Our Lady of Lourdes

On February 11 the Church commemorates the first apparition of the Blessed Virgin to Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, in 1858. The Lady who called herself "the Immaculate Conception" appeared eighteen times to the fourteen-year-old miller's daughter in the grotto of Massabielle, on the river Gave. The spring she uncovered at the Lady's direction has become the sign of the shrine: the sick who bathe in its pools are the heart of every pilgrimage to Lourdes.

In 1992 Pope John Paul II placed the World Day of the Sick on February 11, the anniversary of the first apparition. The feast reminds the Church that Lourdes is not only a place of physical healing — though the 70 miracles recognized by the Church's medical bureau are real — but of the dignity of suffering and the communion of the sick with Christ's own Passion. The candles they carry in the nightly procession are carried for them.

Bernadette herself entered the Sisters of Charity at Nevers, where her incorrupt body lies in the chapel of the motherhouse. The grotto at Lourdes — and its hundreds of replicas, from Banneux to Kibeho to Lac-Bouchette — keeps the same simple message the Lady gave: Pénitence, pénitence, pénitence. Priez pour les pécheurs.