With Open Doors

This is the statue of Mary as it appears in the Basilica of the Rosary: Our Lady of Lourdes.

This morning I awoke feeling more like of pilgrim. Yesterday I felt like I was in Disneyland, in the midst of crowds, everyone wanting to see everything before their two day pass ran out. Yesterday it was like sight-seeing. Today it was seeing within and seeing beyond. Much better today. But I still prefer Fatima. Interestingly, it was to Lourdes that I wanted to come, with Fatima thought to be a stop along the way.

Unlike Fatima the area around the shrine in Lourdes is dreadfully tacky and distasteful. The safe and soothing and reverent and respectful avenues of Fatima are replaced in Lourdes with what is a gagging combination of Gatlinburg and Las Vegas.

As we entered the main plaza in front of the shrine, a man gestured and whispered, “Father.” I went toward him. He pointed. Another man gestured me on. Then another motioned to come with him. Up the side of the crowd, across the center at a break, and up the aisle between the rows of the sick in chairs and carts on both sides at the very front, he took me to the raised area in front and motioned for me to join the bishop and the other priests. Now I was looking out over the crowd, all with lighted candles. The bishop included the prayer, and invited all the priests to join him in offering a blessing over the sea of faces lighted by the glow of candle flames. But then the best part. The statue-bearers brought the statue up the steps and placed it on a table right next to us. We turned – and here it got as best as it could get – wall of us together chanted the “Salve Regina” in Latin.

Whenever we prayed the “Glory be to the Father …” or sang, “Ave, ave, ave Maria,” all the candles were raised high.

I wasn’t the only one with a paper candle shield that looked like mine.

After arrival and dinner at our hotel in Lourdes, we went to the evening rosary procession at the shrine. I kept getting lost in the praying, with so many repetitions in different languages, at least that was my guess as to what was happening. Hoping that God heard at least my intention to pray, I held my rosary and my candle, and walked with the couple thousand people, including a couple hundred sick, most pushed in wheelchairs or pulled in carts by volunteers