Our Lady of Lourdes
February 11, 2015
I
IN 1858, at the Massabielle Grotto in an obscure French village, Our Lady appeared to a poor girl named Bernadette Soubirous. The movie, Song of Bernadette, is historically accurate and tells the story of how Bernadette was rebuked by parents, teachers, priests and the police before her account of the apparitions was believed. The Catholic Church approved the Lourdes apparitions on June 18, 1862. Bernadette was canonized in 1933.
Millions of people have traveled to Lourdes since that time and many miraculous cures have occurred. However, the real message of Lourdes is not relief from suffering, but acceptance of it.
See Pope Pius XII’s inspiring reflections on the apparitions of Lourdes on the occasion of the 100th anniversary in 1958. Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Pope Pius XII said:
To a society which in its public life often contests the supreme rights of God, to a society which would gain the whole world at the expense of its own soul and thus hasten to its own destruction, the Virgin Mother has sent a cry of alarm.
