The Apparition of the Blessed Virgin at Lourdes

 

Today, the Feast of the Apparition of the Blessed Virgin at Lourdes is the second anniversary of the author's consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 2019. Quite out of the blue, a package arrived by post this morning, sent from Golgotha Monastery Island, Papa Stronsay in Scotland. This is nearly 550 miles, as the crow flies, from my home address.

The  package included an unbleached, beeswax candle blessed at Candlemas, a fascinating leaflet about the feast and its various names and forms in history, and a beautiful laminated image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. 

That Our Blessed Mother should have chosen to arrive on this, her great feast, and the anniversary of the consecration, has amazed me and is at once a heart-moving consolation and a powerful spur.

I have placed the image of the Blessed Mother next to the statue of her divine Son, the Holy Infant of Prague, who was installed as Little Lord Jesus, Christ our King, on the very feast of Candlemas earlier this month.

Laudetur Jesus Christus et Maria Immaculata!

Ste Bernadette in death. [Public Domain]

Sainte Bernadette Soubirous

7 January 1844 – 16 April 1879.  Canonized by Pope Pius XI on December 8 1933.

On Thursday, February 11, 1858, fourteen-year-old Bernadette was sent with her younger sister and a friend to gather firewood, when a very beautiful lady appeared to her above a rose bush in a grotto called Massabielle. From the 11th of February until the 16th of July, the lady appeared 18 times. She revealed her identity to Bernadette in the words: Que soy era immaculada councepciou. (I am the Immaculate Conception). She caused a spring to pour forth water in the grotto which was to become a world-famous place of pilgrimage for the sick in soul and body from the lifetime of Bernadette until today.

Marie-Bernadette Soubirous breathed her last in the infirmary of her convent at Nevers at three o'clock in the afternoon on the 16th April 1879. She was 35 years old. Here is one of her prayers which has survived:

Jamais une enfant dévouée à Marie ne pourra périr. O ma bonne Mère, ayez pitié de moi. Je me donne tout entière à vous afin que vous me donniez à votre très cher Fils, que je veux aimer de tout mon cœur. Ma Bonne Mère, donnez-moi un cœur tout brûlant pour Jésus. (Sainte Bernadette)

A child devoted to Mary will never be allowed to perish. O my dear Mother, have mercy on me. I give myself entirely to you so that you can give me to your beloved Son whom I desire to love with my whole heart. My dear Mother, give me a heart on fire for Jesus.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.