He has put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble and meek

An Anglican at Lourdes

When we lived in West London we were lucky that our vicar was enthusiastic about leading pilgrimages abroad. With him we visited the Holy Land and the seven churches of Asia.  But the most eye-opening pilgrimage was to Lourdes, at that time the most popular pilgrimage in honour of Mary.

Lourdes is a small French town just to the north of the Pyrenees mountains, which form the border with Spain.  The local dialect was a cross between Spanish and French.  The river Gave du Pau flows down from the mountains and just before it passes Lourdes there is a rocky outcrop called Massabielle. On the cliff face there is a cleft called the grotto which is central to the story of Lourdes.

Bernadette Soubirous

Bernadette Soubirous was the eldest of five children.  Her father Francois had been a miller but lost his business through misfortune and possibly irresponsibility.  In 1858 the family was reduced to living in the old town lock up, Le Cachot.  The family was not particularly religious.  On 11^th February that year Bernadette was sent with her two sisters to collect firewood, since they could not afford to buy any.  Bernadette was unhealthy, having recovered from cholera and suffering from asthma.  She was the only member of the family who was allowed to wear stockings.

The girls walked along the river bank to the grotto.  While her sisters were down by the river, Bernadette heard a noise like a wind, and turned to see standing in the grotto, at a high level, a girl of about her own age dressed in white with a blue scarf round her waist. Bernadette tried to say the rosary, but found she could only do so when the apparition began to do so as well. Her sisters could see Bernadette’s reaction, but could not see the apparition.

When the girls got home their mother beat them for telling stories. But Bernadette found she would have a great urge to revisit the grotto, which she duly did. From then on, she was always accompanied by a growing number of poor women, and later other people, as word got round.  At no point did anyone other than Bernadette see the girl in white.

At the third appearance the girl spoke to Bernadette in the local dialect, using the polite form, saying: ‘Would you have the goodness to come here for fifteen days?’  This was probably the most courteous that anyone had ever spoken to Bernadette.  In French and its dialects there are two forms of the word for ‘you’ – one is the polite form among adults, and the other is for children, family members and animals.

The Grotto at Lourdes

Bernadette was questioned by the local police chief and remained stubborn in her account of what had happened.  The parish priest Fr Peyramale was cautious but sent a representative to report back.  He asked Bernadette to ask the girl her name, but there was no reply. He was finally convinced on 25^th March, the feast of the Annunciation, when Bernadette told him the girl put her hands together, looked heavenwards and said ‘Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou’ which translates as ‘I am the Immaculate Conception’.  (This is the belief defined only a few years earlier by Pope Pius IX, that from the moment of her conception, Mary was free from all taint of original sin.  The belief is both subtle and much misunderstood.  I am only mentioning it here because it is the one time when the apparition identified herself with Mary the mother of Jesus).  After July there were no further apparitions.

Bernadette had been taught in a school in Lourdes run by the Sisters of Charity of Nevers.  Two years after the appearances, Bernadette went to the hospice of the Sisters, at Nevers, which is in central France.  Some time later she became a nun there, and died in 1879 from tuberculosis, at the age of 35.

In due course the church acquired the land around the grotto on both sides of the river, to accommodate the thousands of pilgrims who subsequently came to Lourdes.  This included a spring of water which Bernadette had discovered from directions given to her by the apparition.  Bathing in this water, and drinking it, has been a major part of pilgrimage activity.

There have been hundreds of claims of apparitions of Mary in many other places, most of which have been refused recognition by the church authorities.  Lourdes is one of a dozen or so sites which have received full Vatican approval.  Catholics are however under no obligation to believe in the truth of the apparitions.

We were booked to visit Lourdes over 15th August, the great festival of Mary.  After the trip had been arranged it was announced that Pope John Paul II was going to visit Lourdes for the festival.  Both these events interrupted the usual daily schedule at the shrine.

Every afternoon there was a procession of the sick followed by a priest carrying the Blessed Sacrament, that is the bread of Holy Communion. It was very moving to see the dignity and care with which the sick, generally on stretchers or wheelchairs, were treated. When the procession ended, the priest moved forward through the sick making the sign of the cross over each one of them.

Except on Sundays, pilgrimage groups celebrate mass separately, mainly due to the vast number of pilgrims. As Anglicans, we were kindly allowed on three occasions to use the sacristy of the Carmelite Convent in the town. But the most memorable place where we celebrated Mass was Le Cachot.  This was Bernadette’s home at the time of the apparitions when her family had become extremely poor.  In my youthful ignorance and lack of imagination I was shocked that a family of five children could live together in such a restricted space.  I now realise there are many families throughout the world today with just such an inadequate home, as there always has been.

Le Cachot vividly brought home to me that Bernadette was at the very bottom of the social scale. Yet is through her that God was to make known a place of healing and powerful prayer. Even if you are not a Christian there is something very moving in the peasant girl who for the first time in her life was addressed as an adult, with respect and courtesy.  For me this is the principal message of Lourdes: the equal dignity of all human beings.

The other daily event was the rosary said at the grotto followed by a candle lit procession. The rosary was broadcast over the sound system and each successive Hail Mary was introduced as follows:

‘Let us pray with our French brethren’ followed by the Hail Mary in French; ‘let us pray with our Italian brethren’ followed by the Hail Mary in Italian; ‘let us pray with our German brethren’ followed by the Hail Mary in German; ‘let us pray with our English brethren’ followed by the Hail Mary in the broadest of Irish accents.

If you have been to Walsingham on a Saturday evening, you will already know the tune of the Lourdes hymn.  As at Walsingham everybody raises their candle at the lines  ‘Ave ave ave Maria, Ave ave ave Maria.’

The Pope arrived on Sunday afternoon.  That evening’s rosary was led personally by the Pope kneeling in front of the grotto. I stood on the opposite bank of the river from him, with a very large crowd filling the meadow beside and behind me.

I have often thought there were four things going on here, of which many Anglicans would condemn as superstitious or even dangerous. They were the Pope himself, the grotto at Lourdes, the rosary, and feast of the Assumption, which is not explicitly mentioned in the bible. On the other hand, there would be some Anglicans who would regard it as a hoot or a giggle, in the spirit of the frivolous and oddly melancholic novels of Roland Firbank.  But it was neither dangerous nor frivolous.  A dignified old clergyman led a large congregation in a form of family prayers, which many would have known from their childhood. They did this at a place ‘where prayer has been valid’ in the words of TS Eliot in his poem Little Gidding from the Four Quartets. I was grateful and privileged to share this time of prayer with them.