Our Lady of Lourdes

1858: Lourdes

At the foot of the Pyrenees, ‘a small young lady’ appeared to 14-year old Bernadette Soubirous in a series of visions over the course of 5 months from February to July. Calling herself ‘the Immaculate Conception,’ the ‘lady’ called for penitence & conversion of sinners & requested that a shrine be built in the garbage dump where the apparitions took place.

Bernadette, the asthmatic child of the town’s poorest family, immediately became a local object of skeptical regard. Persevering in spite of derision & suspicion, Bernadette learned obedience in what Pope Pius XII called in La Pelerinage de Lourdes, the “School of Mary”. Through her submission to the Lady’s bidding, a healing spring came forth, from which multiple miracles have been confirmed.

Bernadette relayed to her Curè the Lady’s request to build a chapel over the grotto. While he initially rebuffed her, after a while it was precisely Bernadette’s poorly-educated state which served to point to the supernatural.

“I am the Immaculate Conception” the lady had said, according to Bernadette. How could a girl in her station of life know that 4 years earlier the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception had been promulgated by Pope Pius IX? She wasn't even aware of what the word “conception” meant.

In any event, the local authorities wanted to stop the crowds from visiting the unauthorized site. They sought a condemnation from the Bishop, who ordered an investigative commission. Four years later, the apparitions were declared authentic, & in 1876, the Basilica over the grotto was consecrated.

Through the Lourdes apparitions, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception became a matter of ordinary discussion & helped to spread an understanding of Divine Logic in preserving Mary from the stain of sin.

Bernadette died in a convent, hidden from the world, 21 years after the last apparition. Her body has remained internally incorrupt, but it isn't without blemish; during her third exhumation in 1925, light wax coverings were placed on her face & hands before she was moved to a crystal reliquary that year. For Catholics, the incorrupt Saints bring us to contemplate how Divine illumination can elevate a human being to such a high state of sanctity that the very cells which should have returned to dust remain in a state of preservation.