'Go to the head spring': Tom Holland and the Blessed Virgin Mary

Not out of envie or maliciousnesse

So I forbear to crave your speciall aid:

                                          I would addresse

My vows to thee most gladly, Blessed Maid,

And Mother of my God, in my distresse.

Thou art the holy mine, whence came the gold,

The great restorative for all decay

                                          In young and old;

Thou art the cabinet where the jewell lay:

Chiefly to thee would I my soul unfold:

But now, alas, I dare not; for our King,

Whom we do all joyntly adore and praise,

                                          Bids no such thing:

And where his pleasure no injunction layes,

(’Tis your own case) ye never move a wing.

George Herbert's words from 'Angels and Saints' perfectly capture a classical Anglican understanding regarding invocations of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Such invocations are absent from classical Anglican piety not because of malice, nor because of a lack of respect for the Maid whom the Book of Common Prayer consistently describes as the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

Reverence for the Blessed Virgin as Mother of the Redeemer is a characteristic of the Prayer Book. Each day at Matins and Evensong, her role in the mystery of our redemption is confessed in the Apostles' Creed. In the Te Deum at Matins we rejoice that the Eternal Son "didst not abhor the Virgin's womb". At Evensong, we praise the God of Israel in the words of the Magnificat, 'The Song of the Blessed Virgin Mary'. At the Holy Communion, we confess in the Nicene Creed that the One who is "one substance with the Father" was "incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary". At Christmastide we give thanks that Jesus Christ was "made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother", she who is, in the words of the collect of the Nativity, "a pure Virgin". The feasts of her Purification and Annunciation celebrate the truth that our salvation in the Lord's Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection is dependent upon the Eternal Word assuming flesh in her womb.

Such is the reverence for the Blessed Maid found in the Book of Common Prayer. 

What, however, of invocations of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Such invocations are not to be found in the Book of Common Prayer precisely because it draws from the deep wells of "the very pure Word of God, the holy Scriptures", according to the "godly and decent order of the ancient Fathers". In neither the teaching of the Scriptures nor of the Primitive Church is prayer addressed to the Blessed Virgin. It is a practice which, for Anglicans, in the words of Article 22, is "grounded upon no warranty of Scripture". Other faithful Christian traditions, of course, disagree. What, however, cannot be accepted is that this doctrinal point equates to a lack of reverence for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

All of this is a necessary preface to considering some of the commentary on historian Tom Holland's recent statement regarding invoking the Blessed Virgin Mary after a cancer diagnosis. He did so in the Lady Chapel (pictured above) of Saint Bartholomew the Great, London, a site of a medieval apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

I went to this place where the Virgin appeared and gave this huge heartfelt prayer. Come on. Please. And all kinds of things went right from that point on.

A particular type of Roman Catholic commentator appears to assume that this will somehow unsettle Protestants in general and Anglicans in particular. It should not, not even slightly. That the shock of a cancer diagnosis would lead a cultural Christian - as Tom Holland has previously described himself - to pray in a manner not usual or normative for the ecclesiastical tradition with which they identify is both entirely unsurprising and entirely understandable.

And then there is the matter of place, for Tom Holland's prayer was offered in a Lady Chapel.

Very many Anglican churches carry the name of Saint Mary. More than a few Anglican cathedrals and larger churches have Lady Chapels. In other words, physical places associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary are hardly unusual for Anglicans. Significantly unusual, however, are sites associated with apparitions of the Virgin Mary. In the words of The Catholic Herald:

A former Augustinian priory and hospital – St Bartholomew’s is associated with the miraculous as it was founded after Rahere, an Augustinian friar, is said to have had a vision in which he was told by a heavenly messenger to found a church in the London area of Smithfield.

It is also the only place in London where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared.

She is recorded in the (still preserved) contemporaneous Book of Foundations as having appeared to a Catholic monk named Hubert. The book describes her, in a delicate and encouraging manner, telling him and the other monks off for not doing the liturgy correctly, urging them to return to the “pious reverence” of their traditional celebration of the “Mass”.

The Church, which was seized by the Protestants at the Reformation ceased to see any more of the miraculous signs or healings which were commonly until then associated with it. No known Marian apparition has occurred to Anglican clergy or laypeople.

Such Counter-Reformation polemics about Saint Bartholomew's being "seized by the Protestants at the Reformation" are suggestive of a very badly written essay by an undergraduate relying on some very odd websites.  Saint Bartholomew's, of course, remained at the Elizabethan Settlement the property of the Church by law established, according to the Crown in Parliament. As for apparitions of the Blessed Virgin, whether in medieval England or, for example, Fatima or Medjugorje, it is not only Anglicans and other Protestants who are deeply sceptical about such events and their theological significance: plenty of voices from the Orthodox East also offer robust critiques.  Put bluntly, I am very glad indeed that "No known Marian apparition has occurred to Anglican clergy or laypeople": such apparitions do not serve the Church's Christological centre and, far too often, are the stuff of Enthusiasm.

As an example of such Enthusiasm we might consider the conclusion of a recent article in The Spectator on the matter of Holland's prayer:

But in turning away from Catholicism, freethinkers and reformers together cut western culture off from the life-giving inspiration of the Blessed Virgin.

The magisterial Reformation did not cut off Europe from life-giving inspiration, for this flows from the One born of the Virgin Mary, as confessed in the catholic Creeds (reaffirmed by the Reformation confessions); He who is Light of Light, very God of very God; the One who is, according to the Apostle, "our life".

Across the churches of the Reformation, there are signs proclaiming that the One who is our life was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the catholic creeds and confessions of the Churches of the Reformation. In the Second Helvetic Confession affirming that our Lord was "born of the ever virgin Mary" and the Heidelberg Catechism declaring that our Lord's humanity was "from the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary". In Anglican and Lutheran churches and cathedrals dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and portraying her in stained glass, paintings, and images. In the Magnificat being sung at Anglican Evensong and Lutheran Vespers.

No, the Reformers did not cut off Europe from life-giving inspiration, for Christ is our life. And no, the Reformers did not abolish reverence for the Blessed Virgin Mary, but restored it to norms they understood to cohere with Scripture and the Primitive Church.

What, however, of Holland's prayer to the Blessed Virgin? 

Holland also spoke candidly for the first time about a cancer diagnosis he received in December 2021, which would have necessitated the removal of part of his digestive system. The news came at a time when hospitals were being overwhelmed by a Covid spike, and a clear picture of the diagnosis was hard to come by. Reeling from the news, Holland attended midnight mass at St Bartholomew the Great, where he prayed a desperate prayer.

Within a couple of weeks, it appeared his prayer had been answered. A set of unusual circumstances led to the diagnosis being reversed. No surgery was needed after all.

For some, of course, it is proof of the legitimacy of invocation of the Blessed Virgin. As the headline in the Catholic Herald declared, 'Tom Holland recalls inexplicable healing from cancer after praying to Our Lady'. Needless to say, it is not a meaningful defence of invocations of the Blessed Virgin: believers and non-believers alike across the globe could point to healing following prayer to a wide range of deities and intermediaries. So, no, those of us in the traditions of the Reformation should not even be unnerved slightly by Holland's experience. 

Likewise, however, any narrow, sectarian response is to be robustly dismissed.  Did God the Father hear Tom Holland's prayer. Yes, certainly. Why? Because "He healeth those that are broken in heart: and giveth medicine to heal their sickness". Because "A bruised reed shall he not break, And smoking flax shall he not quench". Because "we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities". Because God the Father has, in Christ, "reconcile[d] all things unto himself". 

With gentleness, respect, and reserve, in discussion of Holland's experience, we might point to the counsel of the 'Homily Concerning Prayer' regarding invocation of saints: rather than "run for water to a little brook", we should "go to the head spring". The Homily goes on to quote quite beautiful words from the Book of Judith regarding the "head spring":

thou art a God of the afflicted, an helper of the oppressed, an upholder of the weak, a protector of the forlorn, a saviour of them that are without hope.

This is the One who, in abiding, eternal love, heard Tom Holland's prayer.