OurOur LadyLady ofof LourdesLourdes Feast day ~11th February

Our Lady of Lourdes February 11th is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Lourdes. This name was given to the Virgin Mary in honour of the apparitions seen by St Bernadette at Lourdes, France, in 1858. Pope Pius IX had defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. The young lady seen by Bernadette Soubirous said: “I am the Immaculate Conception”. Lourdes is a place of pilgrimage, of healing and compassion. It has become an official Catholic shrine where the sick go in search of healing. Church authorities have recognised over 60 miraculous cures at Lourdes. Many of the people who visit Lourdes return home with their faith renewed. The Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes was established in 1907. It celebrates the continuation of Jesus’ healing miracles, at the intercession of his mother Mary – whose apparitions at Lourdes were seen by a humble girl. The story of Bernadette can be seen in the film ‘The Song of Bernadette’.

The story of St Bernadette Marie Bernarde Soubirous (known as ‘Bernadette’) was born on the 7th of January 1844, to François, a miller, and his wife Louise, a laundress, who lived in Lourdes, SW France. The family spoke Occitan, the local language at that time. Bernadette was the eldest of nine children. She had poor health: she survived cholera as an infant, and suffered from asthma all her life. Bernadette attended a school run by the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction. The Soubirous family was poor. One day, when Bernadette was out with her sister and a friend, gathering wood for the fire, Bernadette had a vision near the grotto of Massabielle. The other girls had crossed a stream, but Bernadette didn’t want to get her stockings wet, so she sat down in the grotto to remove them. Suddenly, she heard the sound of a rushing wind, but only a wild rose, growing in the grotto, was seen to move. Then, from the niche where the rose was, there came a “a dazzling light and a white figure”. Bernadette was astonished, but her sister and her friend saw nothing. Three days later, after Mass, Bernadette returned to the grotto with her sister and some friends. She immediately knelt down, saying that she had seen the vision again, and then fell into a trance – yet the other girls saw nothing. Bernadette returned to the grotto every day for a fortnight (known as the ‘holy fortnight’), saying that the vision had told her to do this. Bernadette found these visions hard to explain, and named what she had seen as ‘aquero’ (‘that’, in the Occitan language). Later, Bernadette described the vision as “a small young lady”. In all, Bernadette had eighteen visions, but it was only during the seventeenth that the vision identified itself. Bernadette had described the lady as wearing a white veil, a blue girdle and with a yellow rose on each foot, and the people of Lourdes believed that she was seeing the Virgin Mary – but Bernadette never claimed that, when questioned by the local police and lawyer. The local people were astonished, and some thought that Bernadette was mad. Some people began to follow her on her daily visits, out of curiosity and looking for a miracle. One day, Bernadette reported that the lady had said ‘Penance’, and had told her “to drink of the water of the spring, to wash in it and to eat the herb that grew there”, as an act of penance. Bernadette did this, and next day the muddy grotto was transformed, and a spring of clear water flowed there. On another day the lady told Bernadette that a chapel should be built and a procession held. With two of her aunts, Bernadette went to tell the parish priest about this, and he said that the lady must identify herself. At her next visit, Bernadette told the lady what the priest had said, but the lady smiled and said nothing. Then the priest told Bernadette to ask the lady for a miracle, as proof of her existence. The priest asked for the rose bush in the niche to be made to flower – in the last week of February, when roses do not usually flower – and it did. Bernadette continued to ask the lady for her name, and finally was told “I am the Immaculate Conception”. (Pope Pius IX had, four years earlier, defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary: that she had been conceived without original sin.) After the visions, Bernadette learned to read and write, and joined the Sisters in Nevers. After further illness, she died there on April 16th, 1879, aged only 35. Saint Bernadette was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1925, and canonised by him in 1933. Her feast day is the 16th of April. In 1876 the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception was consecrated in Lourdes, which has become a major pilgrimage centre, attracting sick people who have heard of the miracle cures attributed to the site. Many Dioceses send groups on pilgrimage to Lourdes each year, with young people to help care for the sick and elderly pilgrims.