How Lourdes Became a Global Pilgrimage Site

As we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and World Day of the Sick on February 11, we remember how an unschooled, sickly fourteen-year-old French girl named Bernadette Soubirous made Church history – humbling the powerful, the mighty, and the unbelieving with her courage and simplicity. Her first encounter with Mary never fails to send shivers down my spine.

Let’s refresh our memory: it was a bitterly cold Thursday, February 11, 1858, in the southern French market town of Lourdes when Bernadette and her two companions went out to gather firewood. On their way to the woods, they had to cross a bridge and go around an immense rock called Massabielle. Bernadette’s companions left her near the rock because she hesitated to wade in the water.

Then she heard a strong sound of wind like a storm, and when she looked around, the branches of trees by the hallowed rock were not moving. She testified:

When I heard the sound of wind, I lifted my eyes, and saw a mass of branches and brambles…behind which I saw a white girl who made a little bow with her head. At the same time, she put her hands out a little from beside her body…A rosary was hanging on her right arm. I was frightened…The girl put herself sideways and turned towards me. She crossed herself…I said my rosary. The girl made the beads slip but she did not move her lips. (F.C. Borlongan, A Filipino Reading of Marian Apparitions.)

The Spring of Water

She described the Lady further: “A white veil covering the head went down over her shoulders and arms. On each foot I saw a yellow rose. The sash of the dress was blue…the girl was alive, very young and surrounded with light.” (Ibid.)

The Lady appeared to Bernadette many more times. On February 25, the Lady asked Bernadette to dig a small hole at the back of the cave and drink of the water that gushed forth. The next day, the hole became a spring which has since produced more than 27,000 gallons of water daily.

When news of this astounding event spread, a quarryman named Louis Bouriette, who had been blind from an explosion at work, told his daughter to fetch some water from the spring. After three days of washing his eyes with it, his sight was perfectly restored! This was the first miraculous cure at Lourdes. It was a proven miracle because a rigid scientific analysis discovered that the water had no medicinal properties whatsoever – it was “pure” water!

The Immaculate Conception

On March 2, the Lady asked Bernadette that a chapel be built at the site where she had appeared.

On the feast of the Annunciation, March 25, the Lady again appeared to Bernadette and identified herself with the words, “I am the Immaculate Conception” (the dogma which Pope Pius IX had proclaimed four years earlier). Our Lady appeared again on April 7 and July 16 (the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel).

Courage and Tenacity

It wasn’t a walk in the park, though, for Bernadette who courageously faced many who were painfully curious about what the Lady had told her. She was subjected to rigorous medical examinations and innumerable clerical interrogations. Local public officials were quick to judge her as emotionally disturbed. They were out to get her!

The doctors, however, failed to establish evidence of any emotional disturbance. Bernadette stuck to her guns; her tenacity and consistency in all her accounts of the visions proved her detractors wrong.

On July 28, 1858, the Bishop of Tarbes, the local diocese, formed a commission of inquiry into Bernadette’s account of the apparitions. In 1862, the commission judged that Our Lady had indeed appeared to Bernadette and that “the faithful were justified in believing this.”

This unassuming lass, in her desire to evade public attention, entered the Sisters of Charity at Nevers, a town in central France. The convent sisters spoke of her great humility and spirit of sacrifice. She died of tuberculosis in 1879 and was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1933.

Miraculous Cures and Conversions

Millions of pilgrims (many of them with serious physical ailments) have trooped to Lourdes and have drunk from the taps or immersed themselves in the baths. So far, more than sixty documented healings have been declared miraculous. The 70^th miraculous cure was reported just two years ago – it involved the healing of a wheelchair-bound French nun who had suffered from spinal complications since 1980.

Not only were the events surrounding Lourdes chilling and compelling, no doubt, the fruits of Mary’s apparitions were extraordinary. Who would have thought a girl of frail build and sick of asthma from a poor family would faithfully convey Mary’s message of penance, convert many a tepid soul, and bring many others back to the faith?

Who would have thought that a sleepy town like Lourdes would become a major pilgrimage destination for the sick throughout the world? Who would have thought that miraculous healings would continue since the time when Bernadette said “yes” to our Lady (similar to Mary’s fiat) and dug a hole in the ground turning it into a flowing spring? Indeed, no matter how many times it is retold, the story of St. Bernadette and Lourdes will always send shivers down my spine.