Lourdes is a village in France where Our Blessed Mother appeared eighteen times to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. Her messages to Bernadette are ageless and apply to all of us today. The first apparition appeared when Bernadette was gathering wood with her sister and a friend. Bernadette heard a noise like a gust of wind and looked up toward the grotto. She described what she saw:
“I raised my head and looked towards the grotto. I saw a Lady dressed in white, wearing a white dress, a blue girdle and a yellow rose on each foot, the same color as the chain of her Rosary.”
In one of the apparitions, the Blessed Virgin Mary asked for a chapel to be built on the grounds, for Bernadette to pray for the conversion of sinners, and for her to drink the spring water that was revealed to her at the grotto. Word of these apparitions spread rapidly and caused quite a stir in town. Bernadette was detained, interrogated, and harassed by the civil authorities. However, Bernadette was determined with God's graces that she said one day:
"There was something in me that enabled me to rise above everything. I was tackled from all sides, but nothing mattered and I was not afraid.”
“I raised my head and looked towards the grotto. I saw a Lady dressed in white, wearing a white dress, a blue girdle and a yellow rose on each foot, the same color as the chain of her Rosary.”
In one of the apparitions, the Blessed Virgin Mary asked for a chapel to be built on the grounds, for Bernadette to pray for the conversion of sinners, and for her to drink the spring water that was revealed to her at the grotto. Word of these apparitions spread rapidly and caused quite a stir in town. Bernadette was detained, interrogated, and harassed by the civil authorities. However, Bernadette was determined with God's graces that she said one day:
"There was something in me that enabled me to rise above everything. I was tackled from all sides, but nothing mattered and I was not afraid.”
The spring that the Lady asked Bernadette to drink from quickly revealed itself to be blessed water with miraculous healing properties.
Today a beautiful church has been erected on the grounds near the grotto at Lourdes. After Rome and the Holy Land, Lourdes, France is the most popular place of pilgrimage for Catholic faithful. The water of Lourdes is readily available to all pilgrims, and numerous healings and conversions have been documented to have occurred there.
Five years after the apparitions, Bernadette petitioned to enter the Sisters of Notre Dame. After a period of illness she was able to make the journey from Lourdes and enter the novitiate. But within four months of her arrival she was given the last rites of the Church and allowed to profess her vows. She recovered enough to become infirmarian and then sacristan, but chronic health problems persisted. She died on April 16, 1879, at the age of 35. She was canonized in 1933. Her feast day is April 16th.
Our Lady of Lourdes, Pray for us!
