Our Lady of Lourdes

Go to drink and to wash at the source

The appearances were made in 1958 and had as Seer the young Bernadette Soubirous

The most shocking thing was the time chosen by the mother of the Lord to appear to talk to Bernadette: none other than during the time you'd normally spend for lunch: le12 and right in the Thursday before Lent, during feasts and banquets throughout the village.

But Bernadette, poor girl of fourteen frail, sickly and illiterate, nurse aide who wants all that well and keep it with you pretty much almost to the days of the apparitions on Shrove Tuesday and a day like any other good to scrape up firewood for large families and poor.

About a kilometre from the village there is a grotto called Massabielle, over the river Gave. It is here that Bernadette, left alone by the sisters who crossed quickly the stream is invoked by a strange sign: twice the noise like a thunder and, on top, the branches of the rose garden that are troubling as driven by the wind. Immediately follows--so writes Bernadette in all its descriptions, the appearance of a golden cloud that becomes a beautiful and young lady with feet supported by Bush.

Says Bernadette Jean Baptiste Estrade: “The Lady looked at me, smiled at me and waved me forward, as if she was my mom. The fear I had passed, but it seemed not to know where you were. I rubbed my eyes, closed them, I opened them; but the lady was always there, who continued to smile at me and to make me understand that I'm not mistaken ... “Mrs. ” -continued Bernadette-“She looks like a young man of sixteen or seventeen. Is dressed in white, with a blue band down the length. On his head a veil too white, which lets see just the hair and falls backward to below the belt. The feet are naked, but covered by the last folds of the gown, except at the end where shines on each of them a golden rose. Door on the arm a rosary white grains, linked by a chain of gold shining like two roses at the foot.

Bernadette drops to his knees to start praying but, the sign of the cross with which you begin can only do so after you have marked the lady who accompanies bernadette's prayer all the time saying though only “GLORIA PATRI ET FILI ET SPIRITUI SANCTO ” at the end of five tens of rosario.

After the prayer the Lady vanishes in an instant.

On 14 February-Bernadette meanwhile had said for her sister to her friend what happened by reporting of what even at home-call inwardly back at the grotto of Massabielle, but equipped with a bottle of holy water because, as you have been told, on these things you never know it might also be the devil to do a trick ...

The Virgin smiles to the gesture of Bernadette and calls her even more deeply to himself in Ecstasy. Bernadette then appears impervious to bullets, of the present and does not demonstrate to notice nothing happening around You that is not the vision.

On 18 February is the third apparition of the Virgin Mary: the Virgin starts to feel his words:”WILL YOU HAVE THE GOODNESS TO COME HERE FOR A FORTNIGHT?”.

“I DO NOT PROMISE TO MAKE YOU HAPPY IN THIS WORLD, BUT IN THE OTHER”. But the Lady of heaven, before leaving after about an hour of Ecstasy-will last always one hour individual appearances-tells Bernadette “THREE SECRETS” that the young man must keep to themselves and never trust anyone. The Virgin during the Ecstasy takes every opportunity to grow in faith and addiction his Bernadette inviting to repentance, exhorting with severity the young to dig into the ground to make you gushing water of a miraculous spring: “GO TO DRINK AND TO WASH AT THE SOURCE”then, later: “GO AND TELL THE PRIESTS THAT A CHAPEL IS TO BE BUILT HERE”; “I WANT TO COME HERE IN PROCESSION”

The apparitions were now become a fact well-known while he developed a real spontaneous devotion with collections of jobs for the chapel requested by our Lady. At the 16th appearance no accident occurred on 25 March-feast of the Annunciation to Mary by the Archangel Gabriele-Bernadette past the Madonna that was already waiting all bathed in light (we indulge this interlude: when was asked Bernadette if the Virgin was bright and she answered simply: it's not bright but is herself the light) directed with maternal gaze , full of love towards the people that called for. .. “The lady was standing, above the rose garden, and showed how they view in miraculous medal ... Then came his hands and took them to the top of your chest, looked up at the sky ...; then slowly peeling off her hands and leaning toward me, he said in a trembling voice: “I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION”.

There were still two more official appearances, on 7 April and on 16 July. Also began to experience miracles recognizable externally: those that the Commission recognised officially has more than seventy. But how many miracles in the miracle that is how many spiritual healing has dragged along the apparition to Bernadette.

Now Bernadette's in heaven and his body rests in the urn of the Church in Nevers where she waited in silence and prayer, in the offering of suffering and patience on the day of the meeting with the beautiful lady and her son Jesus.

Are the backdrop for this text, as written by Bernadette in three different times, the book of father Rene Laurentin, Jean Baptiste Estrade and Paola Giovetti. In “the apparitions of the Virgin Mary” And s. Paul. 1996.