Blessed Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

We celebrate today the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

honoring the anniversary of the first apparition at Lourdes

and the World Day of the Sick.

We pray this year brings you abundant 

blessings and graces through the intercession

of the Mother of God.

On February 11, 1858, the Mother of God came from Heaven and appeared to a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous of the town of Lourdes in the Pyrenees Mountains in France.

Accompanied by her sister and a friend, Bernadette went to the grotto of Massabielle on the banks of the river looking for driftwood to make a fire and sell some firewood to buy bread. Removing her socks to cross the little stream, she heard a great gust of wind in the stillness. She looked up towards the grotto:

"I SAW A LADY DRESSED IN WHITE, SHE WORE A WHITE DRESS, 

AN EQUALLY WHITE VEIL, A BLUE BELT AND A YELLOW ROSE ON EACH FOOT."

Bernadette made the Sign of the Cross with the lady and they prayed the Rosary together in silence. When the prayer ended, the most beautiful lady suddenly vanished.

Four years later, in 1862, the bishop of the diocese declared the faithful "justified in believing the reality of the apparition." Pope Leo XIII authorized a special office and a Mass, in commemoration of the apparition, and in 1907 Pope Pius X extended the observance of this feast to the entire Church.

Bernadette was later canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church for living a holy life. Let us join the Saint of Lourdes united in prayer in the presence of our Blessed Mother.