Lourdes: A Modern Sinai
Do not think me fanciful then if I suggest that we ought to see in Lourdes a sort of modern Sinai; and that we ought to treasure the words our Lady spoke in the grotto as we treasure the words God gave to Moses on the mount. Ten words of God to Moses which are enshrined now in the general conscience of humanity; ten words of our Lady to Bernadette, ruling principles (surely) for the Church to whose altars the little prophetess has been raised. Let us meditate them, very briefly, as they come.
10 words Delivered to Bernadette
At the third apparition, St. Bernadette took with her pen and ink and a sheet of paper, to write down the commands which she felt the strange Lady would want to express. And the first recorded utterance of the Immaculate bears on that point; "What I have to tell you I do not need to set down in writing. Will you have the kindness to come here for a whole fortnight?" When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai, he brought with him two tables of stone, on which the Ten Commandments had been written, we know not how, by almighty God Himself. But the Christian law, St. Paul tells us, is not written on tables of stone, but on fleshly tables of the heart. It is not a code of directions exterior to ourselves, but a spirit with which we are to be imbued, an attitude which we are to assimilate. And Bernadette, accordingly, must not expect her decalogue to be registered in pen and ink. She must come to the grotto for a fortnight, as continuously as she may, and the message will write itself on her heart. And from us, too, our Lady of Lourdes asks no laborious exercise of the intellect, no feats of memory, if we are to learn her lesson. We are to watch Bernadette, and see our Lady's own image in her.
That was the first word, and the second word followed immediately, with an almost cruel abruptness: "I do not promise you that you will be happy in this world, but in the next." Moses, the servant of God, brought his people out into a land flowing with milk and honey—but he was not allowed to enter that promised land himself. And St. Bernadette was to open for us that miraculous spring from which healing has flowed into thousands of homes; the grotto in which she worshipped is hung about with a forest of crutches, the trophies of our Lady's clients; but St. Bernadette herself, what reward was given to her for all her faith and endurance? Thirteen short years of life in the cloister; years haunted with premonition, and crowned with the experience of long and continued bodily suffering. We had so often been told, yet nothing really succeeded in making us believe, that it is eternity which matters, and times does not count. Bernadette should be a living proof of that doctrine; our Lady's favorite confidante, rewarded, not with health like us others, but with a short life and a long cross!
The Prayer Known Only to Bernadette
At the fifth apparition, during forty minutes of ecstasy our Lady taught St. Bernadette, word by word, a special prayer she was to use. That prayer she learned by heart, and used it every day for the rest of her life. What was it? we ask breathlessly. The answer is that we do not know, and shall never know till, by God's grace, we are allowed to use it in heaven. The message, I say it again, was for Bernadette, and for us only through her; we are not to go to Lourdes for this or that ceremony, this or that form of prayer; it is to be the shrine not of a ritual but of a life.
A Familiar Plea: "Pray for Sinners"
And the fourth word presses on to the heart of the mystery; it was during the sixth apparition that our Lady said suddenly, "Pray for sinners." That is not what we think of, is it, when people ask us what are the most characteristic impressions we carried away from the Lourdes pilgrimage. We think of those wasted forms in their invalid chairs grouped round the square in the afternoon, and the heartrending petitions that echo round them: Lord, grant that I may see, Lord, grant that I may hear, Lord, grant that I may walk. Or we think of the torchlight procession in the evening, and the singing of the Credo which concludes it; we remember Lourdes as the embodiment of a great act of faith. But when our Lady stood at the grotto, the first command she gave was not, Heal the sick; was not, Convert the unbeliever. Her command was, Pray for sinners. Man's sin, that is our real malady; man's impenitence, that is the crying problem.
A Common Marian Message: Penance
The fifth word was unique, in that it was heard by the bystanders, not indeed from our Lady's lips, but from Bernadette's. As she knelt there in ecstasy, she repeated several times, sobbing, the one word, "Penance." They learned afterwards that she was repeating it after our Lady. This, then is our Lady's one public utterance; and, as I say, it is the message of Lourdes. We are to make there, in common, what reparation we can for our common faults. The true music of Lourdes is not the "Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick" that thunders across the square; not the Ave, Ave, that sweeps down the terraces. It is the 'Parce, Domine, parce populo tuo'—the confession of our sins, and a desperate cry for pardon.
Then, not till then, at the ninth apparition, our Lady pointed to the sacred spring, and bade her prophetess drink and wash there. This sixth word is a kind of interlude; and, remember, our Lady never said that those who drank, those who washed, would be healed of their bodily infirmities. The faithful themselves were left to find out that gracious corollary; the ceremony performed at the time by St. Bernadette was rather a pantomime of humiliation—to eat grass like the cattle, to drink and wash in a muddy spring. She dedicated herself and her mission to human scorn.
Then, not till then, at the ninth apparition, our Lady pointed to the sacred spring, and bade her prophetess drink and wash there. This sixth word is a kind of interlude; and, remember, our Lady never said that those who drank, those who washed, would be healed of their bodily infirmities. The faithful themselves were left to find out that gracious corollary; the ceremony performed at the time by St. Bernadette was rather a pantomime of humiliation—to eat grass like the cattle, to drink and wash in a muddy spring. She dedicated herself and her mission to human scorn.
A Cruel Request from Our Lady?
The seventh word emphasizes the lesson of humiliation, and connects it with the lesson of penance. "You will kiss the ground, for sinners." Because all our worst sins take their origin in pride, the penance we are to offer—we moderns at least—must be prefaced by the mortification of reminding ourselves, what and whence we are. So, when Ash Wednesday comes around, we open our Lenten fast by having our foreheads smeared with ashes, while the priest says to us, as God said to Adam when he had sinned: "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." We must learn to grovel before we can learn to weep.
Practical Instructions
With the eighth and ninth words we come at last to practical, rubrical directions, which will serve to organize Bernadette's revelations as a cult. "Go and tell the priests to build me a chapel"; "I want people to come here in procession." Man is made of body and soul; body as well as soul must take part in his self-dedication to God. Material edifices, of wood and stone, outward gestures, pilgrimage and march and song, must be the complement and the expression of his inward attitude. So, when God issued to Moses His moral law, in all the grandeur of its austerity, He directed at the same time the building of a tabernacle, and the rites which were to be performed in and at the tabernacle; He would enlist material things in the service of a spiritual ideal. So, when our Lady preached to Bernadette her gospel of penance she externalized it and eternalized it by prescribing the outward ceremonies that should be its expression.
The Last Word of Our Lady
The tenth word is the best known of all: "I am the Immaculate Conception." Why (people have asked) did she say that, rather than "I am the immaculately conceived"? It is, perhaps, rash to venture on explanations. But when God appeared to Moses, He revealed Himself under the title I AM WHO AM; and theologians have read in those simple words the most profound truth about the divine Being—that there is no distinction of essence and existence, of attributes and personality, in Him; His goodness, His wisdom, His power. His justice, are nothing other than Himself. That cannot be said, obviously, of any creature. But, may we not suppose that the plenitude of grace which flowed into the soul of our blessed Lady so overshadowed and transformed her human personality as to make her little suppliant forgetful of it; make her see, there in the grotto, no longer a human figure but the embodiment of a spiritual truth? That the thought of what she was and is was obscured, in that moment of revelation, by the thought of what God wrought and works in her?
"Today, if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts," was the message of Sinai. Moses struck the hard rock, and the waters gushed out; he could not wring tears, even so, from the hearts of a stubborn people. Surely, when she pointed to the miraculous spring at Lourdes our Lady was telling a whole world to weep for its sins. So many years have passed, and do we still come away from Lourdes dry-eyed?
This sermon was originally published in the February, 1980 issue of The Angelus.
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