The intact body of Saint Bernadette: liquid blood flows
There is a 35-year-old woman dying: The intact body of Saint Bernadette Marie Bernarde Soubirous, "converse" of the Sisters of Nevers, aka Bernadette, the one who had seen and talked with Our Lady in Lourdes. Her leg was rotting. He reviews his past of misery and hunger first, of derision and injustice then, of incomprehension always. And here's how the writer Marcelle Auclair interpreted Bernadette's spiritual testament:
"For the need of mum and dad, for the ruin of the mill,
for the wine of fatigue, for the mangy sheep: thank you, my God!
Mouth too much to feed that I was;
for the children looked after, for the sheep kept, thank you!
Thank you, my God, for the Procurator, for the Commissioner, for the Gendarmes, for the harsh words of Don Peyremale,
for the days you came, Virgin Mary,
for those where you didn't come,
I will not be able to give you thanks other than in Heaven.
Bernadette, the one who had seen and talked with Our Lady in Lourdes
But for the slap received, for the mockery, for the outrages, for those who have taken me for mad,
for those who took me for a liar,
for those who took me for interested,
THANK YOU, MADONNA!
the spelling I never knew,
for the memory that I never had,
my ignorance and my stupidity, thank you!
Thank you, thank you, because if there had been on earth
a girl more stupid than me, you would have chosen that!
For my mother who died far away,
for the pain I had when my father,
instead of reaching out to her little Bernadette, Sister Marie Bernarde called me: thank you, Jesus!
Thank you for drinking this bitter heart you gave me with bitterness.
For Mother Josephine who proclaimed me "good for nothing", thank you! For the sarcasm of the Mother Master, her hard voice,
his injustices, his irony, and for the bread of humiliation, thank you!
The intact body of Saint Bernadette "Sister Marie Bernarde called me: thank you, Jesus"
Thank you for being the one that Mother Teresa could say, "You can't get enough of me."
Thank you for being the one privileged by the reproaches,
so my sisters said, "How lucky not to be Bernadette!"
Thanks for being Bernadette,
threatened with prison because I had seen you, Holy Virgin!
Watched by people as a rare beast;
that Bernadette so mean, that to see her she said: "Isn't that this?"
This wretched body that you have given me,
for this disease of fire and smoke,
my rotting flesh, my rotten bones, my sweat, my fever,
my dull and sharp pains, THANK YOU, MY GOD!
this soul that you have given me,
the desert of inner aridity,
your night and your flashes,
your silences and your lightning;
everything, absent and present for you, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, O JESUS!
(From Bernadette's spiritual testament - 1844-1879)
Bernadette died at 35 and her body was exhumed three times in the space of 46 years, due to the canonization process, with the incredible surprise that it was always intact, despite the fact that her rosary was now rusty and her dress moistened.
The doctors who first exhumed it were surprised to find it completely intact (and still is) starting with the liver, which seems to be the first thing that gets undone, and the teeth and nails are also intact.
Also, many years after his death, liquid blood still flows through his body. It is something supernatural, and all that is supernatural is the work of God. Let us now pray to Our Lady of Lourdes.