February 11 is celebrated in the Catholic world as feast day of our Lady of Lourdes. Although not a holiday of obligation, many faithful take time out to honor the Mother of God by attending the Eucharistic celebration on that day or joining the religious procession, if there’s one in their parish. Indeed, among the many devotions to the Virgin Mary, the one on Lourdes is undoubtedly the most popular. In fact, her shrine in Lourdes, France, where she appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, (now a saint) in 1858 is visited by millions of pilgrims every year.
Healing of physical or spiritual ailment is what attracts people to Lourdes. It is said that everyone who goes there and sincerely seeks the intercession of Our Lady never fails to experience some kind of wellness in body and in spirit. But with or without these benefits many Catholics are drawn to that sacred place to see for themselves the very spot where once the Mother of God appeared for 18 times to give her messages of love and hope to the world. What precisely are these messages? The following is culled from a monograph entitled The Messages of Lourdes by Joseph Fabish.
The first message can be gleaned from the very spot where the apparitions took place. These happened in what was (and is) called the Grotto, at that time a dirty secluded nook, damp and cold, where pigs used to feed and shelter themselves. Pigs delight in mud and dirt. Not only that, these were the creatures in whose bodies legions of demons lodged, the ones Jesus drove out as recounted in the Bible. In that very spot the Virgin Mary, dressed in white, appeared. White is a symbol of purity while the Lady herself was no other than the purest of women, the Immaculate Conception. What a contrast – whiteness and dirt, purity and pigsty! What did God want to remind us? He who is without a tint of sin came to be born as man and suffered for the sake of man, a creature weighed down by centuries of sin and guilt. Is there a greater testament of love?
The Virgin Mary has always been an epitome of obedience and humility. At the Annunciation when the angel told her she was to be the Mother of God, her immediate reaction was fear and anxiety, but this did not prevent her from saying: “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me as you have said”. At Lourdes Our Lady must have wanted to show us that our troubles and frustrations in life should not blind us from the beauty of purity and holiness.
The second message was manifested when on the third apparition Bernadette wanted to write down the Virgin’s name. But she was told: “What I have to say to you does not need to be written down”. What did Our Lady mean by this? To write down what is heard imparts a sense of impersonality between the speaker and the listener. But it was a heart to heart relationship the Virgin Mary wanted between her and Bernadette because the heart is the core of one’s being from out of which gushes the spring waters of love. Clearly, the message is that our devotion to the Mother of God should emanate from the very depth of our personhood, otherwise it would be just a mere expression of piety. Praying the rosary for instance would just be sign of religiosity if perfunctorily done and without heartily feeling the import of every word or phrase.
The third message can be derived from these words of the Virgin Mary “I do not promise to make you happy in this world but in the other”. She must have said this because she knew what was forthcoming to the visionary on the days ahead: societal ridicule (people called her “mad”), utter disbelief and mistrust. Yet in later appearances Our Lady also told Bernadette: “I promise that you will discover here below another world”.
Our world is a world of violence, strife and suffering. Injustice prevails as people strive for self upliftment, pride and fame. Yet it’s also a world of charity, self-sacrifice, fellowship, even love. (To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in wild flowers, says a poet). God no doubt is in this world even as He is in heaven, and those who experience His presence experience inevitably His love. Who can afford to be sad? Who can be upset by fear? (The Lord is my life and my salvation, whom shall I fear?) Bernadette despite poverty and illness was happy during the days of the apparitions and years thereafter. The reason could be that she was always keenly aware of the presence of God. There is indeed joy in being always connected to God, joy in this temporal domain and most likely a quintessence of it in the world hereafter.
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