10:30am Liturgy of Welcome

12noon Angelus

3pm Way of the Cross

6pm Rosary

7pm Mass of the Sick

9pm Departure of Relics

The Church will be open to allow people to visit and venerate the relics throughout the day, at times when there are no scheduled liturgies.

10am Liturgy of Welcome

10.15am Mass

11am-6pm Visitation & Veneration of the Relics

4pm Anointing of the Sick

6pm Penitential Service

6pm-10pm Confessions

6.15pm Lourdes Water Liturgy

6.30pm Way of the Cross

7pm Mass

8pm Torchlight Procession

9pm-9.50pm Holy Hour

9.50pm Eucharistic Blessing

Friday

7am Mass

 

 

Saint Bernadette

The town of Lourdes is situated in the south east of France, at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains bordering Spain.  Here in 1841, the Miller, Justin Casterot, died.  Needing a man to run the mill, Justin’s widow arranged a marriage between her daughter Louise and an employee of a local mill, François Soubirous.  They were married on the 9^th of January, 1843. Their first child, Bernadette, was born on January 7^th, 1844.  Later that year, Bernadette’s mother suffered a bad burn and had to send her to Bartres to be cared for and she did not return for eighteen months. In 1848, there was a falling out between François and his mother-in-law, who left the mill to live with her older daughter.  François soon ran up debts and in 1854, the family lost control of their mill, their home and their income.  Bernadette’s father took on a labouring job and her mother did laundry and house cleaning for others, to supplement the family income.  The children collected firewood, scrap iron and bones to sell. Bernadette worked in her aunt’s inn.  By 1858, the family was near destitute and Bernadette was very delicate as a result of numerous illnesses and afflictions and her father found it difficult to get work. In January 1858, Bernadette, at the age of fourteen began to attend a “paupers school” at the Nevers Convent.  On February 11^th, 1858 while gathering firewood washed up on the local riverbank, Bernadette because of her delicate condition, couldn’t cross the river with the others who accompanied her and was left to gather sticks on the near bank.  It was here she had her first encounter with the person she called “the Lady”.

The Lourdes Apparitions 

In 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, made startling claims. From 11^th February to 16^th July 1858, she reported eighteen apparitions of “a Lady”. Bernadette described the lady as wearing a white veil and a blue girdle; she had a golden rose on each foot and held a rosary of pearls. After initial scepticism from the local clergy, these claims were eventually declared to be worthy of belief by the Catholic Church after a canonical investigation. The apparition is now known as Our Lady of Lourdes. According to Bernadette, her visions occurred at the grotto of Massabielle, just outside Lourdes. On 16^th July 1858, she visited the grotto for the last time and said: “I have never seen her so beautiful before”.  

 

During the apparitions, the Lady appealed for prayer and penance and she also invited Bernadette to dig in the soil and drink from the water that filled the hollow.  Shortly after this, a local woman recovered use of her paralysed arm having bathed it in the water.  This led many sick to put their faith in the power of intercession through Our Lady of Lourdes, to bring about a cure for their ailments or an acceptance of suffering and disability.  Many inexplicable cures for incurable complaints are associated with Lourdes. Bernadette reported that the Lady did not always speak but she could see her lips moving as she moved the rosary beads through her fingers.  In March 1858 after a request from a local clergy man to Bernadette to ask the lady to reveal her name, the Lady said in the local dialect “I am the Immaculate Conception”, a dogma of the Church pronounced four years previously in 1854. During one of the final apparitions, the Lady asked Bernadette to “tell the clergy to bring the people here in procession and to build a Church”.  On 18^th January 1862, the local bishop declared: “The Virgin Mary did appear to Bernadette Soubirous”. 

Bernadette was canonised in 1933 by Pope Pius XI.  In 1958, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical “The Pilgrimage to Lourdes” on the 100^th anniversary of the apparitions.  Pope Saint John Paul II visited Lourdes three times.  Pope Benedict XVI visited Lourdes on 15^th September 2008 to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the Apparitions.  Millions of pilgrims visit the Lourdes shrine annually from around the world.