CIN - "Go and tell the priests" Our Lady of Lourdes

MICHEL DE SAINT-PIERRE

"Go and tell the priests"

It was on February 11, 1854 that Our Lady first appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in the grotto at Lourdes. There were eighteen appearances in all; the last took place on July 16 of the same year. In the course of these, she revealed who she was: "I am the Immaculate Conception," and directed Bernadette to tell the priests to build a chapel on the spot and have processions made to the grotto. The miraculous cures which followed have made Lourdes perhaps the most famous place of pilgrimage in the world today.

Bernadette thought about nothing but the Grotto and the Lady she had seen there. An irresistible attraction kept her thoughts on what shc had seen, and sometimes it seemed to her as though two strong but gentle hands were on her shoulders pushing her in that direction. She had to go back to the Grotto. To resist the attraction of Massabieille was beyond her strength. The luminous being fixed a meeting with her in a silence which became the strongest form of appeal.

Gay in temperament, she was now grave, thoughtful-and sad.

Louise her mother said nothing. But she knew what her daughter thinking. At first she chided her with rather gruff tenderness. You must be careful of your imagination, she told the child. You must be reasonable. Have nothing to do with strange things. To keep on thinking about things like that could drive you mad. That sort of thing has happened And it often happens, too, that children or young girls, even quite truthful ones, take things to be real when they're only their imagination.

"You thought you saw something, Bernarde, but you really didn't see anything."

And then, with the Devil you never know! He sometimes disguise himself in order to deceive people. You think you are looking at a beautiful lady, a girl in white, and then suddenly one day you're face to fact with the Devil, horns and all.

"Yes, but the Devil doesn't say the Rosary," objected Bernadettc

She had forgotten nothing of what she had seen. She had given only a relatively brief description of the Vision, and very many of the details she had kept to herself for the time being, out of modesty, timidity and fear of making herself a nuisance. She now recalled the sudden and powerful sound of the wind, the still trees and the wild rose at the Grotto which trembled before giving off a mist of gold. And upright in the halo of light, gradually emerging from it, the Lady in white who had smiled at her. Bernadette clearly remembered all those details. When she saw the Lady she went down on her knees and took her rosary out of her pocket. And the Lady had approved of that. Bernadette once again saw the gentle, gracious movement of her head. There was no hesitation in her memory of these things.

And then the Lady took the rosary hanging from her right arm and let the beads slip through her fingers. Bernadette remembered exactly the gestures that followed. She, Bernadette, had wanted to begin saying the Rosary, first making the sign of the cross, but she had found it impossible. Her right arm had been as though paralyzed. And then the Lady herself had slowly made the sign of the cross. And she knew very well that she would never forget that movement. She could see it, sense it now: a sweeping gesture of wondrous beauty as though the Vision had wanted to embrace the whole Heaven.

The Lady made the sign of the cross like this: and Bernadette herself repeated the gesture a dozen times to make her memory still more vivid. And when the Lady had made the sign of the cross, Bernadette was able to make it, too. The Lady had let her say her prayers alone. She had passed the beads of her own rosary through her fingers but she had said nothing. It was only at the end of each decade that she had said the "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost" with Bernadette.

"Take care! It could have been the Devil himself," Louise Soubirous again said warningly to her daughter.

Bernadette did not know very much about the Devil and his ways, but she could not imagine him devoutly saying his Rosary at the Massabieille Grotto and reciting the "Glory be to the Father...."

And in her naive mind there was another thing that quite decided the matter.

"The Devil can't be as pretty as that," she said with conviction in her Lourdes peasant dialect.

The child was so persistent that her mother gave up the attempt to convince her that she was wrong. Let her keep her mad ideas. After all, what did it matter? She would get over it in time. But in any case, one thing was certain: she mustn't be allowed to go back to Massabieille!

Friday and Saturday, February 12 and 13, passed indecisively. Once or twice Bernadette suggested timidly that she might take a little walk to Massabielle-why not?

But her mother pretended not to hear.

And all the time the silent appeal grew stronger. It was so powerful that it caused a warmth of emotion, gentle yet insistent, which she could resist no longer.

Sunday, February 14, came. It was a fine day, and after High Mass Bernadette tried again. This time she persuaded half a dozen little girls of her own age to support her. Louise Soubirous withstood their first pleas, but in the end she had to give way to the sheer weight of numbers. No one with a heart has ever been able to resist the combined pleading of half a dozen children who have set their minds on a thing. Surrendering, she pretended impatience in order to save the remnants of her authority.

"All right, all right! Go on then. You'll drive me crazy. But be back in good time or you'll know what to expect!"

Outside the circle of her family, Bemadette had spoken to no one about the Vision, and that very reticence is cause for admiration, it is so unusual. To have her heart and soul filled with an extraordinary happening and then not to say a word to a soul outside her family! To remain silent about her adventure! Clearly, an attitude like that does not tally with the quite natural vanity of children, with their normal inclination to spread interesting stories, with their desire to be the center of things -or even with that naive generosity which urges them to sow their joys broadcast.

Now Bernadette was not an introvert. Rather the contrary, she was a visual, a child attached to the world around her. She was temperate by nature, but frank and communicative. Not at all secretive. Her knowledge and education was about that of a six-year-old child, and she was certainly not suflhciently developed to nourish an inner flame. Her spirit was eager enough, but very definitely turned outwards. And spiritually she can hardly have been said to meditate. She prayed out loud in a raised voice, and as she said her Rosary she loved to feel the beads moving through her fingers, beads that were as real and round as seeds. In fact, in French the very word is the same "grain," for all the world as though it were a grain of wheat. Thus, Bemadette prayed as she spoke, as she breathed, as she lived, using the familiar gestures of the daily round, the gestures of peasants. And she prayed to a wide open and ever-present Heaven.

The women of the neighborhood regarded her as "practical," and they were quite right. She was thrifty by disposition and orderly by nature, and quite capable, too. She gladly performed domestic tasks and she was endowed with real housewifely talents. In short, her nature was more that of Martha than Mary.

And this child who "saw with her own eyes" the vision of a Lady marvelously dressed in white and emerging from a golden cloud, said nothing about it to her companions! She didn't want to talk about her experience to them and she remained silent when they questioned her after they had been told about the affair by Marie-Toinette and Jeanne Abadie. For the first time she preferred to remain silent and cherish the memory in her heart.

But her mother had now given her permission-a little grudgingly- to go to Massabielle again. Immediately Marie and Jeanne Abadie ran off to tell their friends, a dozen little girls they had taken into their confidence. And soon there was a procession.

Bernadette was a little frightened. Despite the invincible certainty that filled her, she was trembling. White or black, good or evil, the supernatural is a frightening thing and the flesh revolts against it.

"Perhaps it's something bad," burst out one of the little girls, and she expressed the disturbing feeling which was worrying them all.

But Bemadette shook her head.

"In any case," put in another little girl, "you ought to sprinkle it with holy water. Then if it really is the Devil it will run away. You must say, If you come from God, then come nearer; if you come from the Devil, go away."

This theological point having been satisfactorily settled, the little group started on its way. It had been arranged that other children should follow a little later.

They arrived at the Grotto. One of the little girls importantly carried a bottle which she had filled with holy water.

"Pray all of you," said Bemadette, "and say the Rosary."

And she knelt down to the right of the Grotto opposite the bush above which the Lady had appeared to her.

Then suddenly as though transported she exclaimed:

"There she is! There she is!"

Marie Hillo, the little girl with the bottle of holy water, passed it to her at once, saying in a voice shaky with fear:

"Quick! Sprinkle some of it towards her."

And Bernadette obeyed, throwing holy water from the neck of the bottle towards the Vision.

Then she turned towards her friends.

"She isn't angry," she said. "She's pleased and she's nodding her head and smiling at us."

And all the little girls fell on their knees. Eagerly they looked towards the Grotto, but to them the niche was cold and empty. Bemadette's obvious joy was inexpressible. It seemed almost as though she were leaving the world behind. "Waves of happiness" passed over her face. She was exalted, "carried away" in the full meaning of the term-as though Heaven had taken her from the earth.

Greatly frightened, Marie-Toinette exclaimed:

"Oh! supposing Bernadette is going to die!"

And once again fear took the place of amazement amongst the little girls around.

At that moment there was a sudden menacing sound: a large stone, coming from the summit, bounced down over the rock and fell into the Gave.

This time the little girls were seized with panic. Terribly frightened, all Bernadette's little friends jumped to their feet and fled for their lives, running up the hill, screaming and shouting for help. But when they got to the forest path who should they find there but Jeanne Abadie and the late-comers, clapping their hands with delight and laughing at the trick they had played. It was Jeanne who had thrown the stone.

In the general panic Bernadette had been abandoned. Looking straight at the Lady of the Grotto and clasping her bottle of holy water firmly, she said deliberately:

"If you come from God, then come nearer."

At these words the Vision bowed several times and came forward almost to the edge of the rock on which she stood.

Suffused with a powerful emotion of joy, Bernadette repeated the words, but in a much less confident tone:

"If you come from God, then come nearer!"

Then she tried to say, If you come from the Devil, go away. But she was unable to form the words. The Lady who stood in the niche above the bush bent down and smiled at her in supreme graciousness and affection. From that moment on Bernadette thought of nothing but preserving the happy moment and losing not a single incomparable second, not a single crumb of all that wonder. Without asking further questions, she feasted her eyes on that white Vision that smiled down at her.

A rosary moved slowly between those lovely hands in their halo of light.

But up on the hill the little fainthearts told Jeanne Abadie that Bernadette was in "an extraordinary state." At this they all went down the hill together. Occasionally one of them laughed, but it was more from nervousness than from mockery.

"Bernadette!"

But Bernadette did not answer. She neither saw nor heard them. She was still on her knees looking at the Grotto. But her eyes were not hxed and staring; they were full of vitality. They were taking in a picture up there above the bush that the others could not see. There was something frightening about that chain without links. At one end there was an ecstatic look, and at the other end there was nothing but a bare and dismal hollow in the rock, or so it seemed. But between the one and the other there was a connection as real and vibrant as a filament of metal.

"Bernadette!"

The little girls were scared. And now Bernadette was pale and her wide-open eyes were fixed on the same point. They wanted to shake her, to awaken her out of that dangerous and disturbing dream, but no one dared. Around her the little girls set up a lamentation. Seized with anguish, again they wanted to run away and save themselves.

In the end their cries attracted a young miller named Nicolau (from the Savy mill) together with his mother and sister.

Nicolau was twenty-eight at the time and he approached wit~n an ironi cal smile on his lips. But when he saw Bernadette he backed away sharply. Later on he confided to J-B. Estrade that he had never seen the like of the expression on Bernadette's face and that he had not dared to touch her.

Bernadette did not move. She still looked up at the Grotto. Urged on by his mother, Nicolau took the young girl by the arms and tried to make her walk. After all, they had to go back. The mother aided her son, and together they succeeded in getting Bernadette to their mill.

Whilst she walked along with them Bernadette kept her eyes raised the whole time to an invisible being "which kept in front and a little above her." Much puzzled, Nicolau tried several times to put his hand in front of her eyes to get her to lower her head.

At Savy they sat her down on a chair. Whatever she had seen, she now saw it no longer; she was "awake," and she told them what it was she had seen. It was a repetition of the previous Vision.

But in the meantime Marie-Toinette Soubirous had run back to the rue des Petits-Fosses in a state of great excitement. In tears, but with all the vehemence and urgency of a frightened child, she poured out the story of what had happened. Louise Soubirous was both furious and anxious. Snatching up a switch, she hurried off to the mill and burst into the room where her daughter was.

"What's all this again?" she demanded angrily. "You little hussy, do you want to have the whole town laughing at us? I'll give it to you, with your sanctimonious airs and your cock and bull stories."

And she raised the switch to thrash Bernadette there and then, but Nicolau's old mother intervened.

"Don't hit the child," she said. "She's a little angel."

Louise Soubirous dropped the switch, looked at her daughter and burst into tears.

Lourdes was in ferment.

The children who had gone with Bernadette vied with each other in spreading the new story. Most people treated them as little sillies, but there were exceptions. Here and there an old woman, her thoughts turned to the supernatural, kindled at the children's stories as a dry root comes to life in the summer rain. But most people shrugged their shoulders and smiled knowingly.

However, a certain Mme. Millet? a pious lady of the town, and young Antoinette Peyret, a Child of Mary, decided on Wednesday evening, February 17, to go and see the Soubirous family. They came into the room just as the irate Louise Soubirous was scolding her daughter.

Mme. Millet did her best to soothe the mother and persuade her that the child might not be lying after all. Surely, one ought to go and see. Tomorrow, for example?

"Do you want us to be made a laughingstock?" demanded Louise Soubirous.

The others protested, insisted, argued. And Bernadette was dying to return to the Grotto. It might have a bad effect on her to forbid her to.

"Do what you like," said Louise Soubirous finally. "I think I'm going off my head."

The poor woman felt-and said-that with all her other misfortunes this ridiculous business went beyond reasonable limits.

The next morning, at the break of day-it was February 18-Mme. Millet and Bernadette went off together to Massabieille. Mme. Millet was a devout lady, but she was none too confident and so she demonstratively carried with her the traditional candle blessed at the Feast of the Purification, "a candle which she lit in her room on the Feasts of the Blessed Virgin or on the approach of heavy storms." Young Antoinette Peyret was there, too, and concealed beneath her cloak she carried a piece of paper, a bottle of ink and a pen.

M. de La Fitte had in the meantime had certain repairs to his mill completed, and the millstream now flowed freely so that it was impossible to cross it as the children had done. It was now necessary to clamber up one side of the Espelugues hill and slide helter-skelter down the other. At that game Bernadette easily outdistanced Antoinette and Mme. Millet, though the latter was still quite young. As sure-footed as a mountain goat and without bothering about her asthma, which was unaccountably sparing her, she went far ahead of them, and by the time the other two, still panting for breath, rejoined her they found her already kneeling in prayer before the Grotto.

Suddenly she uttered a cry of joy:

"She is coming! There she is!"

Mme. Millet and Antoinette both looked eagerly at the stone niche. For them it was still bare and empty.

Bernadette recited the whole Rosary. Then Antoinette, who still held to her own theory, suggested:

"Ask the Lady if she has anything to say to us, and if she has, ask her to be good enough to write it down."

Bernadette took the paper and the pen Antoinette handed to her, rose and walked straight towards the bush with them.

The paper remained blank.

Disappointed, the young Child of Mary came fonvard to know the reason why. Bernadette replied calmly:

"When I offered her the paper and the pen she just smiled. And then, without being annoyed, she said, 'It is not necessary for me to put down in writing what I have to say to you.' After that she seemed to consider for a moment, and then she said, 'Will you do me the favor of coming here for a fortnight?"'

Antoinette Peyret listened to what Bemadette had to say.

"Why does the Lady want you to come here?" she asked.

"She didn't say."

Suddenly Mme. Millet felt disquieted.

"Ask her if my presence is perhaps embarrassing," she said.

Bernadette looked at the rock and then she turned to Mme. Millet.

"The Lady said: 'No, her presence is not disagreeable to me."'

Bernadette then went back to her prayers and an hour passed. After that she rose to her feet and left the Grotto. On the way back her companions put further anxious questions to her.

"Did she say anything else to you?"

"Yes, she said, 'I do not promise you happiness in this world, but in the next."'

"Did you ask her her name?"

"Yes, I did. She inclined her head and smiled but she did not answer."

Bernadette frowned slightly; she was visibly preoccupied with something.

"Then she told me, 'Go and tell the priests that a chapel must be built here."'

There was silence for a while, and then Bernadette took the arm of Antoinette in a lively and affectionate manner.

"You know, Antoinette, the Lady looked at you for a long time and smiled at you."

All her life Antoinette remembered what Bernadette had said about that look and that smile.

When Bernadette got home she told her family the story in all its details, including her promise to go to the Grotto every day for a fortnight.

In the meantime, Antoinette Peyret and Mme. Millet were telling everyone they met about the transfiguration they had witnessed. They both believed in the truth of what they had seen and their faith was infectious. The quarrymen (there were very many of them in the district), the beggars, the sick and the infirm, servants, laborers, peasants, housewives and shepherds, a whole little world, began to hope eagerly. Perhaps Lourdes had really been honored by a marvelous visitation? Of course, with the good bourgeois of the town, it was quite different. With their great fear of ridicule-one of the main scourges of social life-they could not be expected to believe such childish stories. But whether people were moved by the story or skeptical of it, they discussed it just the same. . .

From A Treasury of Catholic Reading, ed. John Chapin (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957).

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