Our Lady of Lourdes - Eleventh Book - Finis

  BERNADETTE is no longer at Lourdes.  We have seen how on several occasions she rejected the offers of enthusiasm and refused to open to fortune when it knocked at the humble door of her dwelling.  She dreamt of riches of a very different kind.  “We shall know some day”―the unbelievers had said originally―“how she will be recompensed.”  Truly, Bernadette has chosen her recompense and laid her hand on her treasure.  She has become a Sister of Charity.  She has devoted herself to the care of the poor and the sick received by public charity in the hospitals.

  After having seen the resplendent countenance of the Mother of the thrice holy God, how could she do otherwise than become the tender servant of those of whom the Son of the Virgin has said, “What ye shall do to the least of these little ones, ye shall do it unto me.”

  It is with the Sisters of Charity and Christian   Instruction at Nevers that the youthful Seer has taken the veil.  Her name in Religion is Marie-Bernard.  We saw her some time ago in her religious dress at the Mother-house of the Congregation.  Although she is now twenty-five years of age, her countenance still preserves the character and grace of childhood.  She possesses an incomparable charm―a charm which is not of here below and which raises the soul towards the regions of heaven.  In her presence the heart feels stirred up with the best emotions, by I know not what sentiment of religion, and when you leave her you feel embalmed with the perfume of her calm innocence.  You can easily understand the love of the Virgin for her.  In other respects there is nothing extraordinary about her, nothing to point her out or make you divine the most important part she has played between heaven and earth.  Her simplicity has not in the least suffered from the unheard-of agitation which arose around her.  The concourse of multitudes and the enthusiasm of whole populations have no more troubled her soul, than would the water of a torrent tarnish the imperishable purity of a diamond, whether it were subjected an hour or a century to its waters.

  God still visits her, no longer with radiant apparitions, but with the sanctified trials of suffering.  She is often ill and her tortures are cruel.  She supports them with a sweet and almost cheerful patience.   Often she has been supposed to by dying.  “I shall not die yet,” she says, smiling.

  Never does she speak of the divine favor she has received, unless directly questioned on the subject.  She was the witness of the Blessed Virgin.  Now that she has fulfilled her message, she has retired into the shade of a religious life, full of humility and seeking to lose herself in the crowd of her companions.

  It is a cause of grief to her when anyone from the world comes to find her out in the bosom of her retreat, and any circumstance obliges her once more to come prominently forward.  She rejects whatever might recall to her the celebrity of her name in the Christian world.  Buried in her cell, or absorbed in the care of the sick, she shuts her ears to all the tumults of earth;  she turns away from them her thoughts and her heart to recollect herself in the peace of her solitude, and in the joys of charity.  She lives in the humility of the Lord, and is dead to the vanities of this lower world.  This book, which we have just written, and which speaks so much of Bernadette, will never be read by Sister Marie-Bernard.

FINIS.

Our Lady of Lourdes - Eleventh Book - Part 6

  The greater number of persons mentioned in the course of this long history are still living.
  Only a few of them have departed from this lower world.  The Prefect, Baron Massy, the Judge, M. Duprat, the Mayor, M. Lacadé, and the Minister, M. Fould, are dead.

  Many have advanced in their career,  M. Rouland has left the Ministry of Public Worship―which, it appears, did not altogether suit him―to administer the golden ledgers of the Bank of France.  M. Dutour, Procureur Impérial, has reached a higher position in the Court of Judicature.  M. Jacomet is Chief Commissary of Police in one of the most important cities of the Empire.

  Bourriette, Croisine Beauhohorts and her son, Mme. Rizan, Henry Busquet, Mlle. Moreau de Sazenay, Mme. Crozat and Jules Lacassagne―in fact, all those whose cures we have narrated―are still in high health and bear witness, by their recovery and the disappearance of their maladies, to the omnipotent mercy of the Apparition of the Grotto.

  Doctor Dozons continues to be the most eminent physician of Lourdes.  Doctor Vergez superintends the baths at Beréges, and can attest to the visitors of that celebrated resort the miracles authenticated by him long ago.  M. Estrades, an impartial observer, whose impressions we have more than once referred to, is Receveur des Contributions Indirectes at Bordeaux.  He resides in the Rue Ducan, No. 14.

  Monseigneur Laurence is still Bishop of Tarbes.  The faculties of the Prelate have suffered no diminution from age.  He remains precisely as we have depicted him in this book.  He possesses near the Grotto a house to which he at times retires to meditate―in those places so loved by the Virgin―on the grave duties and grave responsibilities of a Christian Bishop, whose diocese has been the scene of such a marvelous instance of grace.

  The Abbé Peyramale has recovered from the serious illness to which we referred above.  He is still the venerated pastor of the Christian town of Lourdes, where he is personally known as ever being the first to come forward when any good is to be done.  Long, long after his time, when he lies under the turf in the midst of the generation trained by him to the service of God, and the successors of his successors dwell in his Presbytery and mount his chair in the Church, the memory of him will live in the mind of all, and when they repeat the words, “the Curé of Lourdes,” it is to him that their thoughts will recur.

  Louise Soubirous, the mother of Bernadette, died 8th of December, 1866, the very day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.  In choosing this day for removing the mother from the misery of this world, she who had said to her child, “I am the Immaculate Conception,” seems to have wished to temper, in the minds of the survivors, the bitterness of such a death, and to show them―as a certain pledge of hope and of a happy resurrection―the souvenir of her radiant Apparition.

  While millions of francs are appropriated to the completion of the august temple, Soubirous, the father of Bernadette, has remained a poor miller, earning a precarious existence by the labor of his hands.  Marie, the one of his daughters who was with the youthful seer at the time of the first Apparition, is married to an honest peasant, who has learned the trade of miller, and works with his father-in-law.  Bernadette’s other companion on that occasion is now in service at Bordeaux.

Our Lady of Lourdes - Eleventh Book - Part 5

  God had done His work.

  God has said to the flake of snow, motionless and lost on the solitary peaks, “Thou art about to come from Myself to Myself.  Thou art about to go from the inaccessible heights of the Mountain to the unfathomable depths of the Sea.”  And he has sent his Servant the Sun, with his pencil of rays, to collect and to urge, with its broom of diamonds, this glittering dust, which changes itself immediately into limpid pearls.  Drops of water trickle from the edge of the snow;  they roll over the brow of the mountains;  they bound across the rocks;  they are broken among the pebbles;  they unite together;  they form one volume of water, and then they pursue their course together, sometimes calmly, sometimes rapidly towards the vast ocean―striking image of eternal movement in eternal repose;  and, at length, they reach the valleys inhabited by the race of Adam.

  “We will arrest his Drop of water,” say men, as proud as they were at Babel.

  And they attempt to stem this feeble and tranquil current which descends calmly among the meadows.  But the current laughs at wooden dykes, masses of earth and heaps of stones.

  “We will arrest this Drop of water,” repeat the fools in their madness.

  And what do they?  They join together immense rocks, cementing them together invincibly.  And yet, despite their efforts, the water filters through and passes through a thousand fissures.  But these men are numerous;  they outnumber the army of Darius;  they are possessed of immense force.  They stop up the thousand fissures;  they replace the fallen stones, and the time comes when the Gave cannot pass further.  The Gave has before it a bar higher than the Pyramids, thicker than the celebrated ramparts of Babylon.  On this side of that gigantic wall the pebbles of its gigantic bed glitter in the sun.

  Human pride exults with huzzahs and cries of triumph.

  The wave continues, notwithstanding, to descend from the eternal heights where the voice of God has made itself heard;  thousands of drops of water,    arriving one by one, halt before the obstacle and rise silently before this wall of granite which men have built.

  “Contemplate,” say these, “the omnipotence of our race.  Look at this Titanic wall.  Cast your eyes on its formation;  admire its incalculable height.  We have conquered for ever the torrent which is descending from the heights of the mountain.”

  At this very moment a slight gush of water passes this cyclopean bar.  Every one rushes to effect a stoppage.  The gush of water has increased.  It becomes a stream, which flows with fury, carrying before it the highest rocks of wall intended to stop its progress.  

“What is that?” they exclaim, from every part of the doomed city.

“It is the Drop of water which resumes its march and passes on its way―the Drop of water to which God has spoken.”

  To what purpose was your wall of Babel?  What have your Titanic efforts effected?  You have but changed a peaceful stream into a formidable cataract.  You wished to arrest the progress of the Drop of water;  it resumes it course with the impetuosity of Niagara.

  How humble was this Drop of water, this infantine word to which God had said, “Follow thy course!”  How little was this Drop of water, this shepherd-girl burning a taper at the Grotto, this poor woman praying and offering a bouquet to the Virgin, this old peasant humbly kneeling!  How strong was this wall, how impregnable and invincible it appeared, after having occupied the attention and absorbed the labor of a great State, from the common workman up to the overseer, from the agent of the police up to the Prefect and the Minister.

  The child, the good woman, the aged peasant have resumed their task.  Only it is no longer a taper or a poor bouquet which bears witness to the popular faith;  it is a magnificent edifice built by the faithful;  it is proved by the millions contributed towards the foundations of a temple already illustrious in Christendom.  It had been attempted to arrest a few isolated believers;  now they come in crowds, in vast processions, with banners flying, and singing hymns.  It is unheard of pilgrimages―whole populations which arrive, transported on iron roads by chariots of fire and steam.  It is no longer a small country which believes, it is Europe;  it is the Christian world which hastens to the spot.  The Drop of water which they would have chained has become a mighty Niagara.

  God had done his work.  And now, as on the seventh day, when He entered on His rest, He has left to man the care of profiting by his work, and the fearful faculty of developing or compromising it.  He has given them a germ of fruitful graces, as he has given them a germ of everything, charging them with its cultivation and development.  They can increase it a hundred-fold if they march humbly and piously in the order of the divine scheme;  they can render it sterile if they refuse to enter into it.  Every good thing coming from on high is entrusted to human free will, as it was at the origin of the earthly Paradise, which contained everything good, on the condition of knowing how to work it out and keep it, ut operaretur et custodiret illum.  Let us pray to God that mankind may never lose what His Providence has done for them, and that, by earthly ideas or anti-evangelic actions, they may not break, in their culpable or clumsy hands, the vessel of divine graces, the sacred vessel which has been deposited with them.

Our Lady of Lourdes - Eleventh Book - Part 4

  ELEVEN years have now elapsed since the Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin.  The vast temple is nearly finished.  It only requires to be roofed, and for a long time the Holy Sacrifice has been celebrated at all the altars of the subterranean crypt.  Diocesan Missionaries from the house of Garaison have been installed by the bishop at a few paces from the Grotto and the Church, in order to distribute to the pilgrims the apostolic word, the sacraments and the body of our Lord.

  The pilgrimages have become developed in proportions perhaps unexampled in the universe, for never, until our own time, had these vast movements of popular faith the omnipotent means of transport invented by modern science at their disposal.  The railroad of the Pyrenees―for which a line more direct and less costly had been marked before hand between Tarbes and Pau―has made a detour in order to have a station at Lourdes, where it sets down incessantly innumerable travelers, who come from every point of the horizon to invoke the Virgin who appeared at the Grotto, and to seek the cure of their maladies.  They throng there not only from the different provinces of France, but even from England, Belgium, Spain, Russia and Germany.  From the interior of distant America―both north and south―pious Christians have started and traversed oceans in order to repair to the Grotto of Lourdes and kneel before those celebrated Rocks, which the Mother of God has sanctified by touching them.  Often those who cannot come themselves, write to the missionaries requesting them to forward a little of this miraculous water to their homes.  It is sent to every part of the world.

  Although Lourdes is but a small town, there is on the road leading to the Grotto, a perpetual transit to and fro, a prodigious movement of men, women, priests, and carriages, as in the streets of a thickly populous city.

  As soon as the fine weather returns and the sun, having put winter to flight, opens in the midst of flowers, the azure and golden gates of spring, the Christians of those districts commence to move in order to make their pilgrimage to Massabielle, no longer, as during the winter, singly, but in immense caravans.  From a circumference of ten, twelve or fifteen leagues, the hardy people of the Mountain arrive on foot in troops of a thousand or two thousand.  They start the day before in the evening, and march through the night by starlight, like the shepherds of Judæa going to the crib of Bethlehem to adore the birth of the Infant God.  They descend from the lofty mountain peaks, toil up the deep valleys, and file along the banks of streams and rivers, singing hymns to God.  And as they pass, the sleeping herds of cattle awake, and the melancholy sound of their sonorous bells echo through the lonely wastes.  At day-break, the pilgrims arrive at Lourdes.  They form themselves into a procession, and unfurl their banners to proceed to the Grotto.  The men in blue caps, with coarse nailed shoes covered with the dust of their midnight march, support themselves on their knotted staves, bearing for the most part on their shoulders the provisions necessary for their journey.  The women wear the white or red capulet.  Some of them are laden with the sweet burden of their infants.  All this multitude advances slowly in a state of recollection chanting the Litanies of the Blessed Virgin.

  At Massabielle, they listen to the Mass, kneel at the holy table and drink at the miraculous Fountain.  Afterwards they disperse in groups, of their own family or of their friends, on the lawns which surround the Grotto, and, spreading on the grass the provisions they have brought with them, seat themselves on the verdant carpet of the meadows.  Thus, on the banks of the Gave, beneath the shade of those blessed rocks, they realize, in their frugal repast, those fraternal love-feasts of which the Christians of primitive times have left us the tradition.  Then, after having received the benediction afresh, and having kneeled down for the last time, they resume, with happy hearts, the road homewards.

  Thus do the people of the Pyrenees come to the Grotto.  But it is not from that quarter that the greatest multitudes arrive.  From a distance of sixty to eighty leagues there arrive every day immense processions, transported on the swift wings of steam.  We have seen them come from Bayonne, Peyrehorade, La Teste, Arcachon and Bordeaux.  They will come from Paris.  At the request of the Faithful, the railroad of the South organizes special trains, devoted exclusively to this vast and pious movement of Catholic Faith.  On the arrival of these trains, the bells of Lourdes are pealed.  And from these black cars there issue and arrange themselves in procession, in the court of the railway-station, young girls dressed in white, wives, widows, children, men of mature age, as well as those bent with years, and the Clergy clothed in their sacred robes.  Banners and standards float in the air.  There is seen passing by the Cross of Christ, the statue of the Virgin, the image of the Saints.  Chants to the honor of Mary burst from the lips of all.  The endless procession traverses the town, which, on those days, presents the appearance of a holy city, like Rome or Jerusalem.  The heart swells at the sight;  it mounts towards God, and feels carried, of its own accord, to those sublime heights where tears come to the eye and where the soul is deliciously oppressed by the sensible presence of the Lord Jesus.  For a moment one believes he has had a Vision of Paradise.