|
| |
|
Saint Bernadette of Lourdes |
|
Feast Day: April
16
![[photograph of Saint Bernadette]](st%20bernadette.jpg "11kb jpg photograph of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, date unknown, photographer unknown; please do not write to ask about the image")
-
Also known as
- Maria Bernadette; Marie Bernarde; Sleeping Saint of Nevers;
Bernardette; Bernardetta; Bernada; Bernardette Soubirous
- Memorial
-
16 April;
18 February in
France
- Profile
- Oldest of six
children in a very poor family headed by Francois and Louise
Casterot. Hired out as a
servant from age 12 to 14.
Shepherdess. On
11 February 1858, around the time of her first Communion, she
received a vision of the
Virgin; her own account of it is in the Readings section
below. She received 18 more in the next 5 months, and was led to a
spring of healing waters. She moved into a house with the sisters of
Nevers at Lourdes where she lived, worked, and learned to read and
write. The sisters cared to the sick and indigent, and at age 22 they
admitted Bernadette into their order since she was both. Always sick,
and often mistreated by her superiors, she died with a prayer for
Mary's aid. Body is incorruptible.
> Since the appearances of
Mary to young Bernadette in 1858, more than 200 million people have
visited the shrine of Lourdes.
- Born
-
7 January 1844 at Lourdes,
France
- Died
-
16 April 1879, Nevers,
France
- Canonized
- 1933 by Pope Pius XI
- Name Meaning
- brave as a bear
- Patronage
-
bodily ills,
illness,
Lourdes France,
people ridiculed for their piety,
poverty,
shepherdesses,
shepherds,
sick people,
sickness
- Prayers
- Prayer
re...
-
Images
-
Gallery of Bernadette and/or Our Lady of Lourdes [24
images, 363 kb]
- Readings
- Nothing is anything more to me; everything is nothing to me, but
Jesus: neither things nor persons, neither ideas nor emotions, neither
honor nor sufferings. Jesus is for me honor, delight, heart and soul.
Saint Bernadette
You must receive God well; give Him a loving welcome, for then He has
to pay us rent.
Saint Bernadette Soubirous
The more I am crucified, the more I rejoice.
Saint Bernadette Soubirous
I had gone down one day with two other girls to the bank of the river
Gave when suddenly I heard a kind of rustling sound. I turned my head
toward the field by the side of the river, but the trees seemed quite
still and the noise was evidently not from them. Then I looked up and
caught sight of the cave where I saw a lady wearing a lovely white dress
with a bright belt. On top of each of her feet was a pale yellow rose,
the same color as her rosary beads.
At this I rubbed my eyes, thinking I was seeing things, and I put my
hands into the fold of my dress where my rosary was. I wanted to make
the sign of the cross, but for the life of me I couldn't manage it, and
my hand just fell down. Then the lady made the sign of the cross
herself, and at the second attempt I managed to do the same, though my
hands were trembling. Then I began to say the rosary while the lady let
her beads clip through her fingers, without moving her lips. When I
stopped saying the Hail Mary, she immediately vanished.
I asked my two companions if they had noticed anything, but they said
no. Of course, they wanted to know what I was doing, and I told them
that I had seen a lady wearing a nice white dress, though I didn't know
who she was. I told them not to say anything about it, and they said I
was silly to have anything to do with it. I said they were wrong, and I
came back next Sunday, feeling myself drawn to the place....
The third time I went, the lady spoke to me and asked me to come every
day for fifteen days. I said I would and then she said that she wanted
me to tell the priests to build a chapel there. She also told me to
drink from the stream. I went to the Gave, the only stream I could see.
Then she made me realize she was not speaking of the Gave, and she
indicated a little trickle of water close by. When I got to it I could
only find a few drops, mostly mud. I cupped my hands to catch some
liquid without success, and then I started to scrape the ground. I
managed to find a few drops of water, but only at the fourth attempt was
there sufficient for any kind of a drink. The lady then vanished and I
went back home.
I went back each day for fifteen days, and each time, except one Monday
and one Friday, the lady appeared and told me to look for a stream and
wash in it and to see that the priests build a chapel there. I must also
pray, she said, for the conversion of sinners. I asked her many times
what she meant by that, but she only smiled. Finally, with outstretched
arms and eyes looking up to heaven, she told me she was the Immaculate
Conception.
During the fifteen days she told me three secrets, but I was not to
speak about them to anyone, and so far I have not.
from a letter by Saint Bernadette
|
|
