On February 11, 1858, Our Blessed Mother, holding a rosary, appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, a fourteen-year-old French girl who was gathering firewood for her family. Mary appeared seventeen more times until July 16, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
At first, not knowing who the mysterious woman was, Bernadette asked her if she wanted anything. Our Lady replied, “Penance, penance, penance, pray for sinners.” During the March 25th appearance on the feast of the Annunciation, she asked the Lady what her name was. She replied, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Just four years earlier Pope Bl. Pius IX had declared that the dogma of Mary’s being conceived without Original Sin was to be held by all Catholics.
In another of her appearances, the Blessed Mother told Bernadette: “I do not promise to make you happy in this world but in the other.” How true this was! Bernadette barely knew her catechism and experienced many painful interrogations and the disbelief of her family and Church officials. But the apparitions were formally approved in 1862 and Bernadette quietly entered the Sisters of Charity where she lived in anonymity before her death just fifteen years later. Commenting on this, she said: “The Virgin used me as a broom to remove the dust. When the work is done, the broom is put behind the door again.” The Church recognized her humble holiness and she was canonized on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1933.
During her appearances, Mary also asked that a church be built there, where water had begun to flow. Over the years this water has led to many miraculous healings. Millions of pilgrims from all over the world come to the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes every year.
In 1992 Pope St. John Paul II instituted the annual World Day of the Sick to be celebrated on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. He did so to recognize and to ask for prayers for doctors, nurses, and all care-givers, as well as for those who are sick and whose sufferings, joined to the Cross of Jesus, are fulfilling Our Blessed Mother’s request for penance and prayer for the conversion of sinners.
This year in his Message for the Thirty-fourth World Day of the Sick, Pope Leo XIV wrote: “We live immersed in a culture of speed, immediacy and haste – a culture of ‘discard’ and indifference that prevents us from pausing along the way and drawing near to acknowledge the needs and suffering that surround us. In the parable [Luke 10: 25-37], when the Samaritan saw the wounded man, he did not ‘pass by.’ Instead, he looked upon him with an open and attentive gaze – the very gaze of Jesus – which led him to act with human and compassionate closeness.”
May we always do the same!