Saint Bernadette Soubirous

To really know Bernadette, we must walk with her along both roads of her life: from the light-filled grotto of Lourdes to the dark infirmary at Nevers; from the admiring applause of crowds to the silence of a nun learning to live the word of God each day.

But the business failed, and the family slid into poverty. In 1854 they lost the Boly mill and had to scrape by as day laborers. The next year, a terrible cholera epidemic broke out in Lourdes and Bernadette fell gravely ill. The aftereffects of the disease, along with asthma she had from birth, left her lungs permanently damaged, making every breath a struggle.

By the winter of 1857, the family was so destitute that all six of them had to take shelter in a cramped, damp, dark room of just sixteen square meters, called the Cachot. It had once been the town jail, abandoned in 1824 because it was so unsanitary, and a cousin of her mother’s, André Sajoux, took pity on them and let them live there free of charge. The child who had grown up to the sound of rushing water at the mill was now shut inside four moldy stone walls, often going hungry. That room is still preserved today as a small museum in the heart of Lourdes, and visitors are struck by the contrast between that humble beginning and the splendor of the basilicas built later.

Bernadette never went to school. She had to work to earn her keep, and for a time went to the village of Bartrès to herd sheep for people the family knew. When she returned to Lourdes at the beginning of 1858, the fourteen-year-old still could not read or write standard French, spoke only the local dialect, and longed to learn her catechism so she could prepare for her First Communion.

Yet hardship and lack of schooling did not make Bernadette dull or ashamed of herself. Everyone who met her noticed in the girl a complete honesty, a sharp memory and a way of answering that was both plain and remarkably witty. Under her ragged, patched clothes was a free spirit with a quiet dignity.

She rubbed her eyes, thinking she must be dreaming. She hurriedly took the rosary from her pocket and tried to make the Sign of the Cross, but her arm suddenly trembled and would not lift. Only after she saw the Lady make the Sign of the Cross solemnly could she make it too and begin the Rosary. When the prayers were over, the Lady smiled and vanished.

An unschooled fourteen-year-old who had never heard of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, proclaimed by the Pope just four years earlier, kept repeating those words to herself all the way to the presbytery so as not to forget a single difficult syllable. Father Peyramale was stunned, recognized the hand of God, and wept.

On June 3, 1858, Bernadette made her First Communion. On July 16 came the last apparition, as she looked toward the grotto from the far bank of the Gave because the authorities had fenced off the entrance.

Yet Bernadette always held to her simple testimony, never changing. She never added or dropped a single detail to please the adults, and firmly refused every coin pilgrims pressed into her hand. She once said calmly:

“The Lady did not tell me to make people believe; she only gave me the task of telling them!”

After a rigorous canonical investigation lasting four years, on January 18, 1862, the Bishop of Tarbes officially issued a decree recognizing the apparitions at Lourdes as worthy of belief. Lourdes was on its way to becoming one of the great pilgrimage sites of the world. Bernadette, for her part, needed a hidden life.

At her superior’s command she told the whole story of the apparitions once, before the entire community; from then on she was not to bring up the grotto herself. She settled into the daily rhythm of an ordinary sister: praying, sweeping, doing laundry and assisting in the infirmary.

Convent life was not a string of peaceful days. Some superiors, wanting to test the virtue of one to whom Our Lady had appeared, treated her very harshly and coldly. Bernadette accepted all those unjust corrections in silent obedience. She never went back to Lourdes, not even once; her beloved grotto now lived only in her prayer.

When a visitor, full of pity, asked what she was doing in her sickbed, she smiled and whispered:

“My work is to suffer... I lie here to pray for sinners!”

At the grotto of Lourdes long ago, Our Lady had spoken words that proved prophetic:

“I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next.”

Now those words were coming true to the letter.

Pope Pius XI beatified her in 1925 and solemnly canonized her on December 8, 1933. The Church canonized Bernadette not because she saw Our Lady, but because she lived a life of heroic virtue, always humble, truthful and steadfast in carrying the Cross after the Lord to the end.

In parishes and Catholic villages in Vietnam, the Lourdes grotto with the statue of Mary in white and little Bernadette kneeling with her rosary has become a deeply beloved image. People go there to weep when they are at the end of their rope, and to whisper thanks when they have come safely through danger.