With Open Doors

Among the prayers prayed and left at Lourdes was this one from Lucas for his grandfather.

It was here in the grotto of Lourdes I placed all the notes and prayer intentions that I carried to Lourdes for others. It was an odd sensation: I didn’t want to give them up.

Sitting at the grotto at Lourdes, with mom’s twenty decade rosary in my hands, having untangled it out of mom’s embroidered little purse, working my way seat by seat to the first seat in the front row of the benches before the grotto, I fingered all 200 beads one by one, through all four sets of mysteries, in a steady and reflecting way, as I paused before, on and after each bead with just one word or phrase of the Hail Mary:

1. Hail Mary
2. full of grace
3. the Lord is with you
4. blessed are you among women
5. and blessed is the fruit of your womb
6. Jesus
7. holy Mary, Mother of God
8. pray for us sinners
9. now
10. and at the hour of our death

No, this is not a Mass taking place in “the grotto” at Notre Dame University, but at the Grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes.

On display in the “cachot” are the cape, shoes and rosary of (Saint) Bernadette. I have become fascinated with this young girl-saint. Nice photo, huh?

Bernadette was not very bright, to say the least. She was uneducated about the things of God and found learning very difficult. In a movie about her, the parish priest who was preparing her for first communion said, in a striking line with striking insight, “You know nothing but you understand everything.” Poor, uneducated, a little girl who was nothing in the sight of all in her world! Why was she chosen to be the one to whom “The Lady” would appear? How does that cause us to think about why God gives us what he gives to us?

Following bankruptcy the Soubirous family little by little fell into misery: unemployment, insecurity, expulsion from their home. They lived in a one room “foul and dirty hovel” that used to be a prison, six people in a small room. It was from this place that Bernadette, age 14, went forth on 11 February 1858, having no idea that on that day she would see the Blessed Mother.

The fifth glorious mystery: Mary is crowned Queen of Heaven and Earth.

While Father Jan was preaching, I sneakily snapped this photo. I think he will like having it.

I carried your prayers with me to the altar for Mass at the Basilica of the Rosary at Lourdes. Three times they touched me, as I touched them. (1) at the beginning of Mass, when Archbishop Schnurr prayed in silence for a while after inviting, “Let us pray,” and before he prayed the Collect, I instinctively reached into my pocket and touched mom’s bag that held all your prayers that I had “collected” before I set out on this pilgrimage. (2) during the prayer of the faithful, I faithfully reached again into my pocket to faithfully pray your prayers. (3) as we offered ourselves, together with Jesus as he offered himself to the Father in that great “Through him, with him …,” I felt for mom’s prayer purse and I offered you and your prayers to God again. Three times in one Mass at Lourdes.

After a day in Lourdes, on the second day in Lourdes, I was beginning to feel more like a pilgrim. The first day I was a tourist in the midst of crowds, sightseeing. The second day I was a pilgrim, paying less attention to what was going around me and more attention to what was going on within me.

This morning before Mass three of us arrived a little early. I placed your intentions (and mine) before The Lord in the tabernacle. Priest sometimes go where angels fear to tread, and do what angels hesitate to do. But you do not mind that I placed you and petitions there, do you?