Lourdes Love is the True Cure
with Pope Benedict XVI
All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY SEE
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Contents Lourdes - Love is the true cure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Lourdes in faith and love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Keep your lamps burning: Lourdes torchlight procession . .5 The message of Lourdes: Holy Mass at Lourdes . . . . .13 Come in truth and simplicity: Praying the Angelus . . .23 Lord Jesus we adore you: Blessed Sacrament procession and meditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Seeking the smile of the Virgin: Holy Mass for the sick at Lourdes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Last word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 Prayers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
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Lourdes - Love is the true cure The day of St Bernadette’s Feast is also my birthday. This fact already makes me feel very close to the little saint, this little girl, young, pure and humble, with whom our Virgin spoke. To encounter this reality, this presence of the Blessed Virgin in our times, to see the traces of this young girl who was a friend of the Virgin and moreover, to meet the Virgin, her Mother, is a very important event for me. Naturally, we are not going to Lourdes in search of miracles. I am going in order to find there the love of our Mother which is the true cure for all illnesses, all sorrows. I go to be in solidarity with all those who are suffering; I go in a sign of love for our Mother. This seems to me a very important sign for our epoch.1
1 Interview of the Holy Father Benedict XVI during the flight to France Friday, 12th September 2008
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Lourdes in faith and love The principal reason for my visit is the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. It is my desire to join the multitude of countless pilgrims from the whole world who during this year are converging on the Marian shrine, filled with faith and love. It is this faith and this love that I will celebrate here in your land during these four days of grace which have been granted to me.2
2 Welcome ceremony and meeting with authorities of state address of His Holiness Benedict XVI, Elysée palace, Paris, Friday 12th September 2008.
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Keep your lamps burning Lourdes torchlight procession One hundred and fifty years ago, on 11th February 1858, in the place known as the Grotto of Massabielle, away from the town, a simple young girl from Lourdes, Bernadette Soubirous, saw a light, and in this light she saw a young lady who was “beautiful, more beautiful than any other.” This woman addressed her with kindness and gentleness, with respect and trust: “She said vous to me,” Bernadette recounted, “Would you do me the kindness of coming here for a fortnight?” she asked her. “She was looking at me as one person who speaks to another.” It was in this conversation, in this dialogue marked by such delicacy, that the Lady instructed her to deliver certain very simple messages on prayer, penance and conversion. It is hardly surprising that Mary should be beautiful, given that during - the apparition of 25th March 1858 - she reveals her name in this way: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Look to Mary Let us now look at this “woman clothed with the sun” (Rv 12:1) as she is described for us in Scripture. The Most Holy Virgin Mary, the glorious woman of the Apocalypse,
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wears on her head a crown of twelve stars which represent the twelve tribes of Israel, the entire people of God, the whole communion of saints, while at her feet is the moon, image of death and mortality. Mary left death behind her; she is entirely re-clothed with life, the life of her Son, the risen Christ. She is thus the sign of the victory of love, of good and of God, giving our world the hope that it needs. This evening, let us turn our gaze towards Mary, so glorious and so human, allowing her to lead us towards God who is the victor. Countless people have borne witness to this: when they encountered Bernadette’s radiant face, it left a deep impression on their hearts and minds. Whether it was during the apparitions themselves or while she was recounting them, her face was simply shining. Bernadette from that time on had the light of Massabielle dwelling within her. The daily life of the Soubirous family was nevertheless a tale of deprivation and sadness, sickness and incomprehension, rejection and poverty. Even if there was no lack of love and warmth in family relationships, life at the cachot3 was hard. Nevertheless, the shadows of the earth did not prevent the light of heaven from shining. “The light shines in the darkness …” (Jn 1:5). 3 Cachot: abandoned prison cell where the family lived. The cell was owned by a cousin who let them stay there when they were left homeless after failing to pay the rent.
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Candles of light and peace Lourdes is one of the places chosen by God for his beauty to be reflected with particular brightness, hence the importance here of the symbol of light. From the fourth apparition onwards, on arriving at the grotto, Bernadette would light a votive candle each morning and hold it in her left hand for as long as the Virgin was visible to her. Soon, people would give Bernadette a candle to plant in the ground inside the grotto. Very soon, too, people would place their own candles in this place of light and peace. The Mother of God herself let it be known that she liked the touching homage of these thousands of torches, which since that time have continued to shine upon the rock of the apparition and give her glory. From that day, before the grotto, night and day, summer and winter, a burning bush shines out, aflame with the prayers of pilgrims and the sick, who bring their concerns and their needs, but above all their faith and their hope. A school to pray the Rosary By coming here to Lourdes on pilgrimage, we wish to enter, following in Bernadette’s footsteps, into this extraordinary closeness between heaven and earth, which never fails and never ceases to grow. In the course of the apparitions, it is notable that Bernadette prays the Rosary under the gaze of Mary, who unites herself to her at the
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moment of the doxology. This fact confirms the profoundly theocentric character of the prayer of the Rosary. When we pray it, Mary offers us her heart and her gaze in order to contemplate the life of her Son, Jesus Christ. My venerable Predecessor, Pope John Paul II, came here to Lourdes on two occasions. In his life and ministry, we know how much his prayer relied upon the Virgin Mary’s intercession. Like many of his predecessors in the Chair of Peter, he also keenly encouraged the prayer of the Rosary; one of the particular ways in which he did so was by enriching the Holy Rosary with the meditation of the Mysteries of Light. These are now represented on the façade of the Basilica in the new mosaics inaugurated last year. As with all the events in the life of Christ, “which she preserved and pondered in her heart” (Lk 2:19), Mary helps us to understand all the stages in his public ministry as integral to the revelation of God’s glory. May Lourdes, the land of light, continue to be a school for learning to pray the Rosary, which introduces the disciples of Jesus, under the gaze of his Mother, into an authentic and cordial dialogue with his Master! Processions made in prayer On Bernadette’s lips we hear the Virgin Mary asking us to come here in procession so as to pray with simplicity and fervour. The torchlight procession expresses the mystery of prayer in a form that our eyes of flesh can grasp: in the