Pilgrimage to Lourdes

‘I had never any desire to come to Lourdes,’ Father John told me. ‘But while I was working out in Africa as a missionary I contracted a strange tropical disease and I was going downhill steadily. People suggested Lourdes but being a born sceptic I didn’t want to know. Then someone gave me a ticket and I gave in. For the first few weeks I was so ill the doctors almost gave up on me and then .... well, something happened! I was healed! That was five years ago and I stayed on because they needed an English speaking priest.’
This incredible story perhaps encapsulates the popular image of ‘Lourdes’ as the place for physical miracle cures. The clergy like to play this down in favour of spiritual comfort and the big piece of advice given out by most priests or leaders of Lourdes group pilgrimages is ‘Don’t expect miracles!’
Miracle cures were certainly not in the mind of Bernadette Soubirous, a girl of just fourteen preparing for her first communion in 1858. In a grotto near the river in this little town at the foot of the Pyrenees she was at first terrified when without warning she saw an apparition of a beautiful lady calling herself the ‘Immaculate Conception’, followed by seventeen more appearances over five months. She was given certain instructions, two of which were to tell the priest to build a chapel above the grotto and to drink and wash in the spring nearby. Bernadette only saw dry earth where she was told to drink but obediently she scratched until muddy water began to run into her hands, gradually flowing strongly and becoming clear and sparkling. She was interrogated by the church authorities and answered their questions clearly but she took very little interest in the healing that was suddenly taking place in the waters [or indeed in the attentions of the media] and soon afterwards left Lourdes to become a novice in Nevers. Her own health, always poor, worsened and she died at the age of 35.
When a man whose face was partly eaten away by cancer had begged Bernadette to cure him she told him to pray to the Virgin and wash in the water. She would of course pray for him. He did as told and it was reported that he was cured. In the early days there were many cures like this. But the water on analysis was found to be neither thermal, radioactive nor anti-bacterial but just good mountain water [and according to people who have taken it ‘very, very cold! Although when you get out you are bone dry!’].
In the Jubilee year of 1897 three hundred people were miraculously cured but Emile Zola who had witnessed one of the cures commented that ‘the cures at Lourdes are simply the result of a trauma brought about by the unknown force which emanates from crowds during violent demonstrations of faith.’
However another witness to the cures Dr Alexis Carrel who in 1902 had approached Lourdes scientifically and sceptically wrote ‘Such events are highly significant.... They prove the objective value of the spiritual activity which has been almost totally ignored by doctors, teachers and sociologists. They open up a new world for us’.
When I arrived one early June morning at Lourdes station and walked down the hill into the pretty flower filled Swiss-like town with its river flowing through, I bumped into a long procession of bright blue wheelchairs and trolley beds cheerfully being pushed along by a multitude of carers in white accompanied by nuns, priests and friends who were making their way across town through St Michael’s gate to the Basilica in front of which morning mass is celebrated in the open air during the season. The river flows alongside with pleasant riverside walks and seats and laid out gardens. Below the Basilica is the grotto with a statue of Our Lady in the place where Bernadette saw her and where people were reverently filing past or sitting and meditating. Some people were buying the huge white candles, lighting them and placing them in a special area.
It is not possible to know how many of the sick actually expect some sort of cure. Some are very sick indeed and perhaps only pray that their last days will be as free as possible from suffering. Some disabled people may secretly hope when they see the crutches and wheelchairs abandoned by past invalids that they will be able to do the same. The many people who nurse the sick every day and suffer with them must surely long for some relief.
When Cassie Hawkes brought her daughter suffering with cerebral palsy in 1987 she prayed fervently that there might at least be some improvement but nothing seemed to change except that her daughter caught flu. ‘Maybe there were miracles when Bernadette was alive,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe they happen anymore.’
Nevertheless she encourages her other children who have minor problems to go with a group. Susie loves going. It’s her second home where she makes friends and the able and disabled mix equally and love one another. Gerard, a group leader working with children with special needs agrees that it is a wonderful spiritual experience where he gets a lot of inspiration to cope with a very difficult job.
It is also beneficial for carers who take a break every year from busy business life to live simply among the sick as helpers. I met two Parisiennes who seemed relaxed and happy and said it was a wonderful holiday coming down to help - better than staying on the riviera.
The power of Lourdes certainly seems to give great strength to those suffering emotionally. I talked to a lady whose son had been murdered abroad in a terrible way. She had lost all desire to get up in the morning and get on with life and although she had had counselling she could not cope. Here she felt among friends, fellow sufferers, and felt much of the weight of her sorrow lifting. ‘It was like Christmas,’ she observed. ‘with everyone so kind and loving towards one another. Why aren’t we like that all the time?’ She was going to come next year to experience Lourdes more deeply.
Father John said ‘It is important to really love and trust God before anything and to believe that God loves every single person and that a God of Love cannot be a cruel God and that there is a reason for suffering.’ Through his illness he knew first hand not only physical suffering but anger and feeling a burden and separated from society and is grateful for this learning experience. As Dr Carrel observed, ‘believing in God’s Love and sharing this with other people and giving and receiving love has a very healing power.’
But it seems as though every now and again there has to be a ‘Bernadette’ whose absolute devotion forms a channel for great spiritual energy to flow in powerful enough to reach the physical body. After all haven’t all Great Healers begun with loving God!

First published in Wholeness Magazine 2000