Lady‟s Dowry.

The Thorn and Chalice Hill Another Glastonbury tradition holds that as this band of the earliest of all Christian pilgrims rested, Joseph struck his staff into the ground. It immediately took root, blossomed and its descendants continue to bloom at Christmas time until this very day. A sprig of the Glastonbury thorn is cut and taken to the monarch to decorate the table on the feast of the nativity. During the regime of Oliver Cromwell (1649-1660), the Puritans regarded the thorn tree as a part of Catholic superstition and they cut it down. However, local people took cuttings of the thorn and concealed them. It is from these cuttings that today‟s blooms are taken.

On arriving in Glastonbury, the pilgrim enters the ruins of the abbey church. This is where Joseph of Arimathea is reputed to have built his wattle church - the first church in Britain.

The legend also has it that he brought with him the cup which Our Lord used at the Last Supper. In this cup Joseph is said to have caught some of the blood which Christ shed on Calvary. Again, what we know for certain is that Joseph was close to Jesus and his mother and that he was sufficiently wealthy to have his own sepulchre into which he arranged for the body of Christ to be laid after the body was take from Calvary.