St. Bernadette Soubirous

St. Bernadette SAINT OF THE MONTH

Age level: All ages Recommended time: 10 minutes What you need: St. Bernadette (page 115 in the students' activity book), markers and/or crayons

Activity Read aloud the story of this month’s saint to your students. You may also want to show them the full page saint image. While you are reading or sometime the next day, have them complete the coloring page on page 117 in the students' activity book.

Biography of St. Bernadette

BERNADETTE SOUBIROUS was born in The Lady was very beautiful, all France, the eldest of nine children. Her dressed in white, with a blue girdle about family was poor, and had to live in a single her waist, and a long rosary hanging over basement room that used to be a jail. Ever her arm. She gestured for Bernadette to since she was little, Bernadette suffered pray, and together they prayed the Rosary. from bad health and severe asthma, a Bernadette continued to visit the disease that affects the lungs and makes grotto, and large crowds of people it difficult to breathe. Because she often came to watch her, even though they had to stay home sick, Bernadette could could not see the Lady. They made fun barely read and write. of Bernadette and thought she was On February 11, 1858, when she was 14, crazy. During one of her visits, the Lady Bernadette went to gather wood on the instructed Bernadette to drink from a bank of a river near a natural grotto or cave. spring near the grotto. Bernadette could As she was taking off her shoes to cross a find nothing but muddy water and had to stream, she heard a rustling like the wind. scratch at the dirt in order to drink. The The trees and the river were completely crowds laughed at Bernadette’s muddy still. Only the bushes near the grotto were face, but were amazed to find that later moving. There she saw, in a niche above in the day the water had turned into a the trees, a Lady of about her height. clear spring of water that ran into the

© SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS river. People flocked to the spring. A man became sick herself, but never went to who had been blind for 20 years washed the spring for healing. Bernadette saw her his eyes with the water and was healed! suffering as something she could offer up Another lady brought her sick child to to God. the spring, and he also was healed. Many, Bernadette died at 35 years of age and many miracles happened at the spring. is a great example of patient suffering. The Lady appeared to Bernadette Today a great shrine to the Blessed Virgin a total of 18 times and requested that Mary is built above the spring she found. a chapel be built near the grotto. When The water was channeled into a place Bernadette asked the Lady who she was, where people can bathe in it and receive the Lady responded, “I am the Immaculate healing. Many people from all over the Conception,” revealing that she was the world travel to this shrine every day to be Blessed Virgin Mary. healed. In 1866, Bernadette joined the sisters Bernadette Soubirous was canonized of Notre-Dame de Nevers and took care in 1933 and is the patron saint of the sick. of the sick people in the infirmary. She Her feast day is on April 16.

OPTIONAL ACTIVITY Praying with St. Bernadette

Age level: All ages Recommended Time: 15 minutes What you need: Praying with St. Bernadette (page 118 in the students' activity book)

Explain that praying for the sick is always good. The World Day of the Sick is a special day when we are called to pray for everyone suffering with illnesses. Pope St. John Paul II chose for this day February 11, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, who appeared to St. Bernadette in 1858. He explained that this day should be “a special time of prayer and sharing, of offering one’s suffering for the good of the Church, and of reminding us to see in our sick brother and sister the face of Christ.” Follow the directions on Praying with St. Bernadette (page 118 in the students' activity book) to pray a litany for the sick and suffering people you know, as well as those who care for them.

THE SACRAMENTS, March St. Bernadette

SAINT OF THE MONTH