Reflections on the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes
Today, on the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes, I want to share some thoughts about the link between Fatima and Lourdes. At first sight, there seems to be no connection at all, beyond the fact that Our Lady appeared in both places. Truth is, they are deeply connected. Let me explain.
Our Lady came to Lourdes as a compassionate mother, causing healing waters to spring forth and working wonderful cures. At Fatima, there are no healing waters. Instead, there are ominous prophecies, mysterious secrets, and the terrifying sight of the sun plunging earthwards. How could Our Lady be so different in these two apparitions?
Lourdes and Fatima are two episodes in the magnificent story of Our Lady’s intervention in world affairs. What Our Lady began at Lourdes she continued at Fatima.
To do full justice to this magnificent story we should mention the apparition of Rue de Bac, Paris, where Our Lady came with the Miraculous Medal twenty-eight years before Lourdes.
We should also include La Salette, where Our Lady appeared a few years before Lourdes. We might include Akita, Japan (1973). Taken together, these apparitions form a coherent sequence.
To do full justice to this magnificent story we should mention the apparition of Rue de Bac, Paris, where Our Lady came with the Miraculous Medal twenty-eight years before Lourdes. We should also include La Salette, where Our Lady appeared a few years before Lourdes. We might include Akita, Japan (1973). Taken together, these apparitions form a coherent sequence.
There are many other apparitions. But they are either not well-known or have not been approved by Holy Church as worthy of belief. So we leave them outside our present considerations.
At the time of the Lourdes apparitions, Western society was in a steep spiritual decline. Pride, sensuality, materialism, and smug belief in infallibility of progress, hand caused widespread loss of belief in God.
Even while Our Lady was appearing to Saint Bernadette at Lourdes, Charles Darwin was writing his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
This book convinced multitudes that God was not our creator. The famous German philosopher Nietzsche was proclaiming “God is dead.”
False prophets like these were enthusiastically followed by a society looking for a means to exclude God.
We must take this background into consideration to fully understand the higher purpose of Our Lady at Lourdes.
From the rocky outcrop of Massabielle, near the provincial backwater town of Lourdes, a torrent of graces was about to surge across the world.
At a time when science was claiming the right to solve all known problems, the scientists were unable to explain the cures taking place at Lourdes. The skeptics fell into silence; the civil authorities who had tried to thwart Bernadette and her “lady” fell back in defeat.
So when Our Ladyworked those stupendous miracles at Lourdes, it was not merely to show hermaternal compassion. She had the higher purpose of reminding mankind of thepower of God. Our Lady came to beseech the world to convert from sin, above allfrom agnosticism and atheism, the signature sin of our time.
A stark difference between Lourdes and Fatima is the lack of a ‘Lourdes Message’, in the sense of the ‘Fatima Message.’
However, on the 25 February 1858, Our Lady suddenly stopped looking at Bernadette and lifted her gaze to something far off. “Then she became distraught,” writes Lourdes historian Franz Werfel.
“Her crystalline eyes painfully sought some far horizon. She seemed beset by visions – visions of torment and horror, for again and again her lips pronounced the word ‘penitence’. Her revulsion was very great, and Bernadette did her best to ease, by penitential acts, the Lady’s presence in this revolting world. The Lady shivered despite the fairness of the day. The roses at her feet were very faint and at the end of twenty minutes she withdrew.”
Penitence! This was also the word spoken by the terrible angel with a burning sword in the third part of the ‘secret of Fatima’ (as published by the Vatican). During the sixty years between Lourdes (1858) and Fatima (1917) mankind did not show any penitence but sank ever more into sin.
During the Fatima apparition of June 1917, Lucia dos Santos asked Our Lady to cure a sick boy. Our Lady replied, “If he converts he will be cured within the year.” During the last Fatima apparition in October, Lucia asks for the cure of some sick persons. Our Lady responded, “Some yes, others no; they must amend their lives and ask forgiveness for their sins.” Conversion is the condition.
His Holiness Pope John Paul II remarked in his homily at Fatima in May 1983, that far from heeding the Fatima Message, mankind “has gone in the opposite direction.”
However, it would over-simplify things to say Lourdes is all about mercy while Fatima is all about justice. God chastises in order to convert, not to take revenge. He wants our eternal salvation. We should not complain if He lays the burden of suffering on us in this life so that we can have eternal happiness in the next.
There is more. We have the consolation of knowing that conversion of the world was promised at Fatima. Our Lady said, “In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph….and a time of peace will be granted to the world.”
Saint Louis de Montfort says that God came into the world and through Mary and God will save the world through Mary.