Lourdes: Where hope springs eternal (Conclusion)

Some six million people flock annually to the city of Lourdes, making it the second most popular city in France, second only to Paris in the number of hotel rooms.

At least 67 documented miracles have been attributed to the waters of Lourdes, which sprung from the muddy ground after a farm girl (now St. Bernadette Subirous) dug a hole in it upon the instruction of the Virgin Mary in an apparition on Feb. 25, 1858.

A scientific assessment of the water of Lourdes shows that chemically, it is just like mineral water and has no other “wonder” properties. The water is pure and reportedly contains chlorides of soda, lime and magnesia, bicarbonates of lime and magnesia, silicates of lime and aluminum, oxide of iron, sulphate of soda, phosphate and organic matter.

But few make a stand against the miracles of Lourdes. For who is to refute a personal miracle, an inner transformation, a spiritual healing that only the heart documents? As the saying goes, for those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who refuse to believe, no miracle is enough.

Gabriel Gargam is probably one of the best known of all the cures at Lourdes. He was once paralyzed from the waist down and weighed only 78 pounds after a train accident that compelled the French government to award him damages. But after a visit to Lourdes in 1901, he was able to rise from his stretcher and walk again.

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You go to Lourdes to drink from the fountain of faith, not just to pray for a medical miracle. For there are millions who go to Lourdes who are not sick at all, but yearn to quench a thirst in their souls. (Of course, some pray to win the lotto, too, or offer a petition for a good spouse, a good job, a good mother-in-law. I don’t think God pre-judges any of our requests  He hears them all out.) Aside from a visit to the Grotto, the baths and to the taps from which flow the holy water, joining the nighttime procession by candlelight around the sanctuary is a highlight of one’s pilgrimage. You join people in wheelchairs and crutches as they go around the sanctuary singing “Ave Maria,” their candles a symbol of the faith that lights up their lives.

Souvenir shops abound in Lourdes. Pascual

The waters of Lourdes are to a pilgrim what Gatorade is to an athlete. Fortifying. Sustaining. There is a row of taps just before the grotto where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to Bernadette. Some 27,000 gallons of water are produced by the springs of Lourdes every week, and thankfully, not a drop of water is for sale. But the glasses and containers from which you can drink and collect the water are. You line up before the taps and as long as you show some consideration to the person behind you, you can bring home gallons and gallons of water  as much as your checked-in baggage allowance lets you, as you cannot hand carry on the plane any container that holds more than 100 ml of liquid.

The exact spot where the spring first appeared is on the left side of a simple grotto. Water still trickles from above the cave where the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette. The grotto stands humbly below the majestic Cathedral of the Holy Rosary  a reminder that the spot where it all started was a rock and a hole in the ground. Jesus was born in a manger in a stable. Mary appeared to a poor farm girl in a cave on a muddy field.

Because of the number of pilgrims, queues as long as those in Disneyland are ubiquitous in the Lourdes sanctuary. But the queues move, and the small sacrifice you make as you await your turn is part of the hardships and cleansing a pilgrim is expected to go through. At the grotto, it took me 30 minutes to reach the spot where the water cascades gently, unobtrusively down the sides of the cave. In some parts, the walls of the cave are as smooth as porcelain, its roughness smoothed out by over a century of people running their palms over them. To see, to touch, to taste, to feel a miracle  in Lourdes all one’s senses seem to be exhorted to be witnesses.

At the healing pools, which look like a single-story row of sheds from afar, it took me about an hour from where the queue began to the moment I actually reached the pool assigned to me. Benches are provided and the sick are given priority. When you reach the top of the line, you enter a door and inside, you see a row of pools separated by curtains from the waiting room. Volunteers help you undress and you hang your clothes on a peg on the wall. The volunteers give you a cloak and lead you behind the curtains to a single rectangular pool, maybe just a little bigger than a bathtub. There are no other people there but you and the volunteers who help you down the steps to the pool.

The experience was surreal. Humbling yet uplifting. At the end of the pool is a mini statue of our Lady of Lourdes. Kneeling in the pool, the water to my chest, I touched her gently and poured out my heart and soul to her. I then submerged myself as deeply as I could into the cold waters. Was I bothered that others had dipped into the pool before me? Not at all. I knew the waters came from a spring that flows. Besides, my faith was like my wet suit  I knew it would protect me, from the cold, from the doubts and fears.

The Church at Lourdes cautions pilgrims from expecting instant miracles after a visit to Lourdes  though instant miracles, as that which healed Gabriel Gargam in 1901 (not after a dip into the pool but after he joined the nighttime procession around the sanctuary, on a stretcher), are possible.

The author with mother Sonia Mayor and sisters Val Sotto and Dr. Geraldine Mayor. Photo by Miguel Sotto

“It is because of our need to be reborn, forgiven, purified, reconciled… that we come to this water,” reads a leaflet given to all pilgrims at the miraculous baths in Lourdes. “Do not think that performing a great number of religious acts gives us rights over God. He freely offers us peace of heart, and if he judges it to be good for us, the easing of our sufferings.” Bernadette herself was constantly sick and died in pain (but her body, interred at Nevers, 800 kilometers from Lourdes, remains whole and uncorrupted to this day).

I live my life now knowing I have been blessed, and knowing that God’s love, like the waters of Lourdes, will never run dry. I strive still, sometimes with difficulty, to be cleansed and purified of negative thoughts and ill feelings so that I may always relive that glorious moment in Lourdes  that moment when I submerged myself into the pool, humbled, unclothed, stripped to my very core and totally, wholly submerged in the love of God.

I can’t explain the feeling still, or why and how, the minute I walked out the baths and into the sunshine, I felt refreshed and dry, even if I did not even have a face towel to wipe away the cold drops that were at first dripping from my skin and hair.

(There are daily flights Paris-Lourdes on Air France. You may call (02) 887-1202 for inquiries. For Manila-Amsterdam on KLM daily direct flights, you may book on www.klm.com.ph)

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