The Message:
The following information was found at:http://en.lourdes-france.org/deepen/message-lourdes
We call «Message of
Lourdes» the gestures and words that were exchanged between Virgin Mary and
Bernadette Soubirous, at the Grotto of Massabielle, during the time of the
eighteen apparitions. This message can be heard as: God is love and he loves us
as we are.
Lourdes in the 19th.
Century was one of the main places in the district with more than 4,000
inhabitants including nobles, notaries, advocates, doctors, officers as well as
manual workers, tradesmen, slate workers, small artisans such as millers. Mills
were plentiful; many were dotted around outside the town, along one of the
streams that flowed into the Gave - the Lapacca. Bernadette Soubirous was born
in one of these, the Boly Mill, on 7th. January 1844. The bankrupt family were
living in the Cachot.
On 11th. February 1858 Bernadette, her sister Toinette and a friend of theirs,
Jeanne, went looking for wood on the meadows and led towards "the place
where the canal rejoins the River Gave". They were in front of the Grotto
of Massabielle. Toinette and Jeanne crossed the icy water, crying out with the
cold; Bernadette hesitated to do this because of her chronic asthma. She heard
"a noise like a gust of wind", but "none of the trees were
moving". "Raising her head, she saw, in a hollow of the rock a small
young lady, who looked at her and who smiled at her. This was the first
Apparition of the Virgin Mary
At the time of Bernadette, the Grotto was a dirty, hidden, damp and cold
place. The Grotto was called the "pigs' shelter" because
that was where the pigs feeding in the area usually took shelter. It was there
that the Virgin Mary, dressed in white, a sign of total purity, the sign of the
Love of God, in other words, the sign of what God wishes to accomplish in each
of us, deigned to appear. There is a contrast between this damp and obscure
Grotto and the presence of the Virgin Mary, "the Immaculate
Conception". It reminds us of the Gospel: the meeting of the wealth of the
goodness of God and the poverty of the human person. "Jesus goes to sit at
the table of sinners", "because he came to search out that which was
lost".
At Lourdes, the fact that Mary had appeared in a dirty and obscure Grotto, in
the place called Massabielle, the Old Rock, tells us that God comes to join us
where we are, in the midst of our poverty and failures. The Grotto is not only
a place where something happened - a geographical place - it is also a place
where God gives us a sign by revealing his heart and our heart.
It is a place where God leaves us a message, a message that is nothing
other than that of the Gospel. God comes to tell us that he loves us, -
this is the heart of the Message of Lourdes, and he loves us as we are with all
our successes but also with all our wounds, our weaknesses and our limitations
ON 18TH FEBRUARY 1858
: SOME EXTRAORDINARY WORDS
During the third
Apparition on 18th. February, The Virgin Mary spoke for the first time.
Bernadette held out a sheet of paper and a pencil so that she might write down
her name, but the Lady replied: "what I have to say to you does
not have to be written down". This was an extraordinary statement. It
meant that the Virgin Mary wanted to enter into a relationship which is of the
order of love, at the level of the heart. The heart, in the Bible, signifies
the very centre of the person, that which is the depth of the person.
Bernadette was right away invited to open the depths of her heart to this
Message of Love.
At the second statement of the Virgin Mary: "Would
you do me the kindness of coming here for 15 days?" Bernadette
was overwhelmed. It was the first time that anyone had addressed her in a
formal way. Bernadette describes these words by saying that the Virgin looked
at her 'as one person looks at another person'. Human beings, created in the
image and likeness of God, are persons. Bernadette felt that she was also
respected and loved, she also had the experience of being a person. We are all
worthy of our dignity in the eyes of God. Because each of us is loved by God.
The third statement of the Virgin was: "I do not promise to make
you happy in this world but in the other." We know a world
of violence, lies, sensuality, profit, and war. But we know also a world of
charity, solidarity, and justice. These two worlds exist on our earth. When
Jesus, in the Gospel, invites us to discover the Kingdom of Heaven, he invites
us to discover in our world, as it is, "another world". Wherever love
exists, God is present.
GOD IS LOVE
To experience God is nothing other than to
experience love in this world. To whoever knows how to discover this, Jesus
makes the following promise: "You are not far from the Kingdom of God. That
is: "you have known how to discover here below this Kingdom and you have
lived out your life in this Love." This is the promise of the Virgin Mary
to Bernadette. "I promise that you will discover here below another
world". And, in spite of her poverty, her illness and her lack of
education, Bernadette is always deeply happy. That is the Kingdom of God, the
world of real Love.
During the seven first Apparitions of the Virgin Mary, Bernadette has a face
radiant with joy, happiness and light. Between the eighth and twelfth
Apparitions all changed: the face of Bernadette became hard, sad and sorrowful,
and moreover, Bernadette does incomprehensible things. She moves on
her knees to the back of the Grotto. She kisses the dirty disgusting ground of
the Grotto. She eats some bitter grass. She scrapes the ground three times
trying to drink the muddy water, at the back of the Grotto, she tries sucking
in a little and then throwing it away, she takes mud in her hands and she
smears her face. Then the young girl turns to the crowd with her hands apart.
They all say: "She's mad!" During four Apparitions, she carried out
the same actions. What is happening? Nobody understands! We are at the heart of
the "Message of Lourdes".
THE BIBLICAL MEANING
OF THE APPARITIONS
These actions are biblical actions. Because
"the Lady" asked her, Bernadette acts out the Incarnation, the
Passion and the death of Christ. Moving on her knees at the back of the
Grotto: this action recalls the Incarnation, God lowers himself to become
human. Bernadette kisses the ground showing us that this act of
humility is an action of the love God has for his people. Eating bitter
grass at the back of the Grotto: when the Jews in the Old Testament
wanted to show that God had taken on himself all the bitterness and all the
sins of the world, they killed a lamb, cleaned it out and filled it with bitter
herbs and then made the following prayer over the lamb "This is the Lamb
of God who takes away, who takes on himself, all the bitterness and all the
sins of the world." Smearing her face with mud: when the
prophet Isaiah wanted to speak to us about the Messiah he called him "the
suffering servant". "Because he carried on himself all our sins his
face no longer appeared human."He was" Isaiah specifies, "like a
lamb led to the slaughter, and on his way the crowd mocked him". At the
Grotto, mud disfigures Bernadette and the crowd cries out "she has gone
mad".
GROTTO'S
TREASURE
The actions that
Bernadette carried out were the actions of freeing something. The Grotto was
choked with grass and mud. But why does she free this Grotto? Because it hides
an immense treasure, which must be brought out into the open. Thus, at the
ninth Apparition, "the Lady" asked Bernadette to scrape the ground,
at the back of this "pigs’ shelter", saying to her: "Go
to the spring, drink of it and wash yourself there". There is
only a little muddy water to begin with, enough for Bernadette to drink. At first
this water is muddy and dirty then, little by little, it becomes clear.
By these actions, the mystery of the heart of Jesus is revealed for us: "A
soldier pierced his heart with his lance and there immediately flowed out blood
and water." It is, as well, the depths of the mystery of the heart of the
human person, created in the image and likeness of God: "The water
that I shall give you will become, in you, a spring welling up to eternal
life". The grass and the mud signify the human heart, wounded by
sin. But in the bottom of this heart, there is the life of God, as signified by
the spring.
Bernadette was asked: 'Did the Lady say something to you?' She replied: 'Yes,
now and again she would say: "Penance, penance, penance, pray for
sinners". By penance we understand conversion. Conversion in the Church,
as we learn from Christ, involves turning our heart towards God and towards
others. "Pray for sinners". Praying brings us to the Spirit of God.
Thus we understand that sin does not make us happy. We must understand that sin
is something that is contrary to the love of God that is revealed to us through
the Gospel.
On 25th March 1858, the day of the sixteenth apparition,
Bernadette goes to the Grotto where, at the request of Abbé Peyramale, Curé of
Lourdes, she asks the ‘Lady’ to give her name. Bernadette asks her three times
without receiving a reply. At the fourth request, the ‘Lady’ replies in the
local dialect, “Que soy era Immaculada Counceptiou”, meaning “I am the
Immaculate Conception”. Bernadette did not immediately understand the meaning
of these words. According to Church teachings, the Immaculate Conception means
that ‘Mary was conceived without sin by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ,
Saviour of the human race’ (definition of the dogma promulgated in 1854).
Bernadette immediately goes to see the Curé to give him the name of the ‘Lady’.
He realises then that it is the Mother of God who is appearing at the Grotto.
Later on, the Bishop of Tarbes, Mgr Laurence, will confirm this revelation.
THE LADY SAYS HER
NAME: "QUE SOY ERA IMMACULADA COUNCEPTIOU"
During the thirteenth Apparition Our Lady said to Bernadette: "Go,
tell the priests to come here in procession and build a chapel here." "Come
here in procession" means always moving, in this life, towards others.
"Build a chapel here." In Lourdes, chapels were built to receive the
crowds that came here. But these chapels are only the signs of the communion
based on the love to which we are called. The chapel is the "Church"
that we want to build where we are, in our family, at our place of work, in our
parish, in our diocese. All Christians spend their lives building the Church,
living in communion with others.
