St Bernadette’s timeless appeal

Saint Bernadette Special

Seldom do events or phenomena have a timeless appeal. Global juggernauts in the form of organisations and large-scale companies have tried and mostly failed to perfect products, slogans or inventive designs that transcend generations and secure permanent lustre.

As Catholics, we’re reminded to stray away from the material and the commercial, but if we were to crudely compare the timeless appeal of St Bernadette to a marketing strategy or a promotional ploy after almost two centuries of resonance with Catholics and faith-curious people from all corners of the globe, it would undoubtedly be one of the most lauded and would almost guarantee prosperity for whatever business championed it from now until the end of time.

But what makes the story of an unassuming French girl, a girl who was described as a peasant, uneducated, living in abject conditions and unusually small in stature so alluring, generation after generation?

The simple answer is visions, visions which depicted a woman “wearing a white veil, a blue girdle and with a yellow rose on each foot”, that illuminated in front of Bernadette 18 separate times in quick succession before they were never to be reprised again in her lifetime.

These visions varied in appearance and theme, but the colour of the garments described by Bernadette, along with the woman’s style of clothing, were consistent with the traditional image of Mary that has been portrayed in church grottos and paintings in the latter centuries.

Enshrined

St Bernadette’s name and mystical experiences have been enshrined in the dedication of cathedrals, churches, chapels and Catholic schools, and this trend is no more present than in Ireland, where after her canonisation in 1925, there was a clamour to immortalise her legacy and honour her, and this is still visible today, and is particularly noticeable when one examines the names of schools and churches.

Against the backdrop of St Bernadette’s relics set to journey around all of Ireland’s 26 dioceses for the first time between September 4 and November 5, The Irish Catholic investigates the circumstances surrounding the sustained devotional popularity to her life and story – a popularity that sees an incredible 5 million people travelling annually to her shrine in Lourdes, France to encounter her graces and unite themselves wholly to her works and message.

Born on January 7 1844 at the Boly Mill in France and baptised the next day by Fr Dominique Forgue in the parish church of Lourdes, Bernadette Soubirous was the first child of Francois Soubirous and Louise Casterot.

Tragedy was commonplace in the family: out of six brothers and two sisters, only three lived beyond the age of ten”

St Bernadette grew up in a close-knit family in which she was cherished and deeply adored. Her father was a miller at the local Boly Mill and although her childhood is observed as being idyllic and carefree, poverty, sickness, mortality and extreme famine marred her adolescence and brought hardship to the family.

Tragedy was commonplace in the family: out of six brothers and two sisters, only three lived beyond the age of ten. The young Bernadette was illiterate and this became an obstacle to her making her Holy Communion as she needed to learn the Catechism in French when she could only speak patois, a colloquial form of the language.

Eventually a priest, Fr Pomian, promised that if she returned to Lourdes from Bartres (where she was sent at 13), he would prepare her for her Holy Communion. Three weeks after her 14th birthday, the young Bernadette walked back to Lourdes on her own, and never went back to Bartres. This return to Lourdes proved to be the defining moment in the life of St Bernadette and inspired a series of inexplicable events that irreversibly altered her life and the landscape of European Catholicism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Vision

On February 11 1858, Bernadette, then aged 14, was out gathering firewood with her sister Toinette and a friend near the grotto of Massabielle when she experienced her first vision. While the other girls crossed the little stream in front of the grotto and walked on, Bernadette remained behind.

She finally sat down to take her shoes off in order to cross the water and was lowering her stocking when she heard the sound of ferocious wind, but nothing moved. A wild rose in a natural niche in the grotto, however, did move. From the niche, or rather the dark alcove behind it, “came a dazzling light, and a white figure”, according to Bernadette.

This was the first of 18 visions of what she referred to as aquerò, Gascon Occitan (a dialect in southern France) for “that”. In later testimony, she called it “a small young lady” (uo petito damizelo). Her sister and her friend claimed that they had witnessed nothing.

The supposed apparition did not identify herself until the seventeenth vision”

On February 14, after Sunday Mass, Bernadette, with her sister Marie and some other girls, returned to the grotto. Bernadette knelt down immediately, saying she saw the apparition again. When one of the girls threw holy water at the niche and another threw a rock from above that shattered on the ground, the apparition disappeared. On her next visit, February 18, Bernadette said that “the vision” asked her to return to the grotto every day for a fortnight.

This period of almost daily visions came to be known as la Quinzaine sacrée, ‘holy fortnight’. Initially, Bernadette’s parents, especially her mother, were embarrassed and tried to forbid her to go. The supposed apparition did not identify herself until the seventeenth vision.

Although the townspeople who believed she was telling the truth assumed she saw the Virgin Mary, Bernadette never claimed it to be Mary, consistently using the word aquerò. She described the lady as wearing a white veil, a blue girdle and with a yellow rose on each foot – consistent with “a description of any statue of the Virgin in a village church”.

Conflicted

Bernadette’s story caused disquiet among the townspeople, who were conflicted in their opinions on whether or not she was telling the truth. Some believed her to have a mental illness and demanded she be put in an asylum.

The other contents of Bernadette’s reported visions were simple and focused on the need for prayer and penance. On February 25, she explained that the vision had told her “to drink of the water of the spring, to wash in it and to eat the herb that grew there”, as an act of penance.

To everyone’s surprise, the next day the grotto was no longer muddy but clear water flowed. On March 2, at the thirteenth apparition, Bernadette told her family that the lady said that “a chapel should be built and a procession formed”.

The sixteenth vision, which Bernadette stated went on for over an hour, was on 25 March. According to her account, during that visitation, she again asked the woman for her name but the lady just smiled back.

She repeated the question three more times and finally heard the lady say, in Gascon Occitan, “I am the Immaculate Conception” (Que soy era immaculada councepciou in Occitan). Despite being forensically interviewed by officials of both the Church and the French government, she stuck resolutely to her story.

On April 7, Bernadette had another vision, during which her hand was apparently not burnt while being in contact with the flame of a candle for several minutes. On June 8 1858, the mayor of Lourdes decided to barricade the grotto and put guards to prevent public access.

On July 16, Bernadette came back to see the grotto from the other side of the river and experienced her eighteenth and last apparition of the lady.

Bernadette said that it was faith and prayer that cured the sick: ‘One must have faith and pray; the water will have no virtue without faith’”

After investigation, Church authorities confirmed the authenticity of the apparitions in 1862. In the 160 years since Bernadette dug up the spring, 70 cures have been verified by the Lourdes Medical Bureau as “inexplicable” – after what the Church claims are “extremely rigorous scientific and medical examinations” that failed to find any other reason.

The Lourdes Commission that investigated Bernadette after the visions ran an intensive analysis on the water and found that, while it had a high mineral content, it contained nothing out of the ordinary that would account for the cures attributed to it. Bernadette said that it was faith and prayer that cured the sick: “One must have faith and pray; the water will have no virtue without faith”.

Bernadette’s remarkable life took another abrupt turn as unable to cope with the ensuing attention after the visions, she sought solitude and seclusion and entered the local hospice school run by the Sisters of Charity of Nevers where she learned to read and write.

Although she considered joining the Carmelites, her health prevented her entering any of the strict contemplative orders. On July 29 1866, with 42 other candidates, she took the religious habit of a postulant and joined the Sisters of Charity at their motherhouse, the St Gildard Convent at Nevers.

The Mother Superior at the time gave her the name Marie-Bernarde in honour of her godmother who was named ‘Bernarde’. The experience of becoming ‘Sr Marie-Bernard’ marked a turning point for Bernadette as she realised more than ever that the great grace she received from the Queen of Heaven brought with it great responsibilities.

Bernadette spent the rest of her brief life at the motherhouse, working as an assistant in the infirmary and later as a sacristan, creating elaborate embroidery for altar cloths and vestments. Her contemporaries admired her humility and spirit of sacrifice. One day, asked about the apparitions, she replied:

“The Virgin used me as a broom to remove the dust. When the work is done, the broom is put behind the door again.”

Development

Bernadette had followed the development of Lourdes as a pilgrimage shrine while she still lived at Lourdes but was not present for the consecration of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception there in 1876.

Unfortunately, Bernadette’s childhood bout of “cholera left … [Bernadette] with severe, chronic asthma, and eventually she contracted tuberculosis of the lungs and bones”. For several months prior to her death, she was unable to take an active part in convent life. She eventually died of her long-term illness at the age of 35 on April 16 1879 (Easter Wednesday), while praying the Holy Rosary.

On her deathbed, as she suffered from severe pain. Her final words were, “Blessed Mary, Mother of God, Pray for me”. Her body was laid to rest in the St Joseph Chapel, in the grounds of her convent.

30 years after her death, Bishop Gauthey of Nevers exhumed the body of Bernadette on September 22 1909, in the presence of representatives appointed by the postulators of the cause, two doctors and a sister of the community.

The body is practically mummified, covered with patches of mildew and quite a notable layer of salts, which appear to be calcium salts”

They claimed that although the crucifix in her hand and her rosary had both oxidised, her body appeared incorrupt. This was referenced as one of the miracles to support her canonisation. They washed and reclothed her body before re-burial in the Chapel of St Joseph in a new double casket.

The Church exhumed the corpse a second time on April 3 1919, on the occasion of the approval of Bernadette’s canonisation. Dr. Comte, who examined the body, noted, “The body is practically mummified, covered with patches of mildew and quite a notable layer of salts, which appear to be calcium salts… The skin has disappeared in some places, but it is still present on most parts of the body”. Again, the body was returned to the vault of St Joseph’s chapel.

In 1925, the Church exhumed the body for a third time. They took relics, which were sent to Rome. A precise imprint of the face was moulded to make a wax mask based on the imprints and on some genuine photos to be placed on her body.

This was common practice for relics in France as it was feared that the blackish tinge to the face and the sunken eyes and nose would be viewed as corruption by the public. Imprints of the hands were also taken for the presentation of the body and the making of wax casts.

The remains were then placed in a gold and crystal reliquary in the Chapel of St Bernadette at the main church of the convent.

Bernadette was declared blessed on June 14 1921 by Pope Pius XI. She was canonised by Pius XI on December 8 1933, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. She is celebrated in the liturgical calendar of the Church on April 16.

Marvels

The marvels rich in Bernadette’s life have encouraged many of the Irish faithful to actualise her devotion and establish prayer groups and yearly diocesan pilgrimages to Lourdes to experience the sacredness of the site. Pilgrims are able to wash themselves and collect the water in the spring where St Bernadette washed her face in, offering both a profound physical and spiritual healing.

In 1913, the Irish hierarchy organised a national pilgrimage. Canon Lockhart of Glasthule was General Secretary of the 1913 Pilgrimage. A total of 2,187 pilgrims travelled to Lourdes. One pilgrim, Grace Maloney from Co. Clare was cured of a tubercular femur during this Pilgrimage.

Now, with St Bernadette’s relics poised to touch thousands on this island as they take their maiden trip around all the corners of the country, let us recall the gifts and immense sanctity of one of the Faith’s most consequential figures of the last two centuries. Her humble origins, her adversity, her tenacity and, most importantly, her steadfast faith in the Church and the Blessed Mother.

Faith is sometimes advised as optimally being on the far side of reason – that has its merits. Sometimes the inexplicable or anomalous can’t be properly explained without something artificial or humanly inspired underlying it.

Perfect

St Bernadette’s account of the apparition is the perfect example of this ever-lively conflict. Her initial reports of the apparition she saw were greeted with a mixture of support and suspicion; the latter compelling some locals to demand that she be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. But Bernadette persevered and never recanted or deviated from what appeared before her; validation wasn’t her objective. She knew what she saw.

From initial doubt to canonisation, St Bernadette’s story exemplifies the courage that’s needed to become a saint; to be imperturbable in the face of derision and inspired purely by faith and not worldly personal motives.

If you’re fortunate enough to get a glimpse of the relics this Autumn, let the overriding thought be as you take part in this historic event that, as attested by St Bernadette and her story, miracles do happen and savour the moment as you’re now in the presence of one.