NV-Lourdes

NOVENA IN PREPARATION FOR OUR LADY OF LOURDES
(feast day February 11th)

What is a Novena?
A novena is a traditional devotion consisting of specific prayers recited on nine successive days. Besides being a form of praise, a novena is frequently offered for a particular intention. The first novena took place in the Cenacle, during the nine days preceding Pentecost, or the coming of the Holy Ghost. As a regular popular custom, this practice began in 12th century Christianity and continues to be beneficial today as a way of praying for healing, protection or other blessings for ourselves or others.

This particular novena is prayed to God in honor of and thanksgiving for the apparitions, messages and graces granted by Our Lady of Lourdes. In praying this Novena, as in the case of all prayer, it is good to begin by opening ourselves wholeheartedly to God's will, offering a simple act of trust in God's wisdom and in His providential love for us all, that disposes all things for the ultimate benefit of our souls and their salvation.

How to Pray This Novena
This novena is based on the history of the events leading up to and including the 18 apparitions given by Our Lady to St. Bernadette in Lourdes, France, in 1858. Each day of the novena is divided into the following parts: (1) an look at the history leading up the apparitions and then the accounts of the apparitions themselves; (2) if applicable for the day's readings, the actual words spoken by Our Lady to Bernadette; (3) the personal account of the apparitions by St. Bernadette (4) an occasional quote from Holy Scripture wherever relevant (5) a Meditation; (6) a Prayer; (7) after mentioning your intention, pray the Our Father and the Hail Mary; (8) a Closing Prayer.

François and Louise Soubirous, the parents of Bernadette.

The Rosary was the staple diet of Bernadette's prayer life. It was also the prayer the Our Lady would say with Bernadette at the Grotto. It is also the prayer she would ask for at Fatima. Is the Rosary my staple diet?

FIRST DAY OF THE NOVENA (new meditations posted each day)
Theme: The Foolish Things of the World God hath Chosen

A Look at Bernadette
Marie-Bernarde Soubirous (born January 7th, 1844 – died April 16th, 1879), affectionately called Bernadette, was the firstborn daughter of François Soubirous (1807–1871), a miller, and his wife Louise (1825–1866), a laundress, and was the eldest of nine children. Hard times had fallen on France and the family lived in extreme poverty. Neighbors reported that the family lived in unusual harmony, apparently relying on their love and support for one another and their religious devotion. The improvident nature and erratic generosity of her father kept the family in dire poverty at all times, but it did not affect in any degree the love of husband for wife and vice-versa.

At the time of her birth, François was a miller, operating a mill which had belonged to his wife's family. He was a good-natured, easy-going man, with little ability for carrying on a business, and in relatively few years the mill had to be forfeited for debt. During most of Bernadette's childhood he was an odd-job-man, picking up a day's work as opportunity offered, and, from time to time, escaping from his problems and responsibilities by turning to the delusive comfort of alcohol. His wife and children, naturally, were the chief sufferers from his ineffectualness. Louise, whose family was of somewhat better economic status than her husband's, was a hard worker, a warm-hearted neighbor, and exemplary in her observance of Catholic rites.

Within a short space of years many children were born to her, only five of whom survived infancy. After Bernadette, there was another girl, Toinette Marie, and three boys. To help feed and clothe them it was often necessary for their harassed mother to go out to work by the day, doing laundry and other rough tasks for the more prosperous citizens, and, on one occasion, at least, helping to harvest a crop of grain. A peasant woman of the region has told of seeing little Bernadette, then about twelve, carrying the youngest baby to Louise in the field, to be nursed during the noon-day rest period. As a child, Bernadette not only did more than might be expected in caring for the smaller children, but helped in their moral and religious training as well.

When Bernadette was thirteen she was sent to the neighboring mountain hamlet of Bartres, to the home of one Marie Arevant, her foster-mother. It was here that Bernadette had been taken for a few months when she was still an infant, to be nursed by Madame Arevant, who had just lost a baby. The woman now had a large family and little Bernadette made herself useful in the house and in the fields. One of her duties was to tend a small flock of sheep that grazed on a hillside nearby; it is this brief phase of her girlhood that has inspired artists to picture her as a shepherdess. Her life was a lonely one, and we get the impression that she was overworked and homesick while she remained in this peasant home. At all events she sent word to her parents that she wished to leave Bartres.

One thing seemed especially to disturb her at this time; although she was now fourteen, she had not made her First Communion. Her foster mother had tried half-heartedly to prepare her, but after one or two sessions had impatiently given it up, saying that Bernadette was too dull to learn. From a very early age though, she showed signs of having immense faith in God, and when she was told she was stupid because she was unable to learn her Catechism, she whispered in a characteristic way that: “At least I will always know how to love the good God.”

When Bernadette went back to Lourdes, it made her very happy to be admitted to the day school conducted by the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction. This was a teaching and nursing order whose mother-house is at Nevers, in central France. A hospice, a day school, and a boarding school were maintained at Lourdes by these devout nuns, who were, as a group, unusually well trained. Thus Bernadette at last began her secular education, and, under Father Pomian, continued to prepare for First Communion. She was also learning a little French, for up to this time she spoke only the local dialect. The nuns discovered that beneath a quiet, modest exterior, Bernadette had a winning personality and a lively sense of humor. This might have been a happy and constructive time for the little girl had it not been for the ever-increasing shadows of poverty at home.

By the time of the events at the grotto, after moving from one poor location to another, her family’s financial and social status had declined to the point where they lived in a single room of a dilapidated basement, in the rue des Petits Fosses; this damp, unwholesome place which was part of an old abandoned jail, called “Le Cachot”, “The Dungeon,” where they were housed for free by her mother’s cousin, André Sajoux.

There is a very close link bewteen Lourdes and La Salette, where Our Lady had appeared only 12 years earlier in 1846. Lourdes was in the same general region as La Salette; Bernadette, like the children of La Salette mainly spoke in a “patois” (local dialect). Like Maximin and Melanie she could neither read nor write. Unlike them, though, she was already an advanced contemplative when Our Lady appeared, having cultivated the habit of praying always. In the fields she constantly said her Rosary over and over again. At the time Our Lady appeared to Bernadette, she was fourteen years old and living at home. She was the most innocent type of moral character, scrupulously honest, obedient, who never committed a deliberate venial sin during her entire life.

Meditation:
"But the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the wise; and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the strong" (1 Corinthians 1:27). A more appropriate quote will not be found in relation to the St. Bernadette's being chosen to be the witness to Our Lady's apparitions at Lourdes and the recipient of Our Lady's messages.

Bernadette was physically weak and intellectually weak; but spiritually, she was a power-house. All her life she had been sickly and prone to illness. Intellectually, she could not even read or speak the language of her country, speaking only a local dialect. Yet spiritually, she was a contemplative soul; a soul that prayed almost all day long, even as she worked. As it is said that she prayed the Rosary not just once a week, or a few times a week, or even once a day; but the prayed the Rosary every day, over and over again, many, many times a day.

This was her prayer level at the age of fourteen. Such a level is not reached overnight, but it is the fruit of continual effort, that increases the quantity of prayer year by year. This fourteen year old puts most of the adult Catholic world, popes, bishops and priests included, to shame. Her life was as busy, if not busier, than that of most adults today; yet prayer was not the thing that was sacrificed. It reminds us of St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, who said anywhere between 30 and 50 Rosaries a day, and he was no lazy-man either!

It is the fact that she prays so much, that she does not sin. The testimony for the process of her canonization, by the priests who knew her, says that she did not commit a deliberate venial sin to their knowledge. The spiritual masters affirm this: the more we pray the less we sin, the less we pray the more we sin. St. Augustine says that prayer is the key of heaven that fits all the gates of heaven and all the treasure chests of God. Elsewhere he says that what bread is to the body, prayer is to the soul; and “He knows how to live well, who knows how to pray well.”

Prayer brings about more than we would like to give it credit for; prayer is the soul of the world, in a manner of speaking, it is prayer that keep it alive and wards of the destructive anger of God because of our sins. This would be the essential message of Our Lady of Lourdes, and it is also the underlying message of all her modern-day apparitions. We pray far too little, and that is why we are careering down the road that will lead to us having to suffer much. Holy Scripture says: "Pray without ceasing!" (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and "We ought always to pray, and not to faint" (Luke 18:1). The problem is that we faint at the thought of having to pray! Our heart is more set upon amusements than prayer, which was the complaint of Our Lady of La Salette: "People will think of nothing but amusement!"

Let us become prayerful souls, not playful souls. Let us not think we budding saints because we say a Rosary on most days of the week, or even every day! Francisco, of Fatima fame, was told he would not get to Heaven until he had said MANY Rosaries! What is the amount of sin in my basket, compared to that in Francisco's basket? How many more Rosaries should we be saying daily to get to Heaven? Let us be like Padre Pio, Bernadette and little Francisco, of whom it was said that they were rarely seen without Rosary beads in their hands or Ave's on their lips!

Our Prayer:
O Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Eternal Word and, in virtue of this title, preserved from Original Sin, we kneel before thee, as did little Bernadette at Lourdes, and pray with childlike trust in thee, that as we contemplate thy glorious appearance at Lourdes, thou wilt look with mercy upon our present situation, grant us the graces needed to abandon our sinful and lukewarm habits, and to produce works worthy of penance for our past sins, with a firm desire never to commit them again. Grant too, though unworthy we may be, our petition and secure for us a favorable answer to the request for which we are making this novena.

[Mention Intention]
O Brilliant star of purity, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, glorious assumption, triumphant in your coronation, show unto us the mercy of the Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Queen and Mother, be our comfort, hope, strength, and consolation. Amen.

Pray:
Say the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

Final Invocation:
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Saint Bernadette, pray for us.

Map showing the location of the Lourdes shrine on the rock "Massabielle" that juts out forcing the Rive Gave to loop around it.

St. Bernadette would pray the Rosary over and over again while she shepherded the sheep.

The language of the Rosary

SECOND DAY OF THE NOVENA (new meditations posted each day)
Theme: I Know Mine and Mine Know Me, the Language of the Rosary

The Beginning of the Apparitions.

On the morning of February 11th, 1858, when the family awoke in the damp and miserable Cachot there was no more firewood for the fire and Bernadette pleaded with her mother to be allowed to find some new firewood. Eventually her mother consented, although she as always was concerned for her daughter and whether she would suffer another asthma attack. Bernadette and her sister, Toinette, and a friend, Jeanne Abadie, were told to fetch some firewood for the fire. It was while gathering firewood with her sister and a friend, near the grotto of Massabielle, that she would have her first vision.

As St. Bernadette herself says: “The first time I went to the grotto, was Thursday, 11th February, 1858. I went to gather firewood with two other little girls (Toinette, her sister, and their friend Jeanne Abadie). When we got to the mill (of Savy), I asked the other two if they would like to see where the water of the mill joins the River Gave. They said 'Yes.' From there we followed the canal. When we arrived there (at the foot of the rock of Massabielle) we found ourselves before a grotto.”

On land bordered by a loop of the River Gave (Gave de Pau), is an outcrop of rock called Massabielle (the word comes from "Massevielle" which means "old rock" in the local dialect). In this outcrop of rock, on its north side, there was an area near the river bank, where a naturally occurring, irregularly shaped shallow cave or grotto had been formed. The rock, in which we find the grotto, is about 70 feet high and is covered with shrubs and ivy. It seems to be supported by an enormous natural vault, which is nothing more than the grotto itself. It is here that the apparitions would take place.

Their path was obstructed by a small stream running into the river, at which point one of the girls suggested they take off shoes and stockings, wade across and continue searching on the opposite side. Bernadette never seemed to enjoy good health and was reluctant to go wading in cold water, fearing an attack of asthma. For it was a cold day, and she had been told by her mother not to get wet and risk catching a cold. Bernadette asked Jeanne to take her on her shoulders, but Jeanne refused and bluntly told Bernadette, “If you won’t come, stay where you are!”

Her sister and friend raced on and quickly removed their stockings in order to cross the river in front of the grotto.St. Bernadette continues in her own words: “As they could go no further, my two companions prepared to cross the water lying before their path; so I found myself alone on the other side. They crossed the water; they started to cry. I asked them why and they told me that the water was cold. I begged them to help me throw a few rocks into the water so that I could cross without taking my stockings off. They replied that I could do as they had done.”

Whilst being teased by her sister, she eventually decided to cross the river to help find the firewood. So she started looking for a place to cross where she wouldn’t get her stockings wet. She finally sat down in the grotto to take her shoes off in order to cross the water and was taking off her first sock when she heard the sound of rushing wind, but nothing moved. A wild rose in a natural niche in the grotto, however, did move. From the niche, or rather the dark alcove behind it, “came a dazzling light, and a white figure.” This was the first of 18 appearances that Our Lady would make to Bernadette. Here is St. Bernadette’s own account of the events (Taken from “Ecrits de Saint Bernadette” — The Writings of Saint Bernadette):

The 1st Apparition (Thursday, February 11th)

“I had hardly taken off the first stocking when I heard a sound like a gust of wind. Then I turned my head towards the meadow. I saw the trees quite still: I went on taking off my stockings. I heard the same sound again. As I raised my head to look at the grotto, I saw a Lady dressed in white, wearing a white dress, a blue girdle and a yellow rose on each foot, the same color as the chain of her Rosary; the beads of the Rosary were white.

“The Lady made a sign for me to approach; but I was seized with fear, and I did not dare, thinking that I was faced with an illusion. I rubbed my eyes, but in vain. I looked again, and I could still see the same Lady. Then I put my hand into my pocket, and took my Rosary. I wanted to make the sign of the cross, but in vain; I could not raise my hand to my forehead, it kept on dropping. Then a violent impression took hold of me more strongly, but I did not go.

“The Lady took the Rosary that she held in her hands and she made the sign of the cross. Then I commenced not to be afraid. I took my Rosary again; I was able to make the sign of the cross; from that moment I felt perfectly undisturbed in mind. I knelt down and said my Rosary, seeing this Lady always before my eyes. The Vision slipped the beads of her Rosary between her fingers, but she did not move her lips. When I had said my Rosary the Lady made a sign for me to approach, but I did not dare. I stayed in the same place. Then, all of a sudden, she disappeared.

“I started to remove the other stocking to cross the shallow water near the grotto so as to join my companions. And we went away. As we returned, I asked my companions if they had seen anything. ‘No,’ they replied. ‘And what about you? Did you see anything?’ ‘Oh, no, if you have seen nothing, neither have I.’

“I thought I had been mistaken. But as we went, all the way, they kept asking me what I had seen. I did not want to tell them. Seeing that they kept on asking I decided to tell them, on condition that they would tell nobody. They promised not to tell. They said that I must never go there again, nor would they, thinking that it was someone who would harm us. I said no. As soon as they arrived home they hastened to say that I had seen a Lady dressed in white. That was the first time.”

On realizing that she alone had seen the apparition, and not her companions, she asked her sister Toinette not to tell anyone what had happened. Toinette, however, was unable to keep silent, and told their mother, Louise Soubirous. Both girls received a beating, and Bernadette was forbidden by her mother from returning to the Grotto again.

Meditation:
These are the words of Our Lord: "I am the Good Shepherd; and I know mine, and mine know me" (John 10:14). “I speak to you, and you believe not ... you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice: and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them life everlasting; and they shall not perish for ever, and no man shall pluck them out of My hand” (John 10:25-28). Yet these same words could well be placed in the mouth of Our Lady.

At this very first apparition of Our Lady, she chooses not to speak, but she lets the Rosary speak in her place. She comes to Lourdes carrying a Rosary in her hands: "I saw a Lady dressed in white, wearing a white dress, a blue girdle and a yellow rose on each foot, the same color as the chain of her Rosary; the beads of the Rosary were white."

The Rosary is the voice of Mary; the Rosary has the words of Mary; the Rosary gives us the words with which to speak to Mary; the Rosary communicates to us the spirit of Mary. It is to the Rosary that Bernadette turns as soon as she sees the apparition. Bernadete herself says: 'I was seized with fear, and I did not dare, thinking that I was faced with an illusion. I rubbed my eyes, but in vain. I looked again, and I could still see the same Lady. Then I put my hand into my pocket, and took my Rosary."

To calm her fears, Our Lady begins to speak the same language as Bernadette—the language of the Rosary. "The Lady took the Rosary that she held in her hands and she made the sign of the cross. Then I commenced not to be afraid. I took my Rosary again; I was able to make the sign of the cross; from that moment I felt perfectly undisturbed in mind. I knelt down and said my Rosary, seeing this Lady always before my eyes. The Vision slipped the beads of her Rosary between her fingers, but she did not move her lips."

This first apparition was one of mutual prayer, Our Lady prays the Rosary with Bernadette. Our Lady wanted to be approachable, but Bernadette was afraid. The first time Our Lady signaled for Bernadette to approach her was before the Rosary was prayed: "The Lady made a sign for me to approach; but I was seized with fear, and I did not dare." The second time was after the Rosary had been prayed: "When I had said my Rosary the Lady made a sign for me to approach, but I did not dare. I stayed in the same place." This shows us that we must GO TO OUR LADY. At Fatima, 59 years later, she said the same thing but only in a different way. Our Lady said at Fatima, on July 13th, "Only I can help you." For the purists who want the exact words of Our Lady, she was speaking in the third person, and she spoke about Our Lady of the Rosary, but she had not yet identified herself as the Lady of the Rosary, and she said, "Only Our Lady of the Rosary can help you."

Sister Lucia of Fatima, said to Fr. Fuentes in 1957: "Our Lady said to my cousins as well as to myself, that God is giving two last remedies to the world. These are the Holy Rosary and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. These are the last two remedies which signify that there will be no others". Sister Lucia also added: "Look, Father, the Most Holy Virgin, in these last times in which we live, has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary. She has given this efficacy to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or above all spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families, of the families of the world or of the religious communities, or even of the life of peoples and nations, that cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary."

So what are we doing about it? Are we applying the Rosary to all our problems—those of the Church, the nation, our families, our workplaces? Are we applying it enough? Somehow I think one single Rosary a day, said lukewarmly but not prayed fervently, "ain't gonna cut it!" Sister Lucy also mentioned a complaint of Our Lady's: "Father, the most Holy Virgin is very sad because no one has paid any attention to Her Message, neither the good nor the bad. The good continue on their way, but without giving any importance to Her Message. The bad, not seeing the punishment of God actually falling upon them, continue their life of sin without even caring about the Message. But believe me, Father, God will chastise the world and this will be in a terrible manner. The punishment from Heaven is imminent."

Our Prayer:
O Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Eternal Word and, in virtue of this title, preserved from Original Sin, we kneel before thee, as did little Bernadette at Lourdes, and pray with childlike trust in thee, that as we contemplate thy glorious appearance at Lourdes, thou wilt look with mercy upon our present situation, grant us the graces needed to abandon our sinful and lukewarm habits, and to produce works worthy of penance for our past sins, with a firm desire never to commit them again. Grant too, though unworthy we may be, our petition and secure for us a favorable answer to the request for which we are making this novena.

[Mention Intention]
O Brilliant star of purity, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, glorious assumption, triumphant in your coronation, show unto us the mercy of the Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Queen and Mother, be our comfort, hope, strength, and consolation. Amen.

Pray:
Say the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

Final Invocation:
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Saint Bernadette, pray for us.

St. Bernadette would pray the Rosary over and over again while she shepherded the sheep.

Holy Water is a powerful Sacramental of the Church, but is much forgotten and little used.

The Rosary is a powerful Sacramental of the Church and the source of many miracles.

Our Lord sanctifies water by His being baptized in the waters of the Jordan river.

Baptism fills our souls with sanctifying grace, like a bottle is filled with water.

Water both (1) purged and (2) saved the world. Sinners were destroyed by it, while Noe was saved by it.

The language of the Rosary

THIRD DAY OF THE NOVENA (new meditations posted each day)
Theme: Making Good Use of the Sacramentals of the Church

The 2nd Apparition (Sunday, February 14th)
After the first apparition of Thursday, February 11th, Bernadette wanted to go back to the Massabeille the very next day, but her mother, after talking the matter over with a sister, refused to give her permission. Bernadette now showed the independence of spirit—some were to characterize it as obstinacy—that became one of her outstanding traits. When she told her confessor of the apparition, Fr. Pomian made light of it, thinking the girl suffered from hallucinations.

Nevertheless, on the following Sunday Bernadette asked if she might go to the grotto and her father told her she might go if she took a flask of holy water with her, to exorcise the apparition should it prove to be a demon. Bernadette, advancing ahead of several little friends who accompanied her, knelt before the grotto and soon the vision appeared as before.

Here is the account of the second apparition in Bernadette's own words: "The second time was the following Sunday. I went back because I felt myself interiorly impelled. My mother had forbidden me to go. After High Mass, the two other girls and myself went to ask my mother again. She did not want to let us go, she said that she was afraid that I should fall in the water; she was afraid that I would not be back for Vespers. I promised that I would. Then she gave me permission to go.

“I went to the Parish Church to get a little bottle of holy water, to throw over the Vision, if I were to see her at the grotto. When we arrived, we all took our Rosaries and we knelt down to say them. I had hardly finished the first decade when I saw the same Lady. Then I started to throw holy water in her direction, and at the same time I said that if she came from God she was to stay, but if not, she must go. She started to smile, and bowed; and the more I sprinkled her with holy water, the more she smiled and bowed her head and the more I saw her make signs. Then I was seized with fright and I hurried to sprinkle her with holy water until the bottle was empty. Then I went on saying my Rosary. When I had finished it she disappeared and we came back to Vespers. This was the second time.”

Troubled by the notion that the apparition might represent an evil spirit, Bernadette used the holy water as a test. A further reassuring sign was the apparition’s beautiful bare feet; demonic apparitions (even while in human form) were believed to have cloven hooves or animal paws.

Meditation:
It is interesting to see Bernadette's instinctive use of the Sacramentals of the Church when faced with a situation that she found supernaturally confusing and even frightening. Her soul is confused by what she sees and so she takes the road of caution, safety-first, which is also the way that Holy Mother Church acts. It reminds us of little Maximin at La Salette, who begins to throw stones at Our Lady when she first appears! Here, Bernadette takes a more feminine and more spiritual approach, her weapons would be the spiritual weaponry furnished by the Sacramentals of the Church.

In the first apparition, she instinctively reaches for her Rosary beads (which, we must point out, shows that she always carried some Rosary beads with her). Before the second apparition, she purposely goes to the local church to arm herself with holy water, with which to fight and ward off the 'apparition' in case it came from the devil, who, as St. Paul says, can appear as angel of light. (click here to read an article on the power of holy water).

The Sacramentals of the Church are sources of actual grace and they also help to better predispose our souls for an increase in sanctifying grace. We will show their power more clearly in a later article on the Sacramentals of the Church, but for now it suffices to say that they are very powerful means of obtaining the grace of God, and, at times, have even been known to be vehicles for the miracles of God. We have all read, at some time or another, of the miracles surrounding the Rosary and the Scapular; and may have heard of the prophecy that Our Lady is reputed to have made to St. Dominic that, one day, through the Rosary and Scapular, she would save the world.

The likelihood of this prophecy is strengthened by Our Lady's modern-day apparitions which explicitly or implicitly focus upon the Rosary and the Scapular. Lourdes and Fatima both explicitly manifest the Rosary, and they also implicitly concern the Scapular, for at the final apparitions in both places, Lourdes and Fatima, the Scapular is brought to the fore: at Lourdes the final apparition took place on the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (July 16th) and Bernadette says that never was Our Lady as beautiful as she was on that day; while at the final apparition at Fatima, Our Lady ended the apparition dressed as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and Lucia also said that never was she as beautiful as on that day. In addition, at Fatima, the Infant Jesus was holding out a Brown Scapular to the world, which Lucia said manifested Heaven's desire that everyone wear the Brown Scapular.

A few final words upon the significance of the holy water used by Bernadette to sprinkle Our Lady.

(1) Water is a symbol of grace. We have water poured over us at our baptism, symbolizing our soul being filled with sanctifying grace, just like water fills a bottle. Moses struck the rock in the desert and made water miraculously flow from it, much like the water flowed miraculously at Lourdes.

(2) Water is also a symbol of cleansing, and the waters of baptism cleanse our souls of Original Sin and all Actual Sin (mortal and venial): "Wash me and I shall be made whiter than snow" (Psalm 50:9). Bernadette was later to be asked to wash her face in dirty, muddy water, but that water was to be the beginning of the miraculous healing waters of Lourdes, just like grace heals the soul of its sins. It also reminds of the cleansing deluge in Noe's time, when the sins and sinners of the world were washed away. Likewise, Moses led his people to safety through the parting waters, but those same waters destroyed the Egyptian army.

(3) We are able to float on water and so avoid drowning. St. Peter was also able to walk on water! But as he lost faith and confidence, he began to sink. It is our Faith that overcomes the world; it is our Faith that keeps us afloat amidst a sinking, drowning world. This, too, reminds us of the sinners who drowned in Noe's time, because they did not have an ark (symbol of the Church and the Faith) in which to take shelter and float safely through the chastisement of God.

Our Prayer:
O Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Eternal Word and, in virtue of this title, preserved from Original Sin, we kneel before thee, as did little Bernadette at Lourdes, and pray with childlike trust in thee, that as we contemplate thy glorious appearance at Lourdes, thou wilt look with mercy upon our present situation, grant us the graces needed to abandon our sinful and lukewarm habits, and to produce works worthy of penance for our past sins, with a firm desire never to commit them again. Grant too, though unworthy we may be, our petition and secure for us a favorable answer to the request for which we are making this novena.

[Mention Intention]
O Brilliant star of purity, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, glorious assumption, triumphant in your coronation, show unto us the mercy of the Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Queen and Mother, be our comfort, hope, strength, and consolation. Amen.

Pray:
Say the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

Final Invocation:
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Saint Bernadette, pray for us.

St. Bernadette would pray the Rosary over and over again while she shepherded the sheep.

Francois and Louise Soubirous, the parents of St. Bernadette.

A photo of the grotto at Massabielle taken in 1858, the year of the apparitions by Our Lady.

The grotto at Massabielle in 1914, fifty-six years after Our Lady's apparitions.

Engraving showing Bernadette during the first apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes.

The language of the Rosary

FOURTH DAY OF THE NOVENA (new meditations posted each day)
Theme: Not Seeking Happiness in This World, But in the Next

The 3rd Apparition (Thursday, February 18th)
The Apparition did not speak until the third appearance, and therefore its identity was a matter of considerable speculation. Two pious villagers Jeanne-Marie Milhet and Antoinette Peyret, on hearing Bernadette's description of the apparition, considered it may have been a “revenant” (French for “coming back”), meaning a soul returning from Purgatory. Although it was something not officially taught in Catholic doctrine, since onoe has to be careful with regard to such phenomena, the concept of the revenant was deeply rooted in the Pyrenean mindset; furthermore, it was a held belief that “revenants” frequently manifested themselves to young children.

Jeanne-Marie and Antoinette thought the "damiezelo," as Bernadette called her, was the returning spirit of a young woman, one of their dear friends, who had died a few months before. The previous October, the head of the local chapter of The Children of Mary, a woman named Elisa Latapie, had died—they thought that the apparition might be Elisa. “Revenants” rarely spoke, but communicated their messages in writing. Therefore, after going to the 5:30 a.m. Mass one morning, Jeanne-Marie Milhet and Antoinette Peyret, being ardent partisans of the soul-in-Purgatory hypothesis, set out to accompany Bernadette to the grotto and furnished her with paper, a pen and an ink-pot to offer pen and ink to the Lady, with a request that she write down what she wished of the people, or at lest tell what was her motive in coming.

On this occasion the same little figure appeared to Bernadette, smiled warmly, and spoke, asking Bernadette to come every day for fifteen days. Bernadette promised to come, provided she was given permission to do so. Since neither her god-mother, who was her mother's sister, nor the priest actually forbade it, Bernadette's parents offered no objection.

Here is Bernadette’s account of the third apparition: "The third time was the following Thursday. The Lady only spoke to me the third time. I went to the grotto with a few mature people, who advised me to take paper and ink, and to ask her, if she had anything to say to me, to have the goodness to put it on paper. I said these words to the Lady. She smiled and said that it was not necessary for her to write what she had to say to me, but asked if I would do her the favor of coming for fifteen days. I told her that I would. She told me also that she did not promise to make me happy in this world, but in the next."

Although she spoke in Occitan, the regional language which Bernadette (whose French was poor) used, the apparition used remarkably formal language in her request: "Would you be so gracious as to come here for fifteen days?" (in Occitan: "Boulet aoue ra gracia de bié aci penden quinze dias?"; in French: "Voulez-vous me faire la grâce de venir ici pendant quinze jours?"). This significance of this politeness was not lost on the observers. As a penniless peasant girl, it would be very unusual for anyone to adopt this formal form of address when speaking to Bernadette.

While Bernadette returned to her companions, the Blessed Virgin followed her with her eyes, then, for a moment, looked tenderly at Antoinette, who was a member of the Sodality of the Children of Mary. “She is looking at you, now” said Bernadette to the young girl, who remained awe-stricken. “Ask her” said the two women again, “if it would displease her if we came with you every day during the fifteen days.” Bernadette put the question; and the Lady answered: “They may return with you; they, and others besides. I wish to see many persons here.” And she disappeared; and, after her, the celestial light which had surrounded her also gradually vanished.

Bernadette’s two companions related to her parents all that they had seen and heard. Much affected by all this, her parents began to believe, and resolved that one or the other of them should accompany their daughter to see everything for themselves. Bernadette repeated, with her usual candor, all that the Lady of the grotto had said, and how she had made her promise to return there every day for fifteen days.

That day was a market-day at Lourdes. The news of the apparitions in the grotto of Massabielle spread amongst the crowd, and, by the next day, the wonderful details agitated, not only the whole town of Lourdes, but the mountains and valleys, all the country round. “If the apparition is real” was generally said, “it is certainly the Blessed Virgin who is appearing to Bernadette.”

Meditation:
"I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next!" How sad most of us would be upon first hearing such words, because, let's face it, we want to find happiness in this world, don't we? Now, let us be clear about one thing, there is nothing wrong in seeking happiness, even in this life—but it all depends by what you mean by the word "happiness" doesn't it. There is the happiness of the sinner and the happiness of the saint; the happiness of the worldly people and the happiness of the spiritual folk; the happiness of selfish, greedy people and the happiness of humble, generous people. We can apply to this the much bandied and varied phrase of "Tell me who your friends are, and I'll tell you what you are" or "Tell me what you like, and I'll tell you what you are."

Tell an athlete and a lazy-slob that there will no physical education class today, and the former will be sad and the latter will be overjoyed. Tell a spiritual person and a worldly person that we cannot go to Mass today, because a winter storm might have made the roads too dangerous to drive upon, and the former will be disappointed and the latter will be rejoicing. Everyone acts according to their nature, and some persons fail to rise above the natural to appreciate the supernatural. This is often the source of division within families, as Our Lord had foretold:

“Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's enemies shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:34-38). “Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation. For there shall be, from henceforth, five in one house divided: three against two, and two against three” (Luke 12:51-52).

The Douay-Rheims Bible footnote says of the above verse: “I came to set a man at variance...etc”: Not that this was the end or design of the coming of our Savior; but that His coming and His doctrine would have this effect, by reason of the obstinate resistance that many would make, and of their persecuting all such as should adhere to Him."

Hmm! So much for “happy families”! Different kinds of happiness are being sought by different family members and that causes division. Of course, the Liberal way out of the dilemma is to let everyone do their own thing, but Our Lord said that we cannot serve God and mammon; and St. James tells us: “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God” (James 4:4). But to the Liberal that doesn’t matter, “going along to get along” with people is more important than getting along with God.

In Lourdes and even among Bernadette’s family, relatives and friends, we see opposite reactions. Some are for the apparitions, others are against; some believe, some do not; in some it produces joy, in others, anger. It all comes down to what Holy Scripture says of life: “The life of man upon earth is a warfare” (Job 7:1) and Our Lord has come with the two-edged sword for that warfare, not bringing the kind of peace we would like, strife and division because of Him. The Holy Innocents would be slaughtered because of Him; millions of Christians would be persecuted because of Him; hundreds of thousands of Christians would be tortured and martyred because of Him; billions would go to Hell for rejecting or hating Him. He knew that before He came, yet He came nevertheless.

He came to tell us not to seek a false, or fake, or superficial happiness in this world, but to seek a real happiness in the world to come: “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on Earth...but lay up to yourselves treasures in Heaven ... For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also” (Matthew 6:19-21). He came to tell us that we would not find a superficial worldly happiness in this life, for neither did He: “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated Me before you” (John 15:18). “Amen, amen I say to you, that you shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy” (John 16:20). This is nothing other than what Our Lady said to Bernadette: she would not be happy in this world, but in the next.

Sadly, this scandalizes many, if not most. They therefore seek, what they call “a more balanced” position, a way in which they strive to have the their cake and yet eat it; to love and live for worldly happiness, yet still obtain Heaven at the end of the day. That is the spirituality they like to hear, and there are many preaching that spirituality today! False prophets! As Our Lady said at La Salette: “The priests, ministers of my Son, the priests, by their wicked lives, by their irreverence and their impiety in the celebration of the holy mysteries, by their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures...are crucifying my Son again! ... God will allow the old serpent to cause divisions among those who reign in every society and in every family ... and the spirits of darkness will spread everywhere a universal slackening of all that concerns the service of God ... and will preach another Gospel contrary to that of the true Christ Jesus ... Several will abandon the faith, and a great number of priests and members of religious orders will break away from the true religion; among these people there will even be bishops ... the Church will yield to large persecution, a time of darkness and the Church will witness a frightful crisis. The true faith to the Lord having been forgotten, each individual will want to be on his own and be superior to other people ... People will think of nothing but amusement. The wicked will give themselves over to all kinds of sin ... Tremble, earth, and you who proclaim yourselves as serving Jesus Christ and who, on the inside, only adore yourselves!” (Our Lady at La Salette 1846).

So at the end of the day, we have to review and revise our notions of happiness. What is it that we really seek? Where do we seek it? When do we seek it? Are we accepting of Our Lord's version of religion, or are we trying to create our own hybrid version, a bit of religion mixed in with a little of the world and a hefty dose of self? Most Catholics, though they would not admit it and would even explode it accused of it, have made up their own version of the Catholic Faith. Some more, some less; but most are explicitly or implicitly doing just that.

Our Prayer:
O Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Eternal Word and, in virtue of this title, preserved from Original Sin, we kneel before thee, as did little Bernadette at Lourdes, and pray with childlike trust in thee, that as we contemplate thy glorious appearance at Lourdes, thou wilt look with mercy upon our present situation, grant us the graces needed to abandon our sinful and lukewarm habits, and to produce works worthy of penance for our past sins, with a firm desire never to commit them again. Grant too, though unworthy we may be, our petition and secure for us a favorable answer to the request for which we are making this novena.

[Mention Intention]
O Brilliant star of purity, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, glorious assumption, triumphant in your coronation, show unto us the mercy of the Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Queen and Mother, be our comfort, hope, strength, and consolation. Amen.

Pray:
Say the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

Final Invocation:
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Saint Bernadette, pray for us.

St. Bernadette would pray the Rosary over and over again while she shepherded the sheep.

Francois and Louise Soubirous, the parents of St. Bernadette.

A photo of the grotto at Massabielle taken in 1858, the year of the apparitions by Our Lady.

The grotto at Massabielle in 1914, fifty-six years after Our Lady's apparitions.

Engraving showing Bernadette during the first apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes.

The language of the Rosary

FIFTH DAY OF THE NOVENA (new meditations posted each day)
Theme: Our Lady's Power over the devils

The 4th Apparition (Friday, February 19th)
On the morning of Friday, February 19th, the first day of the mysterious fifteen days of visits spoken of by Our Lady, Louise Soubirous, Bernadette’s mother, whose heart was deeply stirred by all the strange news which report brought to her cottage, determined to go herself with her daughter to the Grotto. At daybreak, therefore, both of them, accompanied by her Aunt Bernarde, godmother of the child, carefully traversed the Rue des Petits-Fosses, well wrapped up in their hoods, for the north wind was bitterly cold. In a short time quite a retinue had joined them on the river-banks, the first-fruits of those crowds of Lourdes who will nevermore cease to flock there in ever-increasing numbers, until around 100 persons were present, with the tendency peculiar to all such gatherings, some suspecting a trick of the Evil One in so sensational an event, others inclined to see in it only some selfish trickery, or maybe morbid hallucination, while the majority were beginning to see in it the finger of God. What happened before the eyes of the family just now come?

Always clad in her poor black dress, her head covered with her little white woolen capulet, she quietly advanced, taper in hand, knelt down before the grotto, took her Rosary and prayed as if she were alone. Everything about her breathed innocence, truth, and candor The heavenly apparition disappeared almost always at the instant when the favored little one had finished her Rosary.

After the usual rites (bows, prostrations, and prayer), the little child, as before, was rapt in ecstasy, more sensibly than on previous occasions. When the overjoyed mother and housewife saw her Bernadette thus supernaturalized, and as if carried away by angelic bliss, with those unearthly smiles that lit up her countenance, usually so very plain, with transports of unearthly joy, which made her frail body tremble, she wept, she grew anxious, and complained that they had changed her child, whilst around her the stupefied bystanders said to one another, pointing at the young wonder worker: “How beautiful she is!” All who saw Bernadette in ecstasy declared that they never beheld anything like it on earth, and that long years after, their impression of it was as vivid as on the first day.

The heavenly vision lasted nearly half-an-hour, amid the respectful silence of the crowd. When Bernadette returned to herself, calm, but visibly moved, her first greetings were for her mother, thus proving that religion, even when rapt to the heavens, so far from checking the lawful feelings of Nature, only makes them stronger, while purifying them. And whilst she came to her side, amid the friendly cortege, whose astonishment began to show itself by veneration, the child-seer, becoming the poor, ragged daughter of a miller, informed them that, pleased with her punctuality, the beautiful Lady was going shortly to confide to her important revelations.

She told them also that this morning, when their conversation was most interesting, a hubbub of uncouth noises, contrasting hideously with the sweet voice of the unknown Lady, had sounded quite close to them, as if coming from underground near the waters of the canal; and these voices, wrangling, shouting together, and disputing, like the discordant cries of a mob quarreling, filled the air with barbarous dissonance. At one time, even, one of these voices, harsh and grating, cried out, doubtless to terrify the timid child: “Save yourself! Save yourself!” But the shining and glistening Lady had only to raise her head, frown with displeasure, and with an imperious glance turn towards the river, and at once this horrible discord, undoubtedly from Hell, ceased as if by magic.

Could the Evil One have foreseen at this hour that this spot of earth, fraught with destiny, was going to pass from under his sway, where he had hitherto performed his horrid rites? And was he not then trying to thwart the designs of Providence, as he will eventually try in so many ways, either by violence or craft? Only what avails the insolence of the bad angels, joined to their fury, in the presence of her who, terrible

Meditation:
Already, at a very early stage, we see God allow the devil to run interference with Our Lady's apparitions to St. Bernadette. Yet, Our Lady always remains in control and shows that she has total power of the devil. It is reassuring to know that the devil is totally chained to her will and command. There is nothing that he can without her and God;s permission. They toy with the devil like a cat toys with a mouse; and the devil is as afraid of them as the mouse is afraid of the cat. The following passage from The Secret of Mary, by St. Louis de Montfort illustrates this so well. When St. Dominic was preaching the Rosary near Carcassone, an Albigensian was brought to him who was possessed by the devil. The Saint exorcised him in the presence of a great crowd of people. The devils who were in possession of this wretched man were forced to answer St. Dominic's questions in spite of themselves.

St. Dominic put his rosary round the neck of the possessed man and asked them who, of all the saints in Heaven, was the one they feared most, who should therefore be the most loved and revered by men. At first they refused and pleaded not to be made to answer the question. St. Dominic was not in the least moved by the pathetic words of those wretched spirits, and told them he would not let them alone until they had answered his question. Then they said they would whisper the answer in such a way that only St. Dominic would be able to hear. The latter firmly insisted upon their answering clearly and audibly. Then the devils kept quiet and would not say another word, completely disregarding St. Dominic's orders.

So he knelt down and said this prayer to Our Lady: "Oh, most glorious Virgin Mary, I implore you by the power of the Holy Rosary command these enemies of the human race to answer my question."

Then the devils cried, "Dominic, we beseech you, by the passion of Jesus Christ and the merits of his holy Mother and of all the saints, let us leave the body of this man without speaking further; for the angels will answer your question whenever you wish. After all, are we not liars, so why should you want to believe us? Do not torment us any more, have pity on us."

St. Dominic said, and kneeling down he prayed to the Blessed Virgin that she command them to speak. St. Dominic had scarcely finished this prayer when he saw the Blessed Virgin near at hand surrounded by a multitude of angels. She struck the possessed man with a golden rod that she held and said, "Answer my servant Dominic at once." (It must be noted that the people neither saw nor heard Our Lady, only St. Dominic.)

Then the devils started screaming:

"Oh, you who are enemy, our downfall and our destruction, why have you come from heaven to torture us so grievously? O advocate of sinners, you who snatch them from the very jaws of hell, you who are a most sure path to heaven, must we, in spite of ourselves, tell the whole truth and confess before everyone who it is who is the cause of our shame and our ruin? Oh, woe to us, princes of darkness.

"Then listen, you Christians. This Mother of Jesus is most powerful in saving her servants from falling into hell. She is like the sun which destroys the darkness of our wiles and subtlety. It is she who uncovers our hidden plots, breaks our snares, and makes our temptations useless and ineffective.

"We have to say, however, reluctantly, that no soul who has really persevered in her service has ever been damned with us; one single sigh that she offers to the Blessed Trinity is worth far more than all the prayers, desires, and aspirations of all the saints. We fear her more than all the other saints in heaven together, and we have no success with her faithful servants.

"Many Christians who call on her at the hour of death and who really ought to be damned according to our ordinary standards are saved by her intercession. And if that Marietta (it is thus in their fury they called her) did not counter our plans and our efforts, we should have overcome the Church and destroyed it long before this, and caused all the Orders in the Church to fall into error and infidelity.

"Now that we are forced to speak, we must also tell you that nobody who perseveres in saying the Rosary will be damned, because she obtains for her servants the grace of true contrition for their sins by which they obtain pardon and mercy."

Then St. Dominic had all the people say the Rosary very slowly and with great devotion, and a wonderful thing happened: at each Hail Mary which he and the people said, a large number of devils issued forth from the wretched man's body under the guise of red‑hot coals. (Secret of the Rosary, 33rd Rose)

Our Prayer:
O Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Eternal Word and, in virtue of this title, preserved from Original Sin, we kneel before thee, as did little Bernadette at Lourdes, and pray with childlike trust in thee, that as we contemplate thy glorious appearance at Lourdes, thou wilt look with mercy upon our present situation, grant us the graces needed to abandon our sinful and lukewarm habits, and to produce works worthy of penance for our past sins, with a firm desire never to commit them again. Grant too, though unworthy we may be, our petition and secure for us a favorable answer to the request for which we are making this novena.

[Mention Intention]
O Brilliant star of purity, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, glorious assumption, triumphant in your coronation, show unto us the mercy of the Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Queen and Mother, be our comfort, hope, strength, and consolation. Amen.

Pray:
Say the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

Final Invocation:
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Saint Bernadette, pray for us.

St. Bernadette would pray the Rosary over and over again while she shepherded the sheep.

Francois and Louise Soubirous, the parents of St. Bernadette.

A photo of the grotto at Massabielle taken in 1858, the year of the apparitions by Our Lady.

The grotto at Massabielle in 1914, fifty-six years after Our Lady's apparitions.

Engraving showing Bernadette during the first apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes.

The language of the Rosary

SIXTH DAY OF THE NOVENA (new meditations posted each day)
Theme: Persecution is the Lot for Our Lady's Friends

The 5th Apparition (Saturday, February 20th)
Thirty people were present. Bernadette reported later that the lady had taught her a prayer, which she said every day of her life, but never wrote down or repeated to anyone. Father Peyramale, the local parish curate, questioned Bernadette about the happiness she found at the Grotto. She answered "When I see her I feel as if I'm no longer of this world. And when the vision disappears I'm amazed to find myself still here."

Next day (Saturday, February 20th), when Bernadette appeared on the scene of these wonders, again accompanied by her mother, the approaches to Massabielle were already black with people, yet this crowd, of which all eyes were turned towards her, did not seem to embarrass or surprise her. As though no one was present, Bernadette went simply and knelt in her usual place a stone near the center of the excavation and, taking her Rosary, began to pray. She said the Hail Marys as she let drop bead after bead for some minutes, when, lo and behold, the punctual heavenly Messenger was at hand. At once the shepherd-girl began to return her smiles by smiles, and welcome by greetings, not knowing what to do in order to express better her reverent and affectionate homage, and she did this with such grace that her mother, Louise, more bewildered than content, said to those within ear-shot.

In truth, I no longer recognize my little child. In fact, the ecstasy today filled her completely. They came close to her; they stood up most reverently, not uttering a word, and holding their breath, in order to follow the marvel. Unable to discover anything, alas, on the side of the Grotto, lighted up and tenanted for the child alone, they deemed themselves happy to be able to see the wonderful reflection on the face of the child that seemed like an angel’s. After this too short scene, hardly lasting forty minutes, Bernadette declared that her Lady had deigned, becoming a teacher of Catechism, to teach her, word for word, a special prayer for her own use. How glad should we be to know and repeat this prayer that came from the heart of the Mother of God! O Mary, teach us to pray in like manner!

The 6th Apparition (Sunday, February 21st)
From the dawn of this first Sunday in Lent, the number of sightseers who had come by night to the appointed rendezvous was so great along the banks of the Gave that at six o’clock the little Soubirous had difficulty in making her way amid greetings that waxed ever more enthusiastic. Over 100 people were present and from now onwards, those numbers would grow into thousands.

Now, among the spectators, a doctor, notorious for his skepticism no less than for his skill, was convinced that the visions were simply the result of imagination or illusion due to a nervous or mental disorder. He resolved to come in person, in the secret hope of demolishing by a word, in the name of Science, all this childish display of pathological mysticism. But at the mere sight of the ecstatic child, lost in her wonderful vision, he soon recognized a case without a parallel, which doubtless it would not be easy to explain on medical grounds. So he returned to the Grotto several times in succession, always more attentive and more nonplussed. Everyone knows that, as the grace of God is never wanting to a man of good-will, Doctor Dozous (for it was he) ended by seeing everything in its true light. Recognizing, with a fairness and an independence not often met with, that the facts at Massabielle were supernatural, he was publicly converted. He was thus the first man of science won over by Bernadette he would certainly not be the last. When, then, the doctor had stated that the child, in the midst of her heavenly ecstasy, did not lose her self-possession, remaining ever calm and tranquil, and handing her candle, blown out by the wind, two or three times to her neighbor to be re-lit, her pulse remaining calm the whole time, her breathing normal, her circulation regular, and showing no signs of nervous excitement, his conscience forced him to confess that the finger of God was there.

During this fifth apparition, the doctor saw two large tears roll down her cheeks. Soon they learnt the meaning of this: the vision. Our Lady, after being happy and smiling, suddenly wore a sorrowful and pained look, when she gazed into the far distance, she discerned sights that saddened her. What Our Lady saw, as she explained at once to the alarmed Bernadette, were the sins of the world, already far too great, which came to dim accidentally the essential happiness of the Queen of Heaven, and imprint an unutterable sadness on Mary's glorious face.

The conclusion of this tearful episode was that it was necessary to pray much for poor sinners. Whenever we might go to Lourdes, it should be in a spirit of Reparation and Atonement, this should be the chief idea (too little insisted upon of hitherto) of our pilgrimages. God grant that the hoards of pilgrims may be more and more filled with this idea, in proportion as the evils of the present time grow even greater! But the divine joy did not long remain absent from the heart and face of the Lady, who, smiling graciously and happily as before, disappeared in the reflection of her own brightness.

As for Bernadette, the same evening of this memorable day, when she had witnessed the tears of the Mother of Christ, a terrible trial was about to befall her. Hardly had she returned to her wretched dwelling, when she found herself led off between two policemen to the police-station, there to hear herself bitterly reproached, and even threatened, by the local chief of police, and distinctly forbidden to go near the too-famous rocks any more. This scene is wonderfully like that of the Pretorium, at which, nineteen centuries ago, the holiest of Victims had to appear. The new Caiphas, the police-chief Mr. Dutour, employed his wiliest tricks to no purpose, in the hope of shaking her firm resolve, alleging by turns that the public order was imperiled, the majesty of the law disregarded nay, the sanctity of religion compromised. Quite as uselessly the police magistrate, Jacomet, of unhappy memory, added his persuasions, at first harsh, then mild and insinuating.

The witness of Our Lady found answers to every question; answers as natural as they were to the point without being frightened by brutality or won over by fake niceties ('hard-cop' and 'soft-cop' approach), or ever losing her self-possession, despite the deliberate falsification and twisting of her previous replies, and every kind of false testimony.

Mr. Estrade, a tax-collector, who was an intelligent and thoughtful man, was present either by chance or by the will of Providence at her examination. He became so indignant by the manner of it, that he was inclined to take Bernadette's side, rightly judging that such an attitude on the part of an ignorant young child before this display of civil authority was decidedly supernatural. The sudden arrival of her father, who was immediately intimidated and frightened in the face of this severity of the law, sided with them; but this could not shake the heart of the shepherdess in her firm resolve to revisit Massabielle, whither she felt irresistibly drawn in spite of herself, as soon as circumstances would allow her.

How sad this cold Sunday evening must have been under the roof of the Soubirous family room, especially to the heart of the little child! For it is needless to say that mental anguish was from this time added to external trials. On the one hand the Apparition invited her, yet she saw herself restrained from going there by filial reverence. What was she to do? Was she going to the enchanting Vision, so good and sweet, at the sacrifice of duty, a duty to obey parents and legitimate authorities, which was required by the solemn authority of the Ten Commandments? It was indeed a cruel dilemma!

Whilst waiting till it should please the shining Lady itself to settle this conflict of conscience, Bernadette, like a good Christian, went early next day, Monday February 22nd, not to the Grotto, as she had longed to do hitherto, but to the school.

In the evening, when she had to return to the Sisters, a strange thing happened. Arriving, with her little basket on her arm, at the two paths leading to the hospice, she feels, as it were, an invisible but real barrier, which holds her back. Several times she tries, indeed, to go along the path where obedience calls her, but in vain! Then, thinking she knows, in her childish conscience, that Heaven is calling her towards the Gave river, she walks as though moved automatically by an irresistible force.

The police were also soon on her track. Let us give the gendarme this credit, who was somewhat perplexed: he had, at least, the good sense not to interrupt the long prayer of the holy child. But a new trial was in store for her; this time there was no vision or transfiguration! What could such a disappointment mean? Did Heaven intend, by this sudden and unexpected refusal, to punish a fault more physical than moral, or had the Lady of glory already forgotten her solemn engagements? Lamma sabacthani? My God, My God! Why has Thou abandoned me?

For us, who, in the light of later events, can grasp the true significance of this absence of the Lady, how can we fail to admire in this the extreme delicacy of the Blessed Virgin, anxious to respect paternal authority by staying away that day, though very reluctantly, even to the point in which it was in open conflict with her own heavenly wishes?

On the other hand, because it is the rule of Providence to draw good from evil, it came to pass that the grievous anxiety of the child arose from the involuntary severity and human respect of Francois Soubirous, who had sided with the police against his daughter, and Providence finally made everything easy for her, as the father henceforth gave permission to his unhappy child to go to Massabielle as often as she liked.

Meanwhile the free-thinkers of the town did not see it in this light; and already they were carelessly scoffing, observing to their friends, with a hearty laugh, that the Lady was afraid of gendarmes, adding that because that fox Jacomet had made a few inquiries into the matter, she had decided to change her residence.

Meditation:
After Our Lady appears at La Salette, the two seers, Melanie and Maximin suffer persecution; after Our Lady appears to the young three seers at Fatima, they are arrested, harshly interrogated, threatened and and put in prison for a while; the same happens to Bernadette at Lourdes. It reminds us of the case of St. Teresa of Avila, who was traveling around the country bravely trying to reform the then undisciplined Carmelite Order, and everywhere she went she encountered all kinds of natural and moral difficulties in overwhelming proportions. Frustrated by all this, she looks up to the heavens and in indignation and anger says to Our Lord: "Why are you letting all this happen to me? I am only trying to do your work!" Our Lord surprisingly gives her a response, and says: "But Teresa, I always treat my friends like this!" To which Teresa retorted: "Then I'm not surprised that you have so few friends!"

The Bible warns us: "Son, when thou comest to the service of God, stand in justice and in fear, and prepare thy soul for temptation" (Ecclesiasticus 2:1). Yet it also tells us that "No evils shall happen to him that feareth the Lord, but in temptation God will keep him, and deliver him from evils" (Ecclesiasticus 33:1). "The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly from temptation"(2 Peter 2:9), which is exactly what Heaven does in the case of Bernadette. And God will never give us anything beyond our strength: "And God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able: but will make also with temptation issue, that you may be able to bear it" (1 Corinthians 10:13). That help from God may come in the form of interior strength, or exterior help, like a Simon of Cyrene who helped Jesus carry His cross, or a some natural event or phenomenon, like the miracle of the sun at Fatima, or the miraculous survival from the atom-bomb blast at Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced by the Jesuit and Franciscan priests during World War II, or a combination of some or all of these.

Our love of God is tested by suffering. A fair-weather Catholic is only a partial Catholic. Our Lord is pretty clear about what kind of Catholics He calls "followers" when He says:"If any man will follow Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me" (Mark 8:34). "And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me" (Matthew 10:38). Yet that sorrow and suffering is only temporary, as He told His Apostles at the Last Supper: "Amen, amen I say to you, that you shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy ... and your heart shall rejoice; and your joy no man shall take from you" (John 16:20-22).

Our Prayer:
O Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Eternal Word and, in virtue of this title, preserved from Original Sin, we kneel before thee, as did little Bernadette at Lourdes, and pray with childlike trust in thee, that as we contemplate thy glorious appearance at Lourdes, thou wilt look with mercy upon our present situation, grant us the graces needed to abandon our sinful and lukewarm habits, and to produce works worthy of penance for our past sins, with a firm desire never to commit them again. Grant too, though unworthy we may be, our petition and secure for us a favorable answer to the request for which we are making this novena.

[Mention Intention]
O Brilliant star of purity, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, glorious assumption, triumphant in your coronation, show unto us the mercy of the Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Queen and Mother, be our comfort, hope, strength, and consolation. Amen.

Pray:
Say the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

Final Invocation:
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Saint Bernadette, pray for us.

St. Bernadette would pray the Rosary over and over again while she shepherded the sheep.

Francois and Louise Soubirous, the parents of St. Bernadette.

A photo of the grotto at Massabielle taken in 1858, the year of the apparitions by Our Lady.

The grotto at Massabielle in 1914, fifty-six years after Our Lady's apparitions.

Engraving showing Bernadette during the first apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes.

The language of the Rosary

SEVENTH DAY OF THE NOVENA (new meditations posted each day)
Theme: Being the Object of God's Tough Love

The works of the good God are always crossed by the rage of the devil and by the ignorance or the passions of men. The great things which were being prepared at the grotto of Lourdes for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, were therefore quickly attacked and misrepresented. Some cried out: "Superstition, illusion, folly!" "This little girl is insane," they said, "she must be shut up!" Others spoke of impostures, fraudulent tricks. "It is a cheat; ail will end with money. This child is playing a disgraceful farce. Justice should interfere."

Other, more moderate souls, admitted that they could not doubt either of the child's character and thought that it most probably was a natural phenomenon, which comes within the range of medicine. Science knows perfectly the strange effects of catalepsy, hysteria, and hallucination. Their suggestion was that a physician should examine the thing closely, and as a result the so-called visions will melt away like snow in the sun. The town of Lourdes was literally turned upside down. The pressure was now mounting on Bernadette.

Sunday, February 21st: After the 6th Apparition, she was hauled off to the police station to be grilled and threatened; her father, under intimidation, had take the side of the police, which resulted in both the police and her father forbidding her to go back to the grotto again. She was threatened with prison if she were to disobey. Bernadette had much to suffer, before the evidence of the truth and power of the Immaculate Virgin would triumph over all obstacles,

This decision caused the local parish priest to intervene angrily. "This child is innocent!" cried the priest, indignantly, when the police chief and the mayor of Lourdes came to announce the decision; "This child is innocent! You could find no pretext upon which to prosecute her. Such a measure will be the most odious persecution, the more odious that it strikes a poor defenseless creature. The prefect cannot, by any law, have Bernadette arrested! As a priest, as pastor of this parish, I owe a duty to all, and especially to the weakest I know my duty as a pastor. Go, then, and tell the Prefect that his officers will find me at the threshold of this poor family, and that they shall have to pass over my body, before they touch a hair of this poor little girl s head."

St. Bernadette recounts these painful moments in her own words thus: "Dominique Jacomet the police commissioner! He was suspicious of everyone. He took hold of my hood as I left the church and said, "Qu'em bas sequi—follow me." He took me to his office and the questioning began. 'My name is Bernadette, I said. I could not say if I was thirteen or fourteen, as I had never learned to count. He tried to suggest I was seeing Our Blessed Lady. I insisted I saw only 'Aquero.' Jacomet knew that 'Aquero' means 'reverence in the presence of a sacred reality.' He wrote down with a goose-quill every word I said. Then he read it back to me— all twisted, untruthful, incorrect. 'Sir,' I protested, 'you are altering everything I say. 'You Brazen hussy!' he blazed, and the tassel on his cap shook as he ranted in anger. At that moment the door opened, and my father stood there saying, 'I am the father of this little one.' Next day, at catechism class, the girls shunned me as a criminal, and the Sister Superior thanked God had been arrested for my misbehavior. One woman called me a brat, another slapped my face."

Monday, February 22nd: Bernadette had intended to reluctantly obey and comply with order banning her from visiting the grotto, but was led there by an irresistible force. However, Our Lady failed to appear and Bernadette left disillusioned, sad and in tears. Her father questioned her about that 'irresistible' visit and then, to Bernadette's great joy, changed his mind about forbidding her from visiting the grotto. The next day, Tuesday, she would return to the grotto once again with her father's blessing.

The 7th Apparition (Tuesday, February 23rd)
The crowds were starting to grow as word got around. About 150 people were present for this apparition, including some of the leading villagers who had come part out of curiosity but also a desire to mock the "ignorant fools" for their gullibility. The watchers included Jean-Baptiste Estrade, a local tax inspector who was sent by Fr. Peyramale, the parish priest, to see what was going on. Also present was Duffo (a court official), and the officers from the garrison who had come to witness the "show." However instead of having their suspicions confirmed, they were astonished by what they saw and turned into "believers and witnesses." There is nothing for 'public consumption' that emerges from this 7th Apparition. Bernadette said later that the Lady had told her a secret, which was for her alone, and was never revealed to anyone.

In the midst of a dense crowd of .from eight to ten thousand persons, Bernadette arrived as usual at the grotto, about daybreak. She had knelt down in her usual place, outside the cavern; in her left hand was a blessed taper, in the other her rosary. Suddenly she heard the blessed voice of the Queen of Heaven calling her: "Bernadette!"
"Here I am!" immediately answered the child.
"I have a secret to tell you, for yourself only, which concerns you alone!" said the Mother of God. "Do you promise me never to reveal it to any one?"
"I promise you."
The dialogue continued. Although the Blessed Virgin and the child spoke aloud, no one heard them.
"What! you did not hear?" said she on coming out of her ecstasy. "Yet the Lady spoke aloud. She has such a sweet voice!"
The Blessed Virgin then taught her a prayer, making her repeat it, word for word, with maternal condescension. This prayer the child recited at every apparition; but she would never make it known to any one.

"And now, my daughter" added the Blessed Virgin, "go and tell the priests that a shrine must be erected here, and that they.must come here in procession." These words ended the apparition for that day.

On leaving the Rocks of Massabielle, Bernadette immediately repaired to the pastor s house. The latter had as yet never spoken to her.
"Are you not Bernadette?" he asked gravely and almost sternly, as soon as he saw her coming towards him.
"Yes, it is I, sir!" quietly answered the humble messenger of the Blessed Virgin.
"Well, Bernadette, what do you want of me? What brought you here?"
"I came, Father, on the part of the Lady, who appears to me in the grotto of Massabielle!"
The priest seemed to treat the matter very lightly and not to believe it. The child repeated with an air of candor, and with great confidence, the words of the apparition.
"And you do not know this Lady's name?" asked the pastor.
"No!" answered Bernadette. "She did not tell me who she was."
"Those who believe you, imagine that it is the Blessed Virgin Mary. But take care; you alone say you see her; if you falsely pretend to see her in the grotto, you are taking the way never to see her in Heaven."

"I do not know if it is the Blessed Virgin, Father"; answered the child; "but I see the vision as I see you, and she speaks to me as truly as you speak to me. And I come to tell you, from her, that she wants a shrine to be raised to her at the Rocks of Massabielle, where she appears to me."
Much agitated, the good Father Peyramale made her repeat the very words used by the Lady at the grotto. Bernadette said: "After having confided to me the secret which concerns me and which I can not reveal to anyone. The Lady added: 'And now, go and tell the priest that a shrine must be erected here, and that people come in procession to it.'"

After a moment s reflection, the pastor replied: "I cannot take your word for this, you understand Tell this Lady that she must make herself known. If she is the Blessed Virgin, let her show it by some miracle. She appears to you, you tell me, on a wild ruse-bush? It is now February; tell her, from me, that if she wishes a shrine built, she must make the rose-bush bloom." And he dismissed her. What had passed between the child and the priest was soon known in the town. Curiosity and excitement were general; and several free-thinkers of the neighborhood resolved to go henceforth to the grotto, in order to assist at the exposure of the "superstition."

Meditation:
While we may merely think and focus on the positive side of the apparitions and the great privilege that Bernadette enjoyed, there is also the negative side that keeps everything in balance. We have seen how the apparitions brought Bernadette much pain and suffering: the police and the mayor turns against her; initially her own family turns against her; the religious sisters, especially the Superior of the convent school she attended also turned against her; her fellow students turned against her; the local townsfolk called her either a fraud or insane. The Bible verse of "For whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth" (Proverbs 3:12; Hebrews 12:6) was never more fitting as it was in Bernadette's case.

Our modern sentimental notions of religion find such treatment hard to accept and tolerate. On the one-hand Our Lady is all sweet, smiling and nice; yet on the other hand she brings Bernadette many unjust sufferings! God never changes, and this is God's usual way of acting. Look at the life of most saints, and you will find the moments of sweetness tempered by many more moments of bitter sufferings, or hardships, or persecutions. This balances out all things. God exercises His mercy while at the same time exercising His justice; God is gentle and God is tough; God gives comfort and God gives pain. This is summed up by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: it is both a Sacrament (sweet) and a Sacrifice (bitter). That is also how our life must unfold and grow. The modern man, especially the Liberal, is all about softness, niceties, pleasantries, diplomacy and compromise; the tough side of religion is anathema to him. This is not the way Heaven operates. The forthcoming Chastisement, that Our Lady so often warns us about in her apparitions, will not be sweet, sugary, syrupy, comfortable, diplomatic chastisement; it will one that has never been imagined nor experienced in the history of humanity, where the living will envy the dead. Why? Because through our sweet, sugary, syrupy man-made Liberal version of religion, we have let ourselves and the world around us increasingly offend God, and have neglected, due to our diplomacy, tolerance, compromise and false excuses to make the necessary corrections by our words and our actions. We have "loved our neighbor to Hell"!

Our Prayer:
O Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Eternal Word and, in virtue of this title, preserved from Original Sin, we kneel before thee, as did little Bernadette at Lourdes, and pray with childlike trust in thee, that as we contemplate thy glorious appearance at Lourdes, thou wilt look with mercy upon our present situation, grant us the graces needed to abandon our sinful and lukewarm habits, and to produce works worthy of penance for our past sins, with a firm desire never to commit them again. Grant too, though unworthy we may be, our petition and secure for us a favorable answer to the request for which we are making this novena.

[Mention Intention]
O Brilliant star of purity, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, glorious assumption, triumphant in your coronation, show unto us the mercy of the Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Queen and Mother, be our comfort, hope, strength, and consolation. Amen.

Pray:
Say the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

Final Invocation:
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Saint Bernadette, pray for us.

St. Bernadette would pray the Rosary over and over again while she shepherded the sheep.

Francois and Louise Soubirous, the parents of St. Bernadette.

A photo of the grotto at Massabielle taken in 1858, the year of the apparitions by Our Lady.

The grotto at Massabielle in 1914, fifty-six years after Our Lady's apparitions.

Engraving showing Bernadette during the first apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes.

The language of the Rosary

EIGHTH DAY OF THE NOVENA (new meditations posted each day)
Theme: "Penance! Penance!! Penance!!!" says Our Lady.

8th Apparition: Wednesday, February 24th
In the morning, Bernadette had to pass through massive human barriers, and receive homage she little understood, before she could reach her granite prie-dieu. Everything, at first, happened as usual that is, blissfully. But soon there rolled, as it were, a cloud of sadness over the brightness of the ecstasy.

After she had started to pray, Our Lady once again appeared to her. But after a short while, the crowds saw the child drop her arms, like someone who has just heard some bad news, and tears ran down her cheeks. She then rose up, her face full of sorrow, to ascend the slope of the Grotto, pressing her lips to the earth each time she knelt. Having reached the wild rose-tree, which hung from above, she made fresh reverences to the invisible Being, and raised her head as though to hear her commands, whereupon, turning to the crowd, who deeply touched by her actions and her tear-stained face, they heard her cry out three times, while sobbing: “Penance! Penance! Penance!” At one and the same time, they were words of sadness, like the faults which they deplore; words of sternness as the repentance which they require; and yet words full of light, like the faith and hope in God which they imply. The conclusion of this touching scene was the command which the Vision gave to her confidant to pray for poor sinners. And the dialogue ended by the revelation of another personal secret for Bernadette, which, like the others, we, the uninitiated, shall only learn in the clear light of eternity.

Having returned to her place, the child-seer found there her usual peace, which the untimely and burlesque appearance of a sergeant of the gendarmes (police force) failed to disturb, though he came, he said, in the name of the law, to put a stop to all this nonsense. He only provoked the indignation of the spectators, whose menacing anger soon put to flight this over-zealous officer.

Each person, on coming away, asked himself if such an indictment, on the part of Heaven, did not imply the approach of grave trials, in view of their serious crimes, unless the Divine justice were appeased by an adequate satisfaction, clearly hinted at by the triple cry of the prophetess for penance.

This should be a warning and lesson to those who, forgetting the lessons of Lourdes, and also of La Salette, or even of the Gospel, all of which comes down to the same thing, seem, and who, in spite of every warning, to have taken for their motto: “Let tomorrow take care of itself!” Let those dilettanti (the superficial and frivolous), some of whom were crowding the flowery banks of the River Gave back then, and still do so today, as well as souls of mere sentimental piety and niceness, let them all understand that, except by “Penance, penance, penance,” there is no salvation for nations and no salvation for individuals. As Jesus Himself warned us in the Gospel: “Unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish…No, I say to you; but except you do penance, you shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3-5).

A prominent inhabitant of Lourdes, of upright, but somewhat skeptical mind, related to Mr. Henri Lasserre, how, on that day, he was convinced by the evidence of the supernatural. He did not see the rose-bush bloom, but he saw Bernadette in ecstasy; he saw the heavenly reflection on the face of the humble child; and his good faith returned. How can we help believing in the sun, when, without yet seeing itself, we perceive the summit of the mountains gilded by its rays?

“I reached the grotto“ he said, “very much disposed to investigate, and, to tell the truth, to have a good laugh, expecting a farce or something ridiculous. I placed myself in the first row. The crowd was immense. About sunrise, Bernadette arrived. I was near her. She knelt down, without heeding the crowd which surrounded her, as if she had been alone. Very soon her look seemed to receive and reflect an unknown light. Before this transfiguration of the child, all my preconceived denials fell to the ground at once, and gave place to an extraordinary feeling which took possession of me, in spite of myself. I felt certain that a mysterious being was there. Suddenly and entirely transfigured, Bernadette was no longer Bernadette. Her attitude, her slightest gesture had a superhuman majesty. She smiled at the invisible being.

“I was no less moved than the other spectators. Like them, I held my breath to try and hear the conversation which was taking place between the vision and the child. At a certain moment, Bernadette advanced on her knees, from the spot where she was praying, that is to say, from the banks of the Gave, to the end of the grotto. This was about fifteen feet. Whilst she thus ascended the somewhat steep side of the rock, those who were in her way very distinctly heard her pronounce these words: ‘Penance! Penance!! Penance!!!’”

The more than impartial witness, who relates this touching scene, saw Bernadette come out of her ecstasy and immediately become again a poor little girl, almost in rags, in no way distinguished from other peasant children. This witness was the local tax collector at Lourdes, and it was he, who, on the previous Sunday, had assisted and witnessed Bernadette’s interrogation by the local chief of police.

When, on leaving the grotto, Bernadette presented herself at the parish presbytery, where Father Peyramale, with his usual calmness, said to her, “Well, did you see the vision today? And what did she say?”
“I saw the vision,” answered Bernadette, “and I said to her: ‘Our pastor asks you for some proofs, for instance to make the rose-bush under your feet blossom; because my word does not suffice for the priests, and they will not trust me.’ Then she smiled but without speaking. Then, she told me to pray for sinners, and commanded me to come up to the end of the grotto. And she said three times: ‘Penance! . . . Penance!! . . . Penance!!!’ I repeated these words dragging myself to the end of the grotto on my knees. There she revealed to me a second secret which concerns only myself. Then, she disappeared.”
“And what did you find at the end of the grotto?”
“I looked after she had disappeared (for while she is there I notice nothing but herself, she absorbs me) and I saw nothing but the rock and in the ground a few blades of grass growing up in the sand.”
“Let us wait,” said the pastor. But in this recital Bernadette omitted some interesting particulars, of which we cannot deprive the pious reader.

Whilst the child was absorbed in the ecstasy, she was seen to kiss the ground, several times, ascending on her knees the rugged rock which arose before her, as far as the end of the grotto, on the left. The Blessed Virgin had said to her: “You will pray to God for sinners ... You will kiss the ground for the conversion of sinners.” And she signaled for her to advance on her knees.

Bernadette, raising her head, after having kissed the ground, looked for the Apparition; she saw her slowly drawing back and followed her, renewing her humiliating kisses of penance. She went in under the arch and remained some time motionless. At this moment, she saw the Virgin so near her, she said, that by raising and extending her arm, she could have touched her feet.

She turned toward the spectators, made a gesture which seemed to ask the crowd to bow down. It was not understood. Then her finger rested for a moment on her lips, then was pointed, quickly and imperiously towards the ground with an astonishing energy and authority. The look and gesture seemed to say to all of the bystanders: “You also, kiss the ground!” Many persons instantly bowed down, awed by the sudden supernatural grandeur and authoritativeness of that lowly child; and, thinking they obeyed an order from the Vision, they obediently kissed the ground. Bernadette turned back to the Vision and again knelt down, still kissing the ground, and returned to her contemplation before the niche of the grotto.

From this spectacle, which must have been so trying and testing to human pride, the spectators went home with various feelings. But all were awed and amazed. Many went away with the religious impression left by mysterious events behind which one feels that God is hidden, thinking that a great future was being prepared in the grotto. The Blessed Virgin made them feel a presentiment of her future mercies.

Subsequently, penance for sinners was again asked of Bernadette. She went up and came down on her knees, once, during each apparition, and always in silence; however, it was only that first time that she was heard to say out loud those words: “Penance! Penance! Penance!”

One day, she made several of these laborious ascents up the rock on her knees. Her face was continually lit up with a happy smile, a shade of melancholy veiled it at times, and even then the smile remained sad but happy. It is often remembered with astonishment what lightness the child displayed in that difficult ascent, over rough stone, on her knees, “I often thought,” writes an eye-witness, “that invisible beings were aiding her to ascend and descend so rapidly.”
She was asked the first day: “But why did you walk on your knees and kiss the ground?”
“The Vision commanded me to do it; and it was a penance for myself and others.”
“Why did you make us a sign to kiss the ground?”
“The Vision seemed to say that you all should do penance for sinners.”
More than a year after, some priests who questioned her very closely, said to her in relation to this penance: “But it is very strange that the Blessed Virgin should have asked all that of you! These are extraordinary things, which appear to us unreasonable.”
She answered with downcast eyes and in a thrilling tone: “Ah! For the conversion of sinners! . . .”
The desire of the Heart of Mary was revealed. It was sinners whom she called by Bernadette’s prayer and humiliation. It was sinners she also sought by the future miracles, which were to be performed, in their hundreds, at that favored grotto.

Meditation:
Our Lady is following the Liturgical season with her call for penance at Lourdes! This apparition, at which she demands penance, takes place on the Wednesday after the First Sunday of Lent (or a week after Ash Wednesday). The feast of Our Lady of Lourdes (February 11th) is thus, providentially, falls either in Lent itself (as it did in 1858) or pretty close to Lent (as it is this year). For us, in 2015, Septuagesima Sunday, which starts the 3-2-1 countdown to Lent, fell just before the beginning of this novena (it was on February 1st). It is a most timely reminder for the need of penance in our lives.

Unfortunately, our modern-day Catholic Church, with its diseased sections of Liberalism and Modernism, has gone in totally the opposite direction to Our Lady's wishes for penance. The world, both Catholic and non-Catholic, is growing and has been growing more and more sinful since the time of Bernadette, but the Lenten fast has be reduced to a mockery of merely Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Totally illogical and insane! Which doctor would prescribe less medicine when the disease is growing to even greater proportions? Once again, the words and prophecies of Our Lady of La Salette, about a slackening in matters of Faith and the consequences, come back to mind:

"If my people do not wish to submit themselves, I am forced to let go of the hand of my Son ... A great famine will come ... children will die in the arms of those who hold them. The others will do penance through hunger ... The priests by their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures ... are asking vengeance, and vengeance is hanging over their heads ... for there is no one left to beg mercy and forgiveness for the people. There are no more generous souls, there is no one left worthy of offering a spotless sacrifice to the Eternal for the sake of the world ... The chiefs, the leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance, and the devil has bedimmed their intelligence. They have become wandering stars which the old devil will drag along with his tail to make them perish ... The spirits of darkness will spread everywhere a universal slackening of all that concerns the service of God ... People will think of nothing but amusement ... Disorder and the love of carnal pleasures will be spread all over the earth ... The Church will be in eclipse, the world will be in dismay ... Several religious orders will abandon the faith, and a great number of priests and members of religious orders will break away from the true religion; among these people there will even be bishops ... Rome will lose faith ... The righteous will suffer greatly. Their prayers, their penances and their tears will rise up to Heaven and all of God's people will beg for forgiveness and mercy and will plead for my help and intercession."

Our Prayer:
O Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Eternal Word and, in virtue of this title, preserved from Original Sin, we kneel before thee, as did little Bernadette at Lourdes, and pray with childlike trust in thee, that as we contemplate thy glorious appearance at Lourdes, thou wilt look with mercy upon our present situation, grant us the graces needed to abandon our sinful and lukewarm habits, and to produce works worthy of penance for our past sins, with a firm desire never to commit them again. Grant too, though unworthy we may be, our petition and secure for us a favorable answer to the request for which we are making this novena.

[Mention Intention]
O Brilliant star of purity, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, glorious assumption, triumphant in your coronation, show unto us the mercy of the Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Queen and Mother, be our comfort, hope, strength, and consolation. Amen.

Pray:
Say the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

Final Invocation:
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Saint Bernadette, pray for us.

St. Bernadette would pray the Rosary over and over again while she shepherded the sheep.

Francois and Louise Soubirous, the parents of St. Bernadette.

A photo of the grotto at Massabielle taken in 1858, the year of the apparitions by Our Lady.

The grotto at Massabielle in 1914, fifty-six years after Our Lady's apparitions.

Engraving showing Bernadette during the first apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes.

The language of the Rosary

NINTH DAY OF THE NOVENA (new meditations posted each day)
Theme: God's Ways: Madness or Wisdom?

9th Apparition: Thursday, February 25th
It was Thursday, February 25th. Hoping to witness something of her ecstasy, that morning there was already an extraordinary crowd of people gathering together in the vicinity of Massabielle, overflowing on to the island, covering the crests of the hill, and climbing up the trees by the bank. Every good vantage spot close to the grotto was crowded with ardent eager people. The police were again there, and, according to their head-count, there were more than 350 present. The kind, merciful, and most admirable Virgin Mary vouchsafed, that day, just like on all the others, to keep her appointment in the grotto. In no other sanctuary, perhaps, did the Mother of God so often repeat her celestial visits.

Unlike the fine weather of previous days, this was a cold, miserable rainy day. It was out of the cold misty dawn that Bernadette finally appeared, and everyone, the skeptics, as well as the believers, instinctively uncovered their heads. She was seen to remove her hood, put her candle aside, walk towards the River Gave, then turn, go down on her knees and finally crawl on all fours to the back of the grotto, towards the left of the rock.

After her usual prayers, Bernadette rose by herself as if she were alone in the heart of this crowd, went to the interior of this cavern flooded with light, and, moving aside the tough branches, kissed the rock at the place which served as a pedestal for the Queen of Angels. Then, once at her rocky prie-dieu, she beheld for nearly a quarter of an hour the most blissful of visions.

The Blessed Virgin began the conversation on this occasion, by confiding to her dear Bernadette her third secret. “My daughter,” said she to her, “I wish to confide to you, for yourself alone, a last secret; and like the other, you are not to reveal it to anyone in the world.” Bernadette heard, with joyful heart, the ineffable melody of that voice so sweet, so motherly, so tender, which of old, at Nazareth, charmed the ears and heart of the child Jesus. “And now,” said the Blessed Virgin to her, after moment’s silence, “go drink and wash yourself at the spring, and eat of the grass which is there.”

Bernadette looked round her in astonishment. Our Lady had demanded from Bernadette an act of faith and abandonment of reason, in favor of faith, an act which she has required of every one of her ambassadors. She told Bernadette to "go and wash and drink in the spring." Suddenly she looked puzzled. There was no spring! There was no spring in the grotto; there had never been one. Bernadette looked helplessly about for one, but to no avail.

Hesitating, she logically turned towards the river, for that was the only visible water source available, and so she took several steps forward as if to go there. Without losing sight of the Apparition, Bernadette was moving toward the River Gave, but soon she stopped, looked behind and with a gesture of the hand, the Blessed Virgin pointed out the place where she was to go. “Do not go there,” said she to her “I did not tell you to drink at the Gave; go to the fountain, it is here!” And extending her hand, she pointed out to the child that same dry corner, to which, the evening before, she had made her ascend on her knees. It was at the end of the grotto, on the left of the spectators.

Bernadette listened attentively, nodded affirmatively, then she turned toward the grotto again and walked, not to the bed of the river, but towards the left corner of the excavation. She went up, and when she was near the rock, she was seen to stop and look undecidedly several times all round her for the fountain. Not finding it, yet wishing to obey, she manifested her embarrassment to the heavenly Lady by a glance. In obedience to another sign, the child bent down and, scraping the earth with her little hands, began to scoop out the soil and made a hollow in the ground. At the end of a few seconds, the little hole she had just hollowed out was seen to be full of water. Then the water slowly overflowed the limits of the hole, which might contain about a glass full, and trickled forth, slowly at first, oozing up and turning the surrounding soil to mud and then began to flow like a fine thread, which, during the first day, only moistened the sand. The wet mark which it traced on the soil slowly, insensibly lengthened, in the direction of the River Gave.

Our Lady had said to wash and drink. Mingled with the earth, it was quite muddy. Bernadette scooped up the muddy water and smeared it over her face, leaving it mud-stained. Then poor Bernadette raised the muddy water to her lips three times, without having courage to taste it. Finally, after much hesitation, she overcame her repugnance; she drank the muddy water and bathed her face with it.

Our Lady required a further act of faith and humility; she asked that Bernadette eat some leaves nearby, and in response she plucked a few and ate them (the plant was the golden saxifrage, in Latin, chrysoplenium; French, la dorine. The leaves and stems can be eaten in salads or as cooked greens). What was the object of all this very strange ceremonial of a new kind, so calculated to puzzle the spectators, or to fill them with doubts regarding the state of mind and mental health of their little compatriot? The crowd gathered about the grotto, which had been growing at each one of the apparitions, gasped. When they saw Bernadette drink the muddy liquid, they were in dismay, for most of them had believed in her. The crowd thought her mad. They understood nothing of all this. “Oh! See!” cried some of them, “Look how she daubs her face, poor child!” Others said: “She is losing her mind; there is no sense in that!”

The fact that these seemingly illogical and incomprehensible events, strange in appearance, produced a bad impression on a crowd of witnesses, only goes to show that little is needed to make the ‘prudence of the prudent’ become skeptical when faced with the secrets of Heaven. It also shows that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and that our ways are not God’s ways: “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways My ways’, saith the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are My ways exalted above your ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts’” (Isaias 55:8-9).

Feeling deceived and discontented, the people departed, just as the weak-minded and faint-hearted followers of the Jesus went away, long ago, when He told them to eat His flesh and drink His blood (John, chapter 6). The carnal and worldly man, at all times, in all ages and places, is everywhere the same. With a mud-streaked face and dripping with muddy water, Bernadette wandered back to her former place before the grotto, the crowd in consternation, believers confounded, unbelievers louder than ever in their ridicule. There Bernadette resumed her contemplation of "The Lady."

The pious, humbled, obedient child continued to enjoy the heavenly Vision, with the eternal smile of Heaven on her lips, and on her forehead an angelic gleam, till about eight o’clock in the morning, when the divine Vision usually ended.

The Blessed Virgin, rewarding her little work-woman with a smile, disappeared, all radiant, and the faithful, obedient Bernadette went home as usual. The astonished spectators wished to see the miraculous fountain, and to soak their handkerchiefs in it. Next day, the Blessed Virgin’s fountain, visibly increasing, flowed already a finger’s breadth. At the end of a few days, it gushed out of the earth, pure and limpid, about as broad as a child’s arm. It then ceased to expand.

It was subsequently measured with mathematical precision: the first week, it gave 85 quarts (21 gallons) a minute; 5,100 quarts (1,275 gallons) an hour; that is to say, 122,400 quarts (30,600 gallons) a day. And before that time, we say again, that that rock, those sands were dry and arid, as all the inhabitants of the country knew. The skeptical minds of the neighborhood said and wrote that it was something quite natural, that there was no spring; that the crazed and deluded Bernadette had simply struck a collection of water, which had undoubtedly oozed out of the rock! The miraculous water of Lourdes has been analyzed by skillful chemists; it is a pure, virgin water; a natural water devoid of all mineral properties.

Meditation:
We can draw some comparisons between the waters of the River Jordan and the River Gave at Lourdes. The Jorday plays an important role in the lives of Naaman the Leper and Our Lord. Naaman is cured of his leprosy when he is told by God’s representative, Eliseus, to go wash seven-times in the Jordan. Our Lord is one of the many being baptized in Jordan by St. John the Baptist. Leprosy symbolizes sin. Baptism removes sin. Through the ‘miracle’ waters of Baptism, we are cured of the disease of sin—both Original Sin and any personal Actual Sin. The unpleasant muddy water symbolizes the way we ‘dirty’, ‘soil’ or ‘muddy’ our soul, by trying to mix the grace of God (pure clean water) with the things of earth (soil). We cannot serve God and mammon (Matthew 6:24) and we cannot mix God with the world, which is like oil and water, chalk and cheese: “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God” (James 4:4).

The water, at first, is mostly earth (the world) with very little moisture (grace), but gradually the soil (the world) disappears and the water becomes pure and clear (grace unhindered). Yet this water (grace) would not have been discovered and uncovered were it not for the faith and humility of Bernadette. It was mortifying for her to do these things; the crowd (the world) was turning against her once she embarked down that road of humiliation. The crowd (the world) loved the spectacular (miracles and ecstasies), but they turned back ran away at the sight of the humiliations.

The Sacrament of Confession, mortification and penances symbolically emerge from Bernadette’s actions. Bernadette separates herself from the world and turns to Heaven’s representative, Our Lady, humbling herself in the process—she does not care what others think of her, much like Mary Magdalen at the banquet, washing Our Lord’s feet with her tears; likewise, in Confession, we separate ourselves from the crowd, and go into our own little grotto (the confessional) to speak with Heaven’s representative, the priest, humbling ourselves with the admission of our sins and failings. Bernadette is made to drink mud and eat grass or leaves; in confession, we are made to eat and drink the dirty and earthy sinful things, or better still, we throw-up and throw-out the rottenness of what we have taken into our soul. Our faith in God and our humility in doing this, brings us the waters of grace, and what was soiled, now begins to flow pure.

Throughout that Thursday, February 25th, the supernatural stream of water continued to flow silently, ever increasing in volume. Soon, however (to speak in the manner of Ecclesiasticus), the little basin became a great stream, and the great stream was seen to be a beautiful river, and this river proved to be like a sea. A proof of this is the great increase of the water from the Grotto, the outflow of which is 26,852 gallons in twenty-four hours; its virtue never ceases to multiply cures, of the body, and also of the soul a thousand times more precious but on condition that we must first, like the innocent child, feed on the bitter plant of repentance and suffering, without which the souls of sinners cannot recover their health, any more than without a severe regimen of diet and exercise can the body regain its strength. The Virgin of Massabielle this day extolled the virtue of self-denial, mortification and suffering, which alone has always produced great Saints and also great men.

Our Prayer:
O Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Eternal Word and, in virtue of this title, preserved from Original Sin, we kneel before thee, as did little Bernadette at Lourdes, and pray with childlike trust in thee, that as we contemplate thy glorious appearance at Lourdes, thou wilt look with mercy upon our present situation, grant us the graces needed to abandon our sinful and lukewarm habits, and to produce works worthy of penance for our past sins, with a firm desire never to commit them again. Grant too, though unworthy we may be, our petition and secure for us a favorable answer to the request for which we are making this novena.

[Mention Intention]
O Brilliant star of purity, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, glorious assumption, triumphant in your coronation, show unto us the mercy of the Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Queen and Mother, be our comfort, hope, strength, and consolation. Amen.

Pray:
Say the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

Final Invocation:
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Saint Bernadette, pray for us.