You know how I am
about anniversaries. Well, this weekend
has a big one: Sunday is the 160th anniversary of the first apparition at
Lourdes of Our Lady to Saint Bernadette
Soubirous, our parish patroness. For
as often as we use those names, not everyone is familiar with what happened in
that village at the foot of the Pyrenees for the first time on this very date. So here is a refresher:
The apparitions at
Lourdes took place only four years after the solemn proclamation by Pope Pius
IX in 1854 of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and given their nature it
is only natural to see a strong link between the two.
On Thursday, 11 February 1858, fourteen-year-old
Bernadette Soubirous saw a beautiful young girl in a niche at a rocky outcrop
called Massabielle, about a half mile
outside the town. She was near a wild
rose bush and surrounded by a brilliant light and a golden cloud, smiling, with
her arms extended towards Bernadette, who took out her rosary beads.
When she had finished
praying the rosary, the apparition beckoned to Bernadette, but she did not move
and the girl smiled at her before disappearing. She later described how she had seen a young
girl of about her own age and height, clothed in a brilliant and unearthly
white robe, with a blue girdle around her waist and a white veil on her head.
This was the beginning
of a whole sequence of apparitions, eighteen in all, which occurred during the
spring and early summer of 1858. Mary
first spoke to Bernadette on 18 February when she asked her if she would come
to the grotto for a fortnight. Thursday,
25 February, saw a crowd of about three hundred, and the discovery that was to
make Lourdes famous, that of the miraculous spring in the grotto.
During subsequent
apparitions, Mary asked for a chapel and processions; but Fr Peyramale, the
local parish priest, insisted that the Lady would have to reveal her name
before anything could be done about such matters. Early on March 25, the Feast of the
Annunciation, Bernadette again made her way to the grotto, where the beautiful
Lady was already waiting for her. Bernadette
asked the Lady her name, and after joining her hands at the breast and looking
up to heaven she said, I am the Immaculate Conception.
Bernadette hurried off
toward the presbytery, repeating the Lady's strange words, so as not to forget
them. She met Fr. Peyramale and left him
dumbfounded with the words "I am the Immaculate Conception”; he realized
that the Lady had indeed answered his request for her name. Although the message of Lourdes was now
complete, Bernadette again saw Mary on the Wednesday after Easter, April 7,
remaining in an ecstasy for about three quarters of an hour.
Bernadette was able to
receive her First Holy Communion on the feast of Corpus Christi, and
significantly she saw Mary for the last time from outside the grotto, on 16
July, the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
The local bishop, Bishop
Laurence, on July 28 set up a Canonical Commission to investigate the
apparitions and their cause. This body
first interviewed Bernadette in mid-November, and was impressed by her
testimony and by a growing number of cures. It was not until January 1862, nearly four
years after the apparitions, that the bishop delivered his verdict on Lourdes
in a Pastoral letter, a verdict that silenced those hostile to Bernadette:
We adjudge that the Immaculate Mary, Mother of God, really
appeared to Bernadette Soubirous on February 11th, 1858, and subsequent days,
eighteen times in all, in the Grotto of Massabielle, near the town of Lourdes:
that this apparition possesses all the marks of truth, and that the faithful
are justified in believing it certain. We humbly submit our judgement to the
judgement of the Supreme Pontiff to whom is committed the Government of the
whole Church.
Monsignor Smith