Prayer to our Lady of Lourdes

Bernadette Soubirous became sister Maria Bernarda, talk of the Sisters of Nevers, has 35 years and is dying.

She who has seen and talked with our Lady in Lourdes looks to the past with eye amazed me in disbelief in the face of things made by the Lord in her: the hard life and miserable conduct at his home, suffered hunger, the terrible injustices suffered, the jeers, misunderstandings by those who was closer. Looks to the past and says how her heart notes; and this becomes real and rare prayer ...

“For the poverty of mom and dad
for the destruction of the mill, for wine of tiredness,
for use for mangy sheep: thank you, my God!
Mouth too much to feed who I was;
for children looked after, for the sheep kept, thank you!
Thank God for the Prosecutor,
for the Commissioner, for the gendarmes,
for the harsh words of Peyremale.
For the days are coming, the Virgin Mary,
for those that aren't coming,
There I will give thanks in paradise.
But to slap it received, for mockery, insults,
for those who have taken for mad,
for those who have taken to lying,
for those who have taken to concerned.
THANK YOU, MOTHER!
For spelling that I never knew,
for memory that I never had,
for my ignorance and my stupidity, thanks!
Thank you, thank you, because if we had been on Earth
a little girl more stupid than I am, you would have picked that one!
For my dead mother away,
for punishment that I had when my father,
instead of tending to his small arms Bernadette,
I called sister Marie Bernarde: thank you, Jesus!
Thanks for having watered of bitterness
This heart too soft you have given me.
For mother Josephine that she proclaimed:
“Good for nothing”.
Thank you!
For the mother's Teacher, his voice harsh jibes,
its injustices, its ironies,
and for the bread of humiliation, thanks!
Thank you for being the one whose mother Teresa
Could say,”I combined this enough”.
Thank you for being that privileged
by reproaches, that my sisters said:
“Lucky not to be like Bernadette
Thanks I was Bernadette,
threatened with jail because I view,
Holy Virgin!
Watched by the people as a rare beast;
that Bernadette so petty that to see it was said:
“Is not this?!”.
For this wretched body that you gave me,
for this disease of fire and smoke,
for my rotting meat,
carious in my bones, my sweat,
for my deaf and acute fever, for my pains,
THANK YOU MY GOD!
For this soul that I have given, to the desert of inner dryness,
for your night and your gleams,
for your silence and your lightning;
for all,
for you absent and present, thanks! Thank you Jesus!.”

(Spiritual Testament)