The apparitions to St Bernadette at Lourdes, World Day of the Sick · Feast: 11 February
Open in the Daily Word app“His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”” John 2:5
Bernadette Soubirous was born on 7 January 1844 at Lourdes, a small town in the Pyrenees in southern France. Her family had fallen into deep poverty and in 1857 were living in a single damp room in a former jail, known as the cachot. She was fourteen, often sick with asthma, and had not yet been able to make her First Communion, because she had had so little schooling.
On 11 February 1858, while gathering wood with her sister and a friend near the rock of Massabielle beside the river Gave, she saw in a hollow of the rock a young lady dressed in white, with a blue sash, a yellow rose on each foot and a rosary on her arm. Bernadette prayed the rosary, and the lady passed the beads through her fingers with her. Over the following months the lady appeared eighteen times, the last on 16 July 1858. Bernadette reported that she called for prayer and penance for sinners, that she had her scratch the ground and drink at a spring which then began to flow, and that she asked for a chapel to be built and for people to come in procession. On 25 March, the feast of the Annunciation, when asked her name, the lady answered in the local dialect: I am the Immaculate Conception. Bernadette did not understand the words. Pope Pius IX had defined that dogma in 1854.
Bernadette was questioned harshly by the police and by the local authorities, and at first with great suspicion by her parish priest, Abbé Peyramale. She never changed her account and never sought to gain from it. After a careful commission of inquiry, Bishop Bertrand-Sévère Laurence of Tarbes declared on 18 January 1862 that the faithful were justified in believing that Mary had appeared to her. Bernadette left Lourdes in 1866 to join the Sisters of Charity at Nevers, where she worked in the infirmary and sacristy, suffered much illness, and died on 16 April 1879, aged thirty-five. Pope Pius XI canonised her on 8 December 1933.
It is important to be clear about what this means. Apparitions are private revelation. As the Catechism teaches (CCC 67), they do not belong to the deposit of faith and do not add to Christ's definitive Revelation; they may help us to live by it more fully in a certain period of history. Catholics are not obliged to believe in Lourdes as they are obliged to believe the Creed. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception does not depend on Lourdes. Lourdes is a place of Eucharistic adoration, confession, prayer and care for the sick. More than seventy cures have been recognised as miracles by the Church after strict medical and theological examination. In 1992 Pope John Paul II instituted the World Day of the Sick, to be kept each year on this date.
A poor, sick girl who could barely read became the messenger.
What Bernadette heard is at the heart of the Gospel: conversion.
At Lourdes the sick go to the front and are served by others.
Private revelation never replaces the Gospel; Mary always points to her Son.
When the lady gave her name on 25 March 1858, Bernadette did not know what it meant. She is said to have repeated the words again and again as she walked to the priest's house so as not to forget them. Abbé Peyramale was deeply shaken, for a girl like her could not have understood the expression.
On 25 February 1858, in front of the crowd, Bernadette scratched at the muddy ground as she said the lady had told her, and she tried to drink. People thought she had lost her mind. Over the next days, the trickle became the spring that still flows at Lourdes.
In later life Bernadette said that Our Lady had used her as one uses a broom, and that when the work is done the broom goes back behind the door. She was glad to be there.
We, therefore, judge that the Immaculate Mary, Mother of God, really appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, on 11 February 1858 and on the following days, and that the faithful are justified in believing this as certain.
Bishop Laurence of Tarbes, decree of 18 January 1862, in substance
I am not charged with making you believe it. I am charged with telling you.
St Bernadette, in substance
Private revelations do not belong to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 67, in substance
Mary's whole message points to Jesus (John 2:5).
CCC 67: a help for living the Gospel, not an addition to it.
Today is the World Day of the Sick.
Dear friends, in 1858 God did not choose a learned person or a powerful family at Lourdes. He chose Bernadette, a poor and sickly girl of fourteen who lived with her family in a former jail. She said herself that if there had been anyone poorer or more ignorant, Our Lady would have chosen that person. This is how God works, as Mary herself sings in the Magnificat.
Let us be clear about what we celebrate. The apparitions of Lourdes are private revelation. The Church has examined them and permits us to trust them, as Bishop Laurence did in 1862, but they do not add anything to the faith. As the Catechism says, they help us to live more fully by Christ's Revelation (CCC 67). The Immaculate Conception is a dogma of the Church, defined in 1854, and it stands on its own. We do not go to Lourdes for a new Gospel. We go to hear the old one more deeply.
And what is the message? Prayer. Penance. Conversion for sinners. Come to the water; come together in procession. It is the same as Mary's word at Cana: Do whatever he tells you (John 2:5). At Lourdes the greatest moments are the Holy Mass / Holy Qurbana and the blessing with the Blessed Sacrament, and many who go home unhealed go home at peace. The water has no power of its own. Bernadette herself said that it would do nothing without faith and prayer.
Today is also the World Day of the Sick. At Lourdes the sick go first, and the healthy push their chairs. Let us ask whether this is so in our parishes and in our homes. Who is sick and alone near us? Who has not been visited? Today let us bring them our prayer, the sacraments and our presence. Our Lady of Lourdes, health of the sick, pray for us. Amen.
Merciful God, grant us strength in our weakness. Through the prayers of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and of St Bernadette, comfort the sick and those who care for them, and lead us to turn back to you in prayer and penance. Amen.