Our Lady of Lourdes

Biography

As if to indicate that Heaven ratified what the Vicar of Jesus Christ had done on earth, on February 11, four years later in 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared to the girl Bernadette Soubirous. And he did it eighteen times. She was born in 1844 and was the eldest of six children. She was a simple girl, with hardly any training or culture, because her extremely poor parents could not send her to do special studies. In the third apparition, the Virgin Mary told him: "I will not make you happy in this world but in the next." And he fulfilled it. It was not in her life - neither secular nor religious - carried in palms, as one might suppose. The ordeal that awaited poor Bernadette is not easy to describe in a few lines. Her relatives did not believe her story of the visions and forbade her to return to the grotto, but driven by an inner force, she went there and there she saw the Virgin eighteen times. That humble place of Lourdes soon became famous throughout the world. Pilgrims began to come from all over. It is one of the most visited and most revered Sanctuaries on all continents. There they have gone unbelieving and have found faith. Sick in body and soul, and have found health for both or one of the two. There one breathes a great devotion, the Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, of loving forgiveness and of the activity of the Mediatrix of all graces. There are many miracles that the Virgin Mary works from the Grotto of Massabielle, for all who come to Her.