“God has exalted the lowly” (cf. Lk 1:52). This is how we could sum up the life of St. Bernadette Soubirous, who knew how to respond to Mary’s announcement, obtaining for us the graces and miracles that we contemplate to this day in Lourdes.
Newsroom (11/02/2023 4:40 PM, Gaudium Press) On the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord in 1844, the firstborn daughter of Francis Soubirous and Louise Castérot, Bernarda Maria – also known as Bernadette – was born.
In the year 1858, on a cold winter’s morning, Divine Providence decided to lift some of the veils that separate this material world from the other world, the supernatural world.
The apparitions and the message of the Immaculate Conception
Bernadette, going out with her sister and her cousin to gather wood, came to an area called Massabielle, in Lourdes, where there is a cave. Unable to cross a canal because of her health problems, she decided to sit down and rest a bit while her companions went on their way.
It was then that she heard the mysterious sound of a breeze that seemed to herald a storm. However, while she was looking for heavy clouds on the horizon, her eyes fell upon the branches of the cave where a Lady of unspeakable beauty was to be found. At this point, the Heavenly messages began.
The “young girl in white”, as Bernadette called Her, was enchanting. She had a Rosary in her hands, a blue ribbon around her waist and two golden roses on her feet. However, the seer did not know that this was Our Lady, and remained ecstatic, contemplating the marvelous vision before her eyes.
In the first two apparitions, the Lady said nothing, she only smiled and made gestures to her chosen one. But in the third vision, the Lady asked Bernadette to return to the cave for fifteen consecutive days. And so she did, not without many difficulties and obstacles from her family and acquaintances, as well as from the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.
Throughout her eighteen apparitions, the Blessed Virgin expressed her desires: prayer and penance for sinners, the building of a chapel in her honour, and a procession of candles and tapers. She also asked Bernadette to dig a fountain, to take water from it and to wash herself with it.
After a long period of struggle, persecution, and opposition from the clergy, including being taken before a police commissioner, considered mad and sabotaged in every way by the powers of darkness, the maiden of Lourdes, St. Bernadette, with her heroic fidelity, contributed to the fact that very special graces began to descend from Heaven in profusion: miracles began to abound, and the miraculous spring began to heal bodies and souls.
At a certain moment, the veracity of the apparitions could be certainly confirmed: the clergy asked for a sign confirming the visions. After the seer insisted upon a sign from the Virgin Mary, She revealed: “I am the Immaculate Conception” Bernadette, who hardly knew what this expression meant, repeated it to the clergy, who saw in it the allusion to the dogma recently proclaimed by Pius IX, and in the seer’s obvious ignorance of the fact, a clear sign. After this event, the Blessed Virgin never appeared again.
Bernadette, religious sister
A few years after the apparitions, Bernadette entered the religious order of the Daughters of Charity and Christian Instruction of Nevers. The Blessed Virgin desired of her chosen one a full submission and change, according to all that She had revealed to her.
In Nevers, the seer of Lourdes suffered a great deal, for, besides being treated with excessive severity by her mistress, she also suffered from asthma, these being added to the very severe inner trials that God, as with all His chosen ones, continually sent her.
Bernadette Soubirous, in a certain sense, was a true expiatory victim. Her life in the convent was marked by prayer, by the constant sacrifice of herself, by charity taken to the extreme of self-forgetfulness. She practiced the virtues with true radicalism and also manifested extraordinary charisms that God had granted her: healings, as well as prophetic intuitions about deaths, vocations, and conversions.
God exalts only the humble
Bernadette ended her days on Easter Wednesday, completely configured to Christ crucified. Everyone ran to contemplate the Saint’s body, which to this day remains marvelously incorrupt.
The pilgrimages and the preparation of the cause for beatification soon began. Two miracles having been confirmed, on 14 June, 1925, Bernadette was beatified in Rome. Eight years later, two more miracles were verified, and on 8 December, 1933 – the Feast of the Immaculate Conception – Bernadette was declared a Saint.
The Creator invites each of His creatures to be His instruments for the fulfilment of His designs. This happened with Saint Bernadette: in the eyes of the world, she was a humble shepherdess, the daughter of mill-owners, and of a simple life. But for God, what really matters is fidelity to His will. And this humble young woman, being faithful to her vocation, brought the message of the Blessed Virgin to the world and to the Church; from her sacrifice, united to Mary’s designs, sprang all the marvels that are still present today in Lourdes.
On the day of her canonization, Pope Pius XI pronounced the following words in his homily: “a true Saint, whose message has given the world, thanks to the revelations of the Queen of Heaven and her exhortations to penance, the wonderful spectacle of Lourdes, its three sanctuaries, its pilgrimages, its graces of conversions, invitations to perfection, miraculous cures. In reality, the great lesson of Bernadette’s life is that God exalts only the humble.”
By Matheus Gavioli
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
