Our Lady of Lourdes

The Virgin Mary is venerated under the title of Our Lady of Lourdes due to the apparitions of her that occurred in Lourdes, France.

On February 11, 1858, at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains, the Blessed Virgin appeared for the first of 18 times to Bernadette Soubirous.

Just 14 years old at the time, Bernadette reported seeing a most beautiful young woman dressed in white with a long rosary hanging from her arm. The apparition greeted Bernadette with a slight bow and seemed to invite her to pray. She passed the beads through her fingers as Bernadette recited the rosary.

In subsequent instances, the apparition made various requests of Bernadette: to pray for sinners, to do penance, to have processions in Lourdes and for a chapel to be built on that spot. Ever-increasing crowds — growing into the thousands — did not see the apparition, only Bernadette in her states of ecstasy.

On February 25, an apparition told Bernadette: “Go, drink at the spring and wash in it.” Perplexed, Bernadette started toward the river Gave, but the maiden in white pointed her instead to the floor of the cave.

“I went there,” Bernadette recounted, “but I only saw a little dirty water. I put my hands in but could not get enough to drink. I scratched and the water came, but muddy. Three times I threw it away, but the fourth time I could drink it.” Some in the crowd made fun of Bernadette, her face daubed with mud — but by the end of the day, water was running from the cave to the river. Within a week, the spring was yielding what has since been its constant flow of 32,000 gallons a day.

A month later, on March 25, on the feast of the Annunciation, Bernadette asked the visitor her name and Lady in the apparition said in the Lourdes dialect: “I am the Immaculate Conception”. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which states that the Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin, had been proclaimed by Pope Pius IX only four years earlier. Bernadette, who was not very educated, had no knowledge of what the words meant, but to the religious leaders, it became a verification of the authenticity of the apparitions. The final apparition took place on July 16 of the same year, the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel.

Since that time, many thousands of cures have been reported at Lourdes, both during the processions with the Blessed Sacrament and in the baths that pilgrims can undergo, fed by the water from the spring that Bernadette discovered.

As wonderful as the physical healings are, the true blessings of Lourdes are in the spiritual realm. This was true even of Bernadette herself. During the third apparition, the Lady told her, “I do not promise to make you happy in this life but in the next.”