Lourdes and the great Marian messages

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.

A few years have passed since the apparitions of 1830 in Paris, at Rue du Bac, where the Virgin, preceding the dogmatic definition of the Church, revealed herself as the "conceived without sin" by inviting us her children to turn to her to obtain the graces of we need, thanks that all pass through his hands and like rays of light flood the earth and restore peace and faith in our hearts.

Then, in 1846, in La Salette, the Beautiful Lady returned to talk about conversion, penance, change of life, remembering the importance of the sanctification of the holidays and faithful listening to the Word of God ... and she does it crying, because at least his tears touch our heart.

In 1858 the Immaculate Conception again chose another place in France, hitherto small and unknown, to reveal its presence and bring us another message of faith, penance and conversion. Our Lady insists ... we are always hard to listen, lukewarm in practice ... she insists and will insist again, even in Fatima and then to the present day!

When he chose Lourdes, a great light had just lit up in the sky of the Church: in 1854 Pope Pius IX solemnly proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception: “The most blessed Virgin Mary in the first moment of her conception, for a grace and a singular privilege of Almighty God, in anticipation of the merits of Jesus Christ the Savior of mankind, has been preserved intact from every stain of original sin ".

But the echo of such grace had certainly not yet reached, in the small and remote country, so many simple people, for the most part unable to read and write, but of solid and pure faith, often fueled by poverty and suffering.

During the fall of 1855 Lourdes had been devastated by a cholera epidemic. On certain days the dead were counted by the dozen and were placed in mass graves. Even Bernadette had fallen ill and then the only remedy was considered to rub the back! One more suffering, and not a little! She will heal, Bernadette, but she will always remain frail, of poor health and suffering from an asthma that will never leave her.

This is the environment in which the Virgin is preparing to meet her beloved and to make her the messenger of Lourdes, all over the world.

- Purpose: We praise Mary who, "great and omnipotent by grace", loves poverty, humility and simplicity of heart. Let us ask her to make our heart so too.

- Saint Bernardetta, pray for us.