THE MESSAGE OF LOURDES

Introduction

Between February 11 and July 16 of the year 1858, the Blessed Mother appeared eighteen times to an illiterate, sickly, peasant girl, named “Bernadette Soubirous”, at Lourdes, France. The Blessed Mother appeared as a beautiful young girl of sixteen or seventeen years old. She was dressed in a white robe, girded at the waist with a blue ribbon and wearing a white veil that gave just a glimpse of hair. The last folds of her robe covered her bare feet, with a yellow rose upon each of them. A rosary of white beads, linked by a golden chain shining like the two roses on her feet, was hanging on her right arm. Addressing Bernadette, she used the polite form “vous” rather than the informal “tu”. The humble virgin appeared to a humble girl and treated her with dignity.

In a letter, Bernadette herself described her experience. Following is an excerpt of her letter.

“I had gone down one day with two other girls to the bank of the
river Gave when suddenly I heard a kind of rustling sound.
I turned my head toward the field by the side of the river, but the trees seemed quite still and the noise was evidently not from them. Then I looked up and caught sight of the cave where I saw a lady wearing a lovely white dress with a bright belt. On top of each of her feet was a pale yellow rose, the same color as her rosary beads.

“At this I rubbed my eyes, thinking I was seeing things, and I put my hands into the fold of my dress where my rosary was. I wanted to make the sign of the cross, but for the life of me I couldn’t manage it, and my hand just fell down. Then the lady made the sign of the cross herself, and at the second attempt I managed to do the same, though my hands were trembling. Then I began to say the rosary
while the lady let her beads clip through her fingers, without moving
her lips. When I stopped saying the Hail Mary, she immediately
vanished.

“I asked my two companions if they had noticed anything, but
they said no. Of course, they wanted to know what I was doing, and
I told them that I had seen a lady wearing a nice white dress, though
I didn’t know who she was. I told them not to say anything about it,
and they said I was silly to have anything to do with it. I said they
were wrong, and I came back next Sunday, feeling myself drawn to
the place….

“The third time I went, the lady spoke to me and asked me to come
every day for fifteen days. I said I would and then she said that
she wanted me to tell the priests to build a chapel there. She also
told me to drink from the stream. I went to the Gave, the only
stream I could see. Then she made me realize she was not speaking
of the Gave, and she indicated a little tickle of water close by.
When I got to it I could only find a few drops, mostly mud.
I cupped my hands to catch some liquid without success, and then
I started to scrape the ground. I managed to find a few drops of
water, but only at the fourth attempt was there sufficient for any
kind of a drink. The lady then vanished and I went back home.

“I went back each day for fifteen days, and each time, except one
Monday and one Friday, the lady appeared and told me to look
for a stream and wash in it and to see that the priests build a
chapel there. I must also pray, she said, for the conversion of sinners.
I asked her many times what she meant by that, but she only smiled.
Finally with outstretched arms and eyes looking up to heaven, she
told me she was the Immaculate Conception.

“During the fifteen days she told me three secrets, but I was not to
speak about them to anyone, and so far I have not.”

Incidentally, on December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX officially defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. And, as Bernadette herself said, when she asked the lady’s identity, the lady answered in the native dialect and said, “Que soy era Immaculado Conceptiou”. Clearly, the Blessed Mother confirmed the dogma already defined four years earlier by the Church, even as it was highly improbable that Bernadette, who was then an uneducated fourteen-year old peasant girl, knew the dogma.

In 1862, after thorough scrutiny of the messages of the alleged supernatural vision and the miracles attributed to it, with Bernadette enduring many and various sorts of trials on account of it, the Church declared the authenticity of the apparitions and authorized the cult of Our Lady of Lourdes for the diocese where the apparitions occurred. In 1876, the Basilica of Our Lady of Lourdes was consecrated. Then in 1890, Pope Leo XIII established the liturgical feast of Our Lady of Lourdes for February 11 of every year for the Diocese of Tarbes, but on November 13, 1907, Pope Pius X ordered that the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes be celebrated annually on the 11th of February throughout the Universal Church.

Since then Lourdes has always been a place of pilgrimage where healing and conversion of hearts abound. The Church, to this day, continues recognizing countless accounts of miraculous cures and conversion of sinners attributed to the Lady who once appeared to the illiterate, sickly, peasant girl, named “Bernadette”.

Bernadette Soubirous

Who was Bernadette Soubirous? Let us draw a brief sketch of her life.

Maria Bernadette was born on January 7, 1844. She was the eldest of the six children of Francis Soubirous and Louise Caserot. When she was born, her family was living in the Pyrenees during a turmoil in France. She has always been a sickly girl who suffered from asthma and, at one point in her early years, from cholera. She never went to school during her childhood and could only speak the Burgundian dialect. At the tender age of twelve to fourteen, she hired herself out as a servant. Her family was poor but very pious. Despite her illiteracy, she learned the basics of the Faith and received her first Communion just around the time of the apparitions at Lourdes.

The day that the Blessed Mother first appeared to her, Bernadette was at the bank of the River Gave, gathering firewood for her mother. The account of the apparitions are given in the preceding section of this reflection. Over a period of six months, Bernadette experienced eighteen visitations from the Blessed Mother. She was led to a spring of healing waters and conveyed to the local pastor, Cure Payramale, that it was the Blessed Mother’s desire that a chapel be built in honor of her appearances there. But the pastor did not believe Bernadette and instead accused her of lying about the apparitions. She was told to find out from the lady of her apparitions who she was and demand from her a miracle by making the rosebush in the grotto bloom. On the Feast of the Lord’s Annunciation, March 25, of that year, the pastor’s demand was met: the rosebush bloomed and the lady identified herself as the Immaculate Conception. From then on, even as official investigations on the authenticity of the apparitions were still being carried through by both church and civil authorities, thousands of pilgrims and even skeptics flocked to Lourdes. Healings and conversions came rather naturally from Lourdes, but Bernadette remained sickly and even maltreated, causing her so much sufferings.

Meanwhile, Bernadette moved into a house with the religious sisters of Nevers, Lourdes. There she lived, worked, and had the opportunity to learn to read and write. In 1866, at the age of twenty-two and returning to obscurity, she herself became one of the Sisters of Notre Dame who served by taking care of the sick and the indigent. She was given the religious name “Sour Marie Bernarde”, and was assigned to work in the sacristy so as not to be accessible to the public as much as possible. When referring to herself, Bernadette would say, “I am a broom which Our Lady used, but now I have been put back in my corner.”

The convent was not a refuge from sufferings for Bernadette though because even as she was always sick, she was also often maltreated by her superiors. After a long and painful illness, Bernadette passed away on April 16, 1879, at the age of 35 years old, with a prayer for the Blessed Mother’s help on her lips.

Bernardette was beatified in 1925 by Pope Pius XI and canonized also by him on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception in 1933. She is venerated as patroness of Lourdes, France, of people ridiculed for their piety, of shepherds, and of those who are suffering from sickness and poverty. Her body today lies incorruptible inside a glass casket with the words in gold: “I cannot promise you heaven here on earth but in the next life” – the Blessed Mother’s pledge to her.

Three Points to Ponder On

Much has already been said and written regarding the messages of Our Lady of Lourdes. But little attention is given to the fact that the life of Bernadette in itself was a lesson that the Blessed Mother wishes to teach us even today. I propose three things for further reflection in this regard.

First, the messenger is not guaranteed exemption from suffering. On the contrary, the message of the messenger becomes even more convincing when the messenger suffers on account of his or her message. Through Bernadette, the Blessed Mother conveyed the message of her maternal care in which we all find spiritual and physical consolations. Bernadette’s life, however, seemed to be lacking in such consolations. She was maltreated, maligned, and called names on account of her conveying the message of the Blessed Mother. She was ridiculed not only by her peers; she suffered also from the hands of both church and civil authorities. But despite it all, she stood her ground that the apparitions and the Blessed Mother’s messages and requests were true. That fact in itself was a point considered by the Church in the process of declaring the Lourdes apparitions to be true.

Second, the instrument may not always benefit from what it benefits others. Bernadette was used by the Blessed Mother to give to the world a stream of healing waters. That stream still exists today at Lourdes. Many who are sick in various forms and degrees continue to go to Lourdes today to take a bath or drink from this miraculous stream. And still, many are healed fro their infirmities. A long record of miraculous healing from Lourdes is kept and continues to get longer. Hundreds of crutches, left hanging by the grotto by people who were healed there, powerfully testify to the miracles at Lourdes. But despite all the healings attributed to the miraculous stream dug by Bernadette upon the instruction of the Blessed Mother, Bernadette herself was never healed from her sickness. She did not benefit at all from what she benefited others. Indeed, she was, as she once remarked, like “a broom which Our Lady used,” for after cleaning so many from their illnesses, she remained sickly all throughout her life.

Third, the Blessed Mother cannot promise heaven here on earth for those who love her, but to heaven in the next life, she can bring those who love her until the end. In the first place, heaven is beyond the limitations of the present life. The Blessed Mother cannot disguise heavenly life as earthly life. But she can help very greatly, and indeed she does, in attaining the heavenly life that the living aspires from the earth. The sufferings in this life can be a vehicle that brings souls to heaven. But these sufferings are not just any kind of sufferings. As the suffering of the Blessed Mother was a suffering united to her Son’s suffering, as she stood by Him underneath His cross, so are the sufferings of all her children must be united to Christ. Only those that are united with the sufferings of Jesus can be meritorious and, therefore, bring souls to heaven.

Conclusion

The life of Bernadette in itself was the message of Our Lady of Lourdes. In this life, we will always have sufferings – physical or otherwise. Some may be miraculously healed from their sufferings, but most will have to go through life carrying their crosses as Jesus carried His. However, as this majority, in union with Christ’s sufferings, carry their crosses and eventually are crucified to their crosses, there always stands by their side the Blessed Mother who once stood by the cross of her own Son.

This is the true consolation that comes from true healing: that we are able to transcend our pains because we know that while our bodies may be wasting, our sufferings are not wasted but are, on the contrary, made powerfully useful by Christ as they are united to His in continuously redeeming the world. This is what true healing means.

Is this the kind of healing that we pray for? Is this the kind of healing we ask the Blessed Mother to give us? If ‘yes’, then real healing will come.