Lourdes

Our Lady of Lourdes, France

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, one of the most known in Europe and in the world, is a place where the Love of God manifested itself through the apparitions of the Immaculate Conception to Bernadette in 1858 and is revealed today to the thousands of pilgrims who come every year to this site. During the thirteen apparitions to Bernadette, the message of the Virgin invited all people to come to the Grotto in procession and build a chapel, which prompted the construction of today’s Sanctuary. The ever-flowing spring and the miraculous healings of the pilgrims are a testimony of the salvation that faith and penance can give to all, if we turn our hearts and minds to the Love of God. In the same way as the Virgin is Immaculate – inhabited by God -, the Church and every Christian should allow themselves to be inhabited by God in order to become immaculate, wholly forgiven and pardoned so that they may, in turn, become His witnesses, in the same way as St. Bernadette Soubirous was.