by Kimberley Heatherington
Dec. 8, 2007, marked the launch of a yearlong jubilee at Lourdes, France, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Bernadette Soubirous.
Honoring both the Feb. 11 feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes and the special events that will take place throughout 2008 in both France and around the globe, Our Sunday Visitor brings readers coverage that explores both the historical and modern significance of one of the most remarkable Marian shrines in the world.
The realm of St. Bernadette Soubirous was that of provincial 19th-century France, an austere peasant's life narrowed by the twin deprivations of unprivileged social status and extreme poverty. But in the wider world outside her own, an era of revolution, turmoil and skepticism impacted events both secular and sacred.
By the time of the Blessed Virgin Mary's 1858 apparitions to Bernadette at Lourdes, France was almost 60 years removed from the end of the French Revolution, a decade-long national spasm of reform and violence that began with the 1789 storming of the Bastille and ended with Napoleon Bonaparte's 1799 coup d'etat. While Sunday church services -- suspended during the Revolution -- were resumed in 1799, 10 years of neo-Enlightenment excess had inflicted lasting damage upon French Catholicism, and the upheaval of successive revolutions in 1830 and 1848 further rent the traditional social fabric of the country and its neighbors.
"In 1848, revolutions broke out all across Europe," explained Kevin Orlin Johnson, author of "Apparitions: Mystic Phenomena and What They Mean" (Pangaeus, $25). Armed conflict erupted in "the German states, Austria, Hungary, France, Italy, South America; even as far north as Sweden É almost all of the governments that were in place were toppled. Almost all of the monarchs abdicated." Blessed Pope Pius IX was even driven from Rome into a two-year exile.
Another milestone of social agitation took place in 1848 -- the publication of Karl Marx's "The Communist Manifesto."
"The religious climate in Europe was tense, particularly in France," said Father Peter Damien Fehlner, a theology professor who taught at the Seraphicum in Rome for many years and has written extensively on Marian themes. "Despite the many saints and holy men and women, efforts at 'restoring' a Christian order had accomplished little in the half-century between the fall of Napoleon and the apparitions of Lourdes," Father Fehlner told Our Sunday Visitor.
"Breaking the clergy, ultimately the pope, was the objective of the radical leaders of the new, secular ideology, particularly encouraged by Freemasons in positions of power and influence in shaping public opinion," Father Fehlner added.
Struggling piety was also diluted by a lack of clarity. "Too often popular devotion was more sentiment related to a kind of vague, ethical moralizing, rather than religious practice solidly grounded on dogma and metaphysics," Father Fehlner said.
But amidst this backdrop of chaos and antagonism, extraordinary graces also emerged.
"In some of the messages of Our Lady [when she revealed] the Miraculous Medal to St. Catherine Laboure in 1830, she talks about future difficulties for the Church in France," said Mark Miravalle, professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. "Clearly, the rationalist tenets of the French Revolution continued at that time amidst the people. So, you certainly had a climate which needed a renewal in terms of what would be traditionally seen as a Catholic country."
Renewal was precisely the aim of Pope Pius IX when, in 1854, he proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. "He decided on this course as the only one providing hope for salvaging the Church and civilization from disaster," said Father Fehlner.
The dogma -- promulgated in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus -- states that the Blessed Virgin Mary "was, from the first moment of her conception, by the singular grace and privilege of almighty God and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ the Savior of the human race, preserved free from all stain of original sin."
While the theological premise that Mary was without sin from the first moment of her existence was not new to Church doctrine -- in the East, a feast of Mary's Conception had been celebrated since the seventh century -- Pope Pius' Ineffabilis Deus was the fuel intended to spark a movement of Marian devotion.
Nonetheless, such a concept was hopelessly abstract for a 14-year-old peasant girl like Bernadette, whose education was so lacking that she had been placed in a catechism class with children half her age.
"You have to understand Bernadette's personality," Johnson said. "She was a child who was dismissed by her teachers as basically unteachable. She had an extremely poor memory; she could not memorize things. She was baffled by the most elementary doctrinal points."
Her intellectual challenges were so extreme "she couldn't even remember the whole Our Father," Johnson added. As to the Immaculate Conception, Johnson noted that "her teachers testified also that they had never introduced the subject."
All the more astonishing, then, was Bernadette's report that, during the 16th apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes on March 25, 1858, the vision declared to her, "I am the Immaculate Conception."
The two events are not a coincidence, Miravalle asserted. "You have a case of a solemn papal definition -- then Our Lady herself making a type of confirmation within the domain of private revelation that she is the Immaculate Conception," he said. "I believe that the apparitions of Lourdes is what translated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception . . . I think it really brought it into the hearts of the people at that time that this is not something disconnected; this is an intimate truth about a mother close to you who God and the church want you to know -- and want you to know not just in your head, but want you to understand in your heart."
That translation and reception was not, however, instantaneous. "No doubt, Bernadette did not understand the message [of the Immaculate Conception] at the moment of its delivery," Father Fehlner said, "but she did believe it and communicate it faithfully. The majority of learned theologians and erudite Catholics of the day did not understand it, said it was a contradiction in terms depicting Mary on the level of the 'I am who am' of God, and so impossible to have been said by the 'real' Mary. Therefore, they did not believe."
While the message of Lourdes and the Blessed Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception is now steeped in the historical life of the Church, its modern relevance is not diminished by the passage of time. In this 150th anniversary year of the Lourdes apparitions -- during which special indulgences were authorized by Pope Benedict XVI -- Miravalle suggested that Pope Benedict "is encouraging us to ponder this mystery anew: What does the Immaculate Conception mean to us in an age when we're struggling with purity; many family crises like abortion, sterilization, euthanasia. É What does the Immaculate Conception say to us right now?"
Father Fehlner's own assessment is concise: "In a word, the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, if lived, will bring to pass the renewal of the fortunes of the Church and what the late Pope John Paul II called 'a culture of love' rather than one of violence, terror, death."
Indeed, the significance is -- as it was in Bernadette's era -- both a call to conversion and an embrace of maternal comfort. "We need to be reminded that we have a mother at times of difficulty," said Miravalle. "And in light of our present age of so much difficulty -- morally; spiritually; everything from abortion to terrorism -- we need to be reminded that we have a mother who cares, and a mother who can do something about it by the power of her intercession."
Jan. 7, 1844: Bernadette Soubirous is born in France.
Dec. 8, 1854: Pope Pius IX proclaims dogma of the Immaculate Conception -- Mary's conception without the stain of original sin -- in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus.
Feb. 11, 1858: While walking with her sister and friend by the grotto of Massabielle along the River Gave, 14-year-old Bernadette hears "a noise like the gust of wind" and sees a beautiful young woman in the hollow of the rock. It is the first of 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes that will occur until July 16, 1858.
Feb. 25, 1858: During the ninth apparition, Our Lady asks St. Bernadette to drink and wash from the spring at the grotto. At first the water is muddy and dirty, but it eventually becomes clear.
March 1, 1858: Catherine Latapie plunges her dislocated right hand into the spring. When she brings it out of the water, her hand is cured -- the first miracle of Lourdes, which will be officially recognized in 1862. Millions have since flocked to the spring to seek healing -- spiritual and physical.
March 2, 1858: The Virgin Mary tells Bernadette to have priests bring people to the grotto in procession and to have a chapel built on the site. Work on the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception began in 1866 and the Basilica of the Rosary began in 1883.
March 25, 1858: The Virgin Mary pronounces that she is the Immaculate Conception.
July 4, 1866: Bernadette leaves Lourdes for Nevers, where she will receive the habit of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity and receive the new name of Sister Marie-Bernard.
Oct. 30, 1867: Bernadette makes her religious profession.
April 16, 1879: Bernadette dies at the age of 35.
June 14, 1925: Pope Pius XI beatifies Bernadette.
Dec 8, 1933: On the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Pius XI canonizes Bernadette.
"Oh! If only I could see without being seen!"
It is both the lament and the plea of a simple girl whose life was instantly blessed and turned upside down when the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to her on Feb. 11, 1858, and in 17 additional apparitions lasting until July 16 of the same year.
St. Bernadette Soubirous was born in Lourdes in 1844, the eldest of six children. Her health was, it seemed, always delicate, a condition exacerbated by poverty so dire that by 1858, the entire Soubirous family was reduced to living in a one-room, former prison.
This humble background -- paired with Bernadette's lack of formal education -- doubtless stoked the disbelief and outright hostility Bernadette encountered once she reported her visions of the Virgin Mary. In an era when the popular imagination was captivated by an often unorthodox spiritualism, she was dismissed by many as hysterical at best, hallucinating at worst.
She was nonetheless steadfast, never disowning or amending her account under the intense scrutiny and disturbing attentions she refused, which included offers of money and gifts as well as faithful convinced that her touch could heal.
Eventually, Bernadette's persistent sincerity and humility was rewarded.
After three and a half years of investigation, the bishop of Tarbes, Bertrand-Severe Mascarou-Laurence, affirmed with a pastoral letter dated Jan. 18, 1862, that the Blessed Virgin Mary had, indeed, appeared to Bernadette: "We judge that Mary, the Immaculate Mother of God, did truly appear to Bernadette Soubirous on the eleventh of February 1858, and on subsequent days, to the number of eighteen times in all . . . that this apparition bears every mark of truth, and that the Faithful are justified in believing it as certain."
While the prelate's imprimatur diluted some of the controversy surrounding the visions, it wasn't vindication that she had sought; the rejection of Bernadette's visions was a rejection of Mary's urgent message of penance and prayer.
Besieged by a stream of visitors, including the theologically learned, pious pilgrims and the merely curious, it is not unreasonable to imagine Bernadette's 1864 request to enter the convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame at Nevers as inspired in equal measures by a desire for both sanctity and solitude. She was accepted as a novice in 1866, and spent the rest of her life in the order, continuing to shun the publicity she never sought nor enjoyed. "Our Lady used me," Bernadette said, comparing herself to a broom. "They have put me back in my corner. I am happy to stop there."
Bernadette was beatified in 1925 and canonized in 1933, not primarily in recognition of her visions, but rather for a life lived in simple prayer and obedience.
The bond between the sick and Lourdes is inseparable; the associations immediate. Ailing pilgrims and legendary waters converge in a union that has, since 1858, annually brought multitudes of hopeful and expectant believers to the site, with 8 million anticipated during the jubilee year.
It's a phenomenon that visionary St. Bernadette Soubirous felt was necessary to qualify. Throughout her lifetime, she maintained that the waters of Lourdes had, in and of themselves, no inherent healing properties.
"One must have faith and pray," she said. "The water will have no virtue without faith."
Sixty-seven medical miracles have been recognized at Lourdes -- spanning from 1862 to 2005. The results were often dramatic, and span the entire range of human misery. From paralytics who were suddenly able to walk, to pilgrims cured of blindness, tumors and multiple sclerosis, the Medical Bureau of Lourdes -- established in 1905 after Pope St. Pius X requested "to submit to a proper process" some of the more extraordinary claims -- has investigated and certified a continuous caseload of declared healings.
It's work that has been undertaken with thoroughness and impartiality, but within a framework that has, over time, kept pace with the consensus of contemporary practitioners and therapies.
As Bishop Jacques Perrier noted in a 2003 explanation of the Bureau's work: "The current attitude of doctors is very respectful of the magisterium of the Church. As Christians, they know that a miracle is a spiritual sign. They don't want to be judges on this matter. Moreover, for a modern mentality, it is difficult to say that something is 'inexplicable.' They can only say that it is 'unexplained.'"
Declared cures are currently examined in three stages.
The first moves a cure from "declared" status to "unexpected" status. Physical and mental information relating to the patient is gathered and a judgment is rendered to determine if, in the Bureau's words, the "cure is clearly beyond the normal medical provisions of the illness in question."
The second stage transfers a cure from "unexpected" to "confirmed" status. A comprehensive "before" and "after" study of the patient's health is conducted, with an emphasis upon determining if the cure represents "an indisputable change from a precise medical diagnosis of a known illness to a situation of restored health." Numerous doctors are consulted before presentation of the case to the International Medical Community of Lourdes (CMIL).
In the third and final stage, the CMIL affirms "the 'exceptional character' of a cure according to present scientific knowledge," ultimately presenting the patient's file to Bishop Perrier or the bishop of the diocese where the patient resides. Based upon the evidence, the bishop then decides in favor or against recognition of the cure.
In the 150 years since Our Lady appeared to a peasant girl in Lourdes, France, millions have flocked to the holy site. It remains among the most popular pilgrimage destinations for Catholics. Here are the most visited Catholic shrines in the world, as announced by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People in preparation for the Jubilee in 2000. Note that the numbers vary slightly each year.
The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of all America, in Mexico City. Begun in 1531 and completed in 1709, the basilica attracts more than 7 million people a year.
San Giovanni Rotondo, in southern Italy, the resting place of St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina (d. 1968). It is visited by between 6 million or 7 million visitors a year; 11 million are expected this year for the 40th anniversary of his death.
Our Lady of Aparecida, in Aparecida, Brazil, the home of a black statue of Our Lady of Conception discovered along the shore of the S
Basilica du Sacre-Coeur(Sacred Heart of Jesus), in Paris, France. The basilica overlooks the city on a hill in Montmartre and was built between 1875 and 1919.
Czestochowa, in Poland, site of Jasna Gora Monastery and the famed icon of the Mother of God with the Christ Child, known as Black Madonna of Czestochowa or Our Lady of Czestochowa.
Lourdes in France, site of the apparitions of Our Lady in 1858 to St. Bernadette Soubirous. More than 5 million visitors make their way to Lourdes every year, with 8 million expected this year.
Basilica of Lujan in Argentina, near Buenos Aires, a neo-gothic basilica built in honor of the Virgin of Lujan, the patron saint of Argentina.
Fatima, in Portugal, the site of the apparitions of Our Lady in 1917. The basilica and shrine are visited by more than 4 million people a year.
Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua, Italy. Begun in 1238 and finished in 1310, it is the largest church in Padua and is visited by millions every year.
Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain, has been a popular pilgrimage site for over 1,000 years, with its shrine of St. James.
Other popular sites are: Assisi, Pompeii, and Loreto in Italy; Mariazell in Austria; Knock in Ireland; St. John of the Valley in Texas; the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.; and Yamaoussoukro in the Ivory Coast.
Three other major pilgrim destinations are: Rome, Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
-- Matthew Bunson
Kimberley Heatherington writes from Virginia.
blog comments powered by Disqus
Catholic Faith Resources | For Catholic Parishes | Order OSV Products | RSS | Advertise | About Us | Contact Us | Jobs Copyright © 1996-2012, Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright information | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy