From the desk of the Tar Heel disciple:
February 12, 2026 (#75)
Our Lady of Lourdes-Part III
Bernadette Soubirous was only 14 years old when she experienced 18 apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Lourdes, France. She was infirm almost her entire life and died in suffering and pain. She was the oldest of nine children. Her father was a miller and the family eventually fell into deep poverty, forcing them to leave their home and take up residence in the former community jail. Bernadette contracted cholera as a toddler and afterwards suffered from asthma for the rest of her life. In later years she contracted tuberculosis, and felt severe, constant pains in her bones and lungs. She died, in 1879, when she was only 35 years old, at Nevers, France.
Bernadette was declared “Blessed” by Pope Pius XI in 1925 and was canonized by the same pope, in 1933. Her feast day was originally established on February 18, the anniversary of the third apparition, in 1858, during which the Blessed Mother told Bernadette, “I do not promise you that you will be happy in this world, but in the next.” During the reform of the General Roman Calendar, in 1969, the feast was transferred to April 16, the anniversary of her death. In the relatively short span of years between her death and her canonization, Our Lady of Lourdes, the apparitions, and Bernadette herself became known throughout the Catholic world. Imitation grottos have long-since been erected in many nations. But Bernadette was not declared a saint of the Church because of the apparitions. It was her heroic virtue and fidelity to the Gospel of Jesus Christ that brought the Church to “raise her to the altars.”
After the apparitions were concluded (July 16, 1858), Bernadette sought refuge from the notoriety she had attracted by taking up residence with the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, at their boarding school in Lourdes. It was there that she learned to read and write. She was received as a postulant (candidate) for that same community of religious sisters at the motherhouse in Nevers, on July 29, 1866. She spent the rest of her life in the same convent, working as an assistant infirmarian and sacristan, as her health allowed.
Her profound humility is seen in a response she is said to have once given to an inquirer with regard to the apparitions and the hiddenness of her later life: “The Virgin used me as a broom to remove the dust. When the work is done, the broom is put behind the door again.”
Books for adults and for children, as well as numerous devotional items related to Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette can be found at:
https://inhisname.com/search?options%5Bprefix%5D=last&q=lourdes
