On February 11, 1858, Bernardette Soubirous, a poor young girl in Lourdes, France had a vision of Mary. She was meant to be collecting firewood, but as she was scrounging around in a grotto near the river, a vision of Mary appeared before her. This was the first of 18 visits Mary made to Bernardette over the next few weeks. The impact these visits, or visions, had on Bernardette personally and on Lourdes the community would be difficult to overstate.
Mary wanted a chapel built on that very spot. And what a chapel it has grown to be. She also told Bernardette to dig around and find a spring, which she did. And still today people flock to the spring for the healing waters.
So when the snow wouldn't fall, and our ski trip to the Haute Pyrenees was all but bust, we decided that we, too, should make our way to Lourdes to see what all the fuss was about.
Jack had been suffering from an upset stomach, so he decided to give the waters a try. And I had a few nice little bottles I bought in town to take some holy water back home. I was feeling a little selfish. You know, it wasn't a life threating illness that Jack was seeking a cure for, just a minor irritation. And I had brought three little bottles, not just one. What was I thinking? I looked around and saw people carrying huge jugs. Families were walking away with gallons and gallons of the stuff. It looked like they had all the water they could drink for a week. 
Over by the grotto, yes, the grotto, there is a statue of Mary. I'm going to operate on the assumption that it is in the exact spot where Mary appeared and that it looks exactly like Mary did to Bernardette. It's more fun to imagine it this way. That little cynical voice is whispering in the back of my head, but I'm shushing it. There is also a little piece of plexiglass on the ground, presumably in the exact spot where Bernardette dug in the mud to find the holy spring, which is now piped over to the faucets where the throngs are filling their jugs.
It's a lovely grotto. And it's fun to stand there, imaging that I am Bernardette, and Mary appears. What would I do? In fact, what would anybody do? I found myself wondering about apparations, about who Bernardette was, what was she like, wondering if she really believed it was Mary talking to her, how she convinced a bunch of priests to believe it was Mary talking to her. Let's say for a second that JC himself appeared, who would believe it? But I digress. As I often do when I'm wondering about this kind of thing (remember the pilar in Zaragosa?).
When we find ourselves in Catholic holy places we always light a candle for Jack's parents. So Anna and I went off for some prayer candles. Big prayer candles. Even the smallest candle option was pretty impressive, making it infinitely more fun to light than those faux electronic candles many churches use to avoid the mess of real candles.
We put the candles in a spot well protected from the wind. Then we went around and relit dozens of other candles that had been blown out. I felt bad for those prayers and wanted to rekindle them. I hoped that someone would do the same for John and Ann's candles if the wind blew them out before they exhausted their prayer power.
After visiting the lovey church built over the grotto we headed toward the sanctuary's exit only to stumble into the underground Basilica of St. Pius X. You could easily mistake it for a parking lot.
Once inside, I wondered how such an atrocity could be the manifestation of any spiritually inspired idea. I'm thinking it must boil down to simple crowd control measures. Standing in that church didn't feel any different than standing in an underground parking garage. It's a mystery why the church would build such a souless church. Like many mysteries here in Lourdes.
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