The Ever-Present Relevance of Lourdes
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - February 8, 2008
As we begin the season of Lent, God gives us a special feast day on Monday to orient us. It is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the apparitions of our Lady to St. Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France.
Several times in history, God has allowed Mary to appear on earth with a message. In 1531, she appeared in Guadalupe, Mexico, to St. Juan Diego. In 1917, she appeared to the three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal. Strictly speaking, Catholics are under no obligation to believe in these apparitions with Catholic faith, but to use common sense, as the Church does, to evaluate them. Common sense tells us that there are no human means by which the image of Our Lady could have gotten onto the St. Juan Diego's tilma, not to mention have inverse images corresponding to Juan, to Bishop Zumarraga, and to his secretary captured in the tiny eye of the image. Common sense tells us that there is no scientific explanation for the famous miracle of the sun at the end of the Fatima appearances, which almost instantaneously dried the flooded grounds and soaked clothes of everyone and converted even hardened communists among the crowd of 70,000 witnesses.
The purpose of private revelations like the apparitions of our Lady, the Catechism says, "is not to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history." Private revelations, in other words, are meant to help us better to put what Christ taught into practice. Writing in 2000, the future Pope Benedict XVI said, "Such a message can be a genuine help in understanding the Gospel and living it better at a particular moment in time; therefore it should not be disregarded. It is a help which is offered, but which one is not obliged to use."
To say that authentic apparitions do not add anything or improve upon what Christ revealed, Cardinal Ratzinger continued, "does not mean that a private revelation will not offer new emphases or give rise to new devotional forms, or deepen and spread older forms. But in all of this there must be a nurturing of faith, hope and love, which are the unchanging path to salvation for everyone."
As we prepare to mark the sesquicentennial of Our Lady's 18 appearances to St. Bernadette in Lourdes, we need to ask how those apparitions are meant to nurture our faith, hope and love and help us live to more fully by what Christ revealed. I would like to propose three ways they do, which are just as relevant to us here in the Diocese of Fall River in Lent 2008 as they were to those in southern France 150 years ago.
The first is through Mary's call to prayer. When she appeared to St. Bernadette on February 11, 1858, she had a rosary over her arm and by silent gestures invited Bernadette to pray the rosary with her. In every one of the 18 apparitions between then and July 16, the vast majority of the time Bernadette spent in Mary's presence was spent in prayer. Mary had come to invite Bernadette — and through her, the rest of us — to pray, and to pray with her. The request she eventually entrusted to Bernadette was to ask that a chapel be built at the site of the apparitions, so that such prayer with her would never cease.
The second thing Mary revealed was what we should be praying for with particular urgency: she asked Bernadette to join her in praying particularly for sinners. In the eighth apparition, she spoke and announced a particularly Lenten theme: "Penance! Penance! Pray to God for sinners. Kiss the ground as an act of penance for sinners!" Mary had come to ask Bernadette and us to pray for our and others' conversion from sin.
In doing so, she was an icon of hope that freedom from sin is possible. When Bernadette at the local bishop's request asked Mary what her name was, Mary responded in a way that encapsulates this hope. Mary did not reply, "Mary of Nazareth," or "the Mother of Jesus," or even, "Your mother." She folded her hands in front of her breast, looked up to heaven, and said in the local patois, "Que soy era Immaculado Conceptiou" — "I am the Immaculate Conception." As we see so many times in the Bible, names are more than just arbitrary phonics allowing us to get someone's attention: they're meant to express an identity. Mary expressed her fundamental identity as one who is free from sin, showing that through God's grace such freedom is possible.
When Pope John Paul II visited Lourdes for the 125th anniversary of the apparitions, he said that this is the essence of what Mary revealed in Lourdes: "What message can I give to guide you? Simply this: the Virgin without sin brings help to sinners!" Mary came down from heaven to encourage us to pray with her for conversion.
The third thing Mary announced in Lourdes was that healing is possible for those with faith. In the 9th apparition on February 25, she pointed to a place in the ground and asked Bernadette to dig and wash her face. The stream Bernadette uncovered now produced 27,000 gallons of healing water a day. Each year 400,000 people bathe in the cold waters, seeking from Christ cures for their illnesses through the intercession of his mother. Since 1858, there have been 66 fully-documented medically-certified miracles and tens of thousands of undocumented ones.
But these miracles of physical healing — just like Jesus' miracles in the Gospel — are meant to point to a more profound healing of the soul. Each day thousands of pilgrims experience not just conversion in Lourdes, but healing of sin through the miracle of the sacrament of confession.
As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the apparitions in Lourdes, we turn to the "the Immaculate Conception" — to the "Virgin without sin who brings help to sinners" — and ask her to help us this Lent to pray with her for the conversion of sinners, beginning with ourselves, and for our miraculous healing by her Son through his priests.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
