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Basilica of Lourdes at the height of the season.
Six million pilgrims visit every year. |
Today is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Do you know
St. Bernadette's story? Raised in poverty, she was a sickly child, but was still eager to help her family. One day in winter she, her sister and a friend went to look for firewood. At the cave of Massabielle, what the locals called the "pigs' shelter" she saw a vision of a young girl dressed in a white gown with gold roses on her feet who invited Bernadette to pray the rosary and asked her to return every day for fifteen days. Every day she would kneel at the grotto, venerate the beautiful lady, and pray the rosary.
Bernadette became a figure of mockery when the lady told her to dig in the earth and drink the water that appeared there and eat the weed. The gathered crowd called her crazy, but a spring bubbled up there and miraculous cures soon took place at the site.
When Bernadette asked the lady her name she replied, "I am the Immaculate Conception," a title conferred on her only a few years earlier by Pope Pius IX.
