December 17, 2008

A holy visit

I went to Paris earlier this year for six months. My 70-year-old mother, we all call her Grandma Ellen, came for a visit in early October. I decided to surprise her with a weekend pilgrimage to Lourdes to celebrate the 150-year jubilee of Mary’s apparitions to St. Bernadette.

We took the “pilgrims train” from the Montpernass station in the south of Paris, like so many others have over the years. The platform was busy with groups of pilgrims scurrying about to get on the early morning train.

On the way down, I read a book on the 150 years of Lourdes, sharing parts of it out loud with Grandma Ellen. We arrived at the Lourdes station mid-afternoon. As we walked across the tracks we could see nuns, priests and lay pilgrims going in every direction, with the snow covered peaks of the Pyrenees in the background. You could feel the excitement—we were at Lourdes.

We made our way down a narrow street lined with trinket shops and loaded with pilgrim bus traffic. After crossing the Gave River we were standing at St. Michael’s Gate looking down Jubilee Avenue at the Rosary Basilica. Grandma Ellen said it looked like a little girl’s princess castle.

After checking in to our hotel we returned to Rosary Square and made our way under the arches to the grotto, Massabielle. Turning the corner under the arches we could see the candle vending station, the Mass intentions office, the candle burners, the submersion pools, the water collection station, the Gave—and the very spot where Mother Mary appeared to St. Bernadette so many times.

Hundreds of pilgrims from all over the world were in silent prayer in front of the grotto. We purchased a candle and followed the flow of pilgrims to the candle burners where candles have been burning for the past 150 years. The burners held candles of all sizes—some so large that they took four or five men to carry them across Rosary Square. We lit our candle, prayed at the grotto and then went to an Italian Mass at the upper basilica.

That night we joined pilgrims lined up to enter the grotto to see the spring that St. Bernadette dug with her hands at the direction of the Holy Virgin. We had just entered the grotto when Grandma Ellen blurted out, “I see the Virgin Mary right over there.” I start telling her in a low voice that the statue of Mary was above the grotto and that she could not possibly see it since we were inside the grotto. Halfway through this statement I saw the Holy Virgin in white, kneeling with folded hands, looking away from us. Thinking a picture of the Holy Virgin was painted on the rocks to the right of the spring, and that that must be what Grandma Ellen was seeing, I silenced myself and proceeded in line.

We passed the spring and started making our way out of the grotto. Dragging my hand along the rock wall, I stopped at the spot where we saw the Holy Virgin. But the rocks were black. There was no depiction of the Holy Virgin there. Hmm, I thought.

We left the grotto. As we walked along the Gave back to Rosary Square, with tears running down my face, I told Grandma Ellen, “I saw Her, too.”

Jeff Fiocchi
Our Lady of Loreto, Foxfield