Waiting a Lifetime for Lourdes

Over six million people visit Lourdes every year, yet I don’t remember when I first learned about St. Bernadette and her encounters with the Blessed Virgin Mary. Looking back, I feel that I’ve known about Mary’s visits to Fatima in Portugal since childhood because my home parish had an outdoor shrine to Our Lady of Fatima, complete with life-sized statues of Mary and the three children kneeling before her.
 
In the early 1990s my mother was very ill and her cousin Anna traveled back and forth to Louisiana from Glasgow, Scotland, to help care for her.  On one such visit, she brought us plastic bottles, shaped as Mary statues, filled with water from Lourdes, where she had gone on pilgrimage. Anna talked about the spiritual experience of bathing in the waters at Lourdes, attending morning Mass, praying the rosary daily during her visit, and meeting so many priests and nuns also there on pilgrimage. As Anna shared all of this with me, I knew I too wanted to experience Lourdes one day.

My interest in Lourdes and Faitma has inspired me to research other Marian apparition sites, especially those where Mary visited children. Having taught in Catholic schools for nearly 20 years, I am researching these sites where Mary appeared to children to write a book for school children about these miraculous events and the saints that were created through them. It is that project that took me to Lourdes this summer, and hopefully, will take me to Fatima next year.
My journey to Lourdes began July 3, 2024, flying into Dublin to visit a friend for a few days, and then a short flight to Toulouse, France, where my husband and I took the train to Lourdes. From the train station in Lourdes we went straight to our hotel, which had an amazing view of the central spire of the Upper Basilica towering over the city of Lourdes.

As our room was not ready, we took a walk and had a late lunch at a nearby restaurant. We walked near the gates of the Sanctuary, and my excitement continued to build. This 30-year dream of mine to visit Lourdes was finally here. But, we were exhausted from the heat, the train ride, and still feeling a bit jet-lagged, so we returned to the hotel to unpack, rest up, and start fresh the next day.

Yes, it was summer, and yes, we expected it to be hot, but it was very, very hot. The walk to the Sanctuary from our hotel was exhausting, along narrow sidewalks banked by souvenir shops selling everything from rosaries to plastic containers for the holy water to t-shirts and hats. We purchased some containers to collect the holy water with the high hopes of being able to figure out how to get them safely–and dryly–back to the States. I had made a long list of people I wanted to receive small bottles of water from Lourdes, just as my cousin Anna had done so many years earlier.
 
Once past the souvenir shops and cafes, and upon entering the gates of the Sanctuary, the atmosphere completely changed. It was much more quiet, with nearly everyone being respectful and speaking in lower tones. Other than those taking photos, most people were not on their phones unlike nearly every other place on earth. We got a map from the information center and began exploring the grounds. We visited the fountains but did not fill our bottles right then to keep our bags light for walking around. We did wash our faces in the water and blessed ourselves as we had read about and saw others doing around us. ​

We saw a roped-off area beyond the fountains and people starting to line up there so we got in line as well, unsure whether it was the line to file past the grotto where Mary appeared to Bernadette from February 11 to July 16, 1858. As long as I had waited for this experience, and with months of planning behind us, it was surprising that we were in a short line so quickly upon arriving at the shrine.

The line was orderly and quiet, with many people around me holding their rosaries. I, too, had my rosary in my hand, still damp from holding it under the fountains we had visited earlier. Entering the grotto area, everyone around me was holding their hands up against the boulder upon which the Upper Basilica sits. The rock is smooth to the touch, no doubt from the millions of hands of the faithful that have rubbed against it while visiting the grotto, but it is also damp, from the spring that runs behind it, Bernadette’s spring, which Mary had instructed her to find.

Deeper into the grotto area at ground level, is the actual site where Bernadette knelt and dug in the earth as Mary instructed, where the water flowing from the spring can easily be seen behind a glass screen.
 
At the precise area where Mary appeared 18 times to Bernadette is a niche in the boulder. In the niche is a large statue of Mary, created in 1864 by French sculptor Joseph-Hugues Fabisch, which was to be based on the precise descriptions of Bernadette Soubirous herself: “I raised my head looking towards the grotto, I saw a Lady dressed in white, she had a white dress and a blue sash and a yellow rose on each foot, the color of her rosary chain.” Before Bernadette left Lourdes to enter a convent in Nevers, France, the statue was installed in the niche, and it is said that she did not think the statue was in the likeness of her descriptions of the Blessed Virgin.

Honestly, I did not expect to be as emotional as I was when walking through the grotto. Walking away from the roped-off area, I felt shaky and overwhelmed. We climbed the steps to the Upper Basilica where I prayed the rosary and contemplated the miracles of Lourdes.

Facing the grotto is an area known as the Prairie, with rows of benches to sit and pray. It is also the area where pilgrims sit to attend daily Mass each morning in front of the grotto. After the moving experience of walking through the grotto, running my hands across the damp, smooth boulder, seeing Bernadette’s spring and the statue of Mary in the niche, it was a welcome respite to sit in the Prairie area and reflect upon my experiences of that day. We then filled our containers with water from the fountains near the grotto, and I once again felt overcome by emotion, seeing the water of Bernadette’s spring pouring out and thinking about the 70 miraculous cures that have been attributed to this very water.

The next morning, we returned to the Sanctuary to attend daily Mass in the Adoration Chapel, and after Mass, we stopped again to wash our hands and faces with water from Bernadette’s spring. Once again, my own tears mixed with the Lourdes water on my hands and face. This time, I did not ask for anything or make prayer requests for others, but instead I offered up a prayer of thanksgiving for this spiritual opportunity of a lifetime, one I will never forget. St. Bernadette, pray for us.

Michelle Ardillo is a freelance writer and retired SJRCS middle school teacher. She is a longtime parishioner at the Shrine of St. Jude Catholic Church in Rockville. Her essays and articles have been published in the Catholic Standard, Missio (Canada), Washington Family, and other periodicals. She is currently working on a book about the Blessed Virgin Mary. Find more of her writing at https://michelleardillo.com/.