A Celebration of the Assumption

A Celebration of the Assumption – Ancient European Harvest Festival – an Ecumenical Gathering with Prayer, Pilgrimage and Cakes

Our Lady of the Crag, Knaresborough, North Yorkshire

Saturday 17th August 2013, 3-5 p.m. (visit for any length of time) at the Shrine Chapel of Our Lady of the Crag, Abbey Road, Knaresborough

You are invited to a celebration of the ancient feast of the Assumption of Mary, which marks her death and being taken up into heaven. Whether you regard this as doctrine or legend, it is an appropriate time of year to reflect on the power and wonder of God in the natural world. In ancient and medieval European cultures, August was a time for resting and celebrating after the wheat harvest (in Ireland, Lughnasadh; in England, Lammastide; in Italy, Ferragosto). By the 4th century, the death of Mary (Assumption or taking up in the West; Dormition or falling asleep in the East) was celebrated on August 15th and associated with the traditional harvest baking of bread or cakes. The afternoon will be a chance to spend some time at this awe-inspiring medieval chapel, carved out of the rock (Wordsworth referred to it to illustrate the beauty of natural sites): birdsong; the rippling of the river Nidd; the shade of the sycamore trees – this is a chapel in the ‘Cathedral of Nature’. Quiet Prayer and Reflection; Prayers and Readings; Pilgrimage to the Chapel, lighting candles in the cave chapel and, of course… some cakes! (chrismaunder@tiscali.co.uk for information)