The Story Of St. Bernadette And Our Lady Of Lourdes

Re-Told By The Bishop Of Nottingham
The festival of Our Lady of Lourdes was once again kept with much rejoicing in London by special services in Westminster Cathedral. In the afternoon the Cardinal Archbishop addressed a large congregation of schoolchildren, and in the evening the Cathedral was filled for the custerna Lourdes service at which an imposing procession was as usual an impressive feature.
The evening preacher was the Bishop of Nottingham, who re-told the story of Bernadette and emphasised the lessons taught by Our Lady of Lourdes. Following is the substance of his lordship's address: After a brief narration of Bernadette's visits to the Grotto, and of the Apparitions, Mgr. McNulty, said : It is not necessary for us to consider in any detail the events which led first to the approbation of Bernadette's own civil and ecclesiastical authorities and finally of the head of the Church of the wonderful story which she told over and over again with great simplicity but with never a sign of hesitation or contradiction. After four years of the closest investigation, the Bishop of Tarbes issued a statement in which he said : "We consider that Mary Immaculate, Mother of God, appeared to Bernadette Soubirous on February II, 1858, and the following days, in all eighteen times, in the Grotto of Massabieille near the town of Lourdes; that this apparition bears the whole stamp of truth; and that the faithful are entitled to believe it as a certainty."
Six weeks later, 25,000 pilgrims. it is said, came to the Grotto for the blessing of the statue of Our Lady, and shortly afterwards preparations .began for the erection of the great enclosure and of the group of buildings with which most of us are happily familiar.
Seventy-five years after the Apparitions. on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1933, the Holy Father now happily reigning set the seal of the Church on the heroic sanctity of Sister Marie Bernard Soubirous by raising her to the altars as a Saint of God. known and honoured by us all under the sweet name of Saint Bernadette.
Exhortation to Repentance
" You will pray to God for sinners," Our Lady said to Bernadette, " You will kiss the ground for sinners." And Bernadette herself on one occasion after conversation with the Beautiful Lady, suddenly turned to those who had come with her to the Grotto and repeated three times the word " Penitence "—Repentance.
Mary, then, exhorts to repentance the unhappy children of Eve who have not been, like her, preserved from the stain of sin and the fear of its consequences, and the Mass of the Apparition which is said today throughout the Church recalls Mary's triumph over the enemy of the human race whose head she was to crush and wham she, the second Eve, overcame through her sinlessness.
"Tota pulehra es Maria," the Church sings, " thou art all fair, 0 Mary, . . . and with thy virgin foot thou has' crushed the serpent's head."
During the remaining years of her life Bernadette, like her Blessed Mother, must have kept these words, pondering them in her heart. Sufferer though she was, the only evil she dreaded was sin, and her last prayer, uttered just before she died. was "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me a poor sinner, a poor sinner."
It will be well for us all when we kneel again before the Grotto at the foot of Massabieille to call to mind these dying words of little Bernadette—the clean of heart, who now sees her God face to face. If she looked upon herself as a sinner, what shall we say of ourselves?
The First Lesson The first lesson, then. taught by our Lady of Lourdes, is that of the duly of avoiding sin and of doing penance for whatever faults we have committed and for the sins of the whole world. And if Lourdes warns and encourages us to avoid sin, it offers also a solution of a mystery which has perplexed the minds of men through the centuries—the age-long mystery of pain.
In her Immaculate Conception Mary shows her complete triumph over the Devil and sin and by her intercession she obtains for the sufferer sometimes a miraculous cure, but always resignation and submission to the Will of her DivinesSote Sickness and infirmity are the direct consequence of sin and, when willingly borne, make reparation to Divine Justice for the insults committed against him by the sinner. Thus, in St. Paul's mysterious phrase, they " fill up what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ."
The Waiting Sufferers
As, during the ceremony of the Blessing of the Sick at Lourdes, we gaze upon the suffering multitude waiting and watching, like the maimed and afflicted in the Gospel, for Jesus to pass by, we are filled with profound pity for their sufferings, sufferings such as possibly we have never seen before, possibly have never imagined. For the moment, indeed, they appear to have forgotten their pain and discomfort in their loving eagerness at His approach and their desire for His Benediction Their resignation fills the pilgrims with admiration, and it has been our experience that amongst the happiest people in Lourdes are the sufferers who have not been cured. Year after year they travel even from distant countries, returning possibly in the same physical condition as
when they left their homes. Still they never complain, and their resignation and even their joy in their sufferings give us possibly the greatest of all the miracles worked at Lourdes.
So does Mary, the Comforter of the Afflicted. teach us that the problem of pain finds its solution in suffering itself provided it is borne in union with the Passion of her Divine Son, the Man of Sorrows, who died that we might live— for gold onus, be tried by fire and he who sows in tears shall reap in joy a hundred/ old.
To Nevers Bernadette remained in Lourdes for eight years after the Apparitions, and then travelled to Nevers, where she passed the remaining thirteen years of her life as a humble religious in unceasing prayer and in patient submission to constant suffering. On the day before she left Lourdes she made her last visit so the Grotto. On corning to the rock, she pressed her lips to it and seemed unable to tear herself away. Finally one of the Sisters who was with her reminded her that she would find Our Blessed Lady not only at Lourdes but wherever she went. " I know, I know," she said, " but at Lourdes the Grotto was my heaven."
So it is with all who have travelled as pilgrims to Lourdes and knelt in prayer before the Grotto. Something new enters into the life of one who visits the shrine for the first time. Lourdes becomes " home," for home is where Mother is, and the pilgrim MUSE return. And the cornpelting force which draws the pilgrim back to the feet of our Immaculate Mother comes from the realisation that at Lourdes is enshrined in a special way the central truth of Christianity, the Incarnation of the Son of God, horn of the Virgin Mary, to redeem the world from sin and its fearful consequences. At Lourdes, as in Holy Scripture and in the history of the Church from the beginning, Jesus Christ is offered to the world in the arms of His Blessed Mother.
Bethlehem and Lourdes
More than nineteen centuries ago Wise Men from the East travelled as pilgrims to another hill town where, as St. Luke tells us. " they found the Child with Mary, His Mother, and falling down they adored Him and offered Him gifts." So it was later in Nazareth and at Cana and on Calvary : so, too, it has been through the centuries since He came.
The Church of God has never separated the Mother from the Child, and it
is a matter of history—tragically true of England. Her own Dowry—that where the Mother has been dishonoured, the Child has soon been forgotten, and the pilgrim at Lourdes should reeve,jail to pray earnestly for the return of this country to the faith of which it was robbed four centuries ago.
The resemblances found to exist between Bethlehem of old and the Lourdes we know are, indeed, full of interest and significance. Bethlehem, like Lourdes. was a small and little-known city, described by the prophet Michaeas (v. 2) as " a little one among the thousands of Juda," but as the birthplace of the Saviour it became the first city in the world. So Lourdes, which at the time of the Apparitions was almost unknown, has become the most famous place of pilgrimage in modern times, to which many millions from every part of Christendom have travelled at the bidding of a little child to find, as those first pilgrims did, Jesus with Mary His Mother, and to bend their knees in adoration of the Mystery of the Incarnation perpetuated in the " mysterium fidei," the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.
" Per Mariam ad Jesum "—through Mary to Jesus—has become the motto of the Bishops of Lourdes, and we her children make our pilgrimage to her sacred shrine that she, our Mother, may take us by the hand and lead us to her Son. her and our Lord and God.
The Climax of the Day So it is that the climax of the pilgrims' day at Lourdes is the procession of the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessing of the Sick; and it is during this unique and touching ceremony that most of the physical cures take place. Like the Wise Men of old, pilgrims have come to seek Him who was born King of the Jews, to find Him raised up before them in new swaddling clothes—the appearances of bread and wine, and on their knees in adoration they offer their gifts—the myrrh of repentance for their sins and for those of the whole world, the incense of devout and prayerful lives, and the gold of loyal service to Jesus Christ their Redeemer and their King, and of Mary their Mother and their Queen. So during our earthly pilgrimage may Jesus and Mary—the Child with His Mother—be ever our companions and our guides until we find safe anchorage in union with them for ever and ever. Amen.
In addition to the two thousand children attending the afternoon service in the Cathedral, local services in various parts of the metropolis drew large attendances. At SS. Mary and Michael's, Commercial Road, E., there were 2,600 children. Haverstock Hill and Ealing, each had a thousand; and the same number at Stamford Hill included about two hundred boys from
the Jesuit School. Eight hundred children attended the service at Golders Green, and six hundred at St. John's, Islington.
There is a strong feeling, especially in the East End, that the children's local Lourdes service should be an annual event.