Our Lady of Lourdes, Pray for us!

View of the Basilica from the bridge

“Mary brought us here”.  I have heard this statement before and I have even heard stories from people about how they were not sure how their trips to different Marian shrines would work out and it took some pretty amazing events for them to get there.  Whenever I heard this, I always thought it was “interesting”.

At the beginning of every year here at the College, we have to write out a list of Goals and Objectives for the upcoming year of formation.  As one of my goals for my first year in Rome, my formation advisor told me to think about making a visit to one of the many Marian shrines throughout Europe.  Over Christmas, I was able to stay in Paris for about ten days and we were no more than a five minute walk from the chapel where Our Blessed Mother appeared to St. Catherine Labore, which we visited quite often for prayer time and Mass.  During the beginning of my summer as I was driving through Ireland, we stopped in Knock, where Our Lady appeared to a handful of people.  These experiences were great and I’m sure Our Lady had her hand in my going to those places, but our Lord’s call to me and Our Lady’s desire was for me to come here to Lourdes.  Soon after I put “to visit a Marian shrine” as one of my formation goals, Our Lady of Lourdes popped up everywhere!  First, I thought of a statue that my classmates and I had given to our Italian tutor and realized it was of Our Lady of Lourdes.  The second thing that helped my decision was that I had been reading John Paul II’s encyclical entitled “The Christian Meaning of Human Suffering” and when I finished it I realized that he had dated it on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.  Next, arriving in Rome I was amazed by the beauty of a mosaic in our chapel at the NAC.  It is an image of Our Lady as The Immaculate Conception.  The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was promulgated in 1854, four years before the apparitions to a poor little girl in Lourdes, but during those apparitions (18 in all) Our Lady told the young girl, “I am the Immaculate Conception”.  This was the only name Our Lady gave herself during these apparitions.  Also, our College’s Patronal Feast is December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

You get the picture!  All of these things and a few others all made it very clear to me that I HAD to visit Lourdes.  Thinking back to when I first arrived in Rome, I remembered how several of the guys in the class above me had spent time in Lourdes as part of their summer program, so I thought that this was ideal!  As I began making summer plans, I knew that working in Lourdes had to be part of them.  Sticking to this decision was actually harder than it seems.  For our first summer there are so many amazing opportunities.  Guys from my class went to China, Africa, India, Norway and many other places.  We had the option to go to several seminars, study different languages in different places work with the Missionaries of Charity and just about anything else you could imagine.  When I looked at my summer plans, they seemed sort of “vanilla” compared to some of the others.  However, through prayer, I realized that the summer plans I had made would serve me and the diocese very well indeed.  Looking back as the summer comes to a close, I am very happy with the summer God had planned for me and I already see that it was a great experience of growth, learning and deepening of my relationship with our good and gracious God!

Back to Lourdes.  My time here has been amazing.  I have not experienced any miraculous healings, but I have witnessed God moving in my life and in the lives of thousands of people around me.  One very moving experience for me has been praying at the Grotto here and watching people walk through.  Young, old, sick, healthy, families, priests, religious, and nuns from all around the world have come to this place to pay honor to God by honoring the Ever Virgin Mother of his Son and to ask for healing both spiritual and physical.  I was almost in tears the first time I prayed at the Grotto.  The most moving thing to me is seeing those who are not able to get to the Grotto themselves having their family bring them through and touching them with water from the rock.  In these simple gestures, they showed me what real faith looks like.  They have so much hope that Our Lady will bring their petitions to her Son and faith that He will hear and answer them.

One thing that really helped to bring my whole Lourdes experience together was going to confession the day before I left.  I happened to go to a priest who I got to know over the two weeks I was there and he helped me to realize something amazing.  When he asked me how my time in Lourdes had been, I replied that it was good, but in the beginning I felt like it would have been better FOR ME to have come as a pilgrim first.  The first days were difficult because I had not seen the sights or done the tours, yet I was having to lead others.  I was wanting time to be reflective and prayerful (which eventually came), but I had come to Lourdes to lead others and to help them to experience God’s love through the story of Saint Bernedette’s apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes.  This is precisely the life of the priest.  He has experienced God’s love and the only worthy response is to return that love to God and to spread it to others.  This brought on an “a ha” moment for me.  I heard a few years back that when we pray the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, we begin with the Annunciation, God overshadowing Mary and letting her know of His plan and immediately after we go to The Visitation.  Once Mary has an experience of God, she “goes in haste” to help her cousin Elizabeth.  She goes both to serve Elizabeth, who in her old age has conceived a child, and to spread God’s message of goodness and love.  Over the last 11 years, I have come to know Our Lord more and more as he has revealed Himself to me and showed me His love.  I will always continue to grow closer to God and understand His love in new and more intimate ways, but now it is time that I begin focusing more on sharing what I have received from our good and gracious God with others.  I am called to serve Christ by serving others.  My time at Lourdes was an opportunity to put others before myself and to help create a prayerful atmosphere where they could experience God’s infinite love.  At first, it seems like I have to put myself and my own relationship with God aside in order to focus on helping others, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth.  I must continue to grow in my relationship with God so that I can continue to lead others to Him.  Also, as I give myself to others and try to assist them in their spiritual life, my own spiritual life will continue to flourish.  In giving we become more like God, who gives us everything, who, in the fullness of time even sent His only Son to die for love of each one of us. Wow!

As I said before, this trip has been amazingly blessed and I have only just begun to unpack all of the graces and insights from the summer, especially my time in Lourdes.  Please know of my prayers for all of you while I was there and my continued prayers for you always.  Please keep me in your prayers that I may continue to grow closer to Our Lord and that I may continue to be formed into the man he is calling me to be.

With many thanks to Our Blessed Mother for calling me to Lourdes so that my relationship with her Son could be strengthened I head back to Rome to begin another year of formation for the priesthood of Jesus Christ!

In Christ,

Patrick