OUR LADY OF LOURDES
February 11, 1858, is a date ever memorable in the
annals of Lourdes. It was a Thursday. After the mid-day meal Bernadette Soubirous, and her sister Marie, and a little girl, Jeanne Abbadie,
sallied forth with the object of picking up sticks. Their wanderings led
them to the spot known as the Roches de Massabielle. Between them and the
rocks there was a narrow canal supplied by the Gave, the water of which
was very low just then, owing to repairs going on at a neighboring mill.
Marie Soubirous and Jeanne Abbadie took off their wooden shoes and walked
across. Bernadette, who was more delicate and therefore wore stockings,
hesitated before crossing. It was cold and the sky gray, but the air was
still. Bernadette, however, suddenly heard the sound as of a strong wind.
She thought at once that a storm was coming up, and looked in the
direction of the sound. Everything was quiet, including the trees on the
banks of the Gave. Then she went on taking off her shoes, when she again
heard the same sound. This time she was frightened and stood up.
Then, looking straight before her and up at an opening
in the rock having somewhat the form of a niche, she noticed that a
trailing wild-rose bush growing out of it was in motion. In another moment
she saw the aperture illumined by a bright light. Then, in the midst of
the light, she saw a human form. The figure was that of a woman—a lady,
to use Bernadette’s own words—young and more beautiful than any one
she had ever seen. It was clad in white from head to foot, and girded with
a blue sash or scarf, the ends of which fell in front to the bottom of the
dress. The child related, too, that on each bare foot, which the folds of
the dress just allowed to be seen, there was a yellow rose as of shining
gold. A white veil falling over the shoulders, down below the waist, a
rosary, formed of white beads and a gold chain, hanging from the right
arm, completed the portrait of the Lourdes Apparition.
The next day Bernadette saw the same apparition and was
told that she was to come for fifteen consecutive days. It was in the
course of the ninth apparition that the miraculous spring was opened up by
Bernadette’s little hands under the direction of the Blessed Mother
herself. Bernadette was commanded the next morning to tell the priests
that a chapel must be built here. Obeying the command of Abbe Peyramale,
the priest of Lourdes, Bernadette had asked the "Lady" who she
was, but received no answer at first. Three weeks after the fifteen
consecutive apparitions Bernadette was vouchsafed another vision, and
again she repeated her entreaty.
"I had asked a third time," says Bernadette;
"she seemed to become more serious and to wear a look of deeper
humility. Then she joined her hands and raised them high against her
breast, casting her eyes upwards. Unfolding her hands, and letting them
slowly fall, and bending toward me, she said in a voice that trembled a
little: ‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’"
Since then less half a century has passed, yet the rock
of Massabielle has become as polished marble by contact with the lips of
innumerable multitudes, and Lourdes has grown into a fame without a
parallel in the Christian world. There, in His sacramental presence,
Christ, indeed, heals as He did in the days when He was on earth.
(From The Glories and Triumphs of the Catholic
Church, Benzinger Brothers, 1907.)
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