Yesterday, 11 of February is the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes. For me, this is a wonderful celebration throughout this Chinese New Year. This is my first time ( as a Catholic) to celebrate this wonderful feast day. Praise the Lord that this year, the feast day falls on the second day of Chinese New Year.
Today, the Catholic Church around the world celebrate this wonderful feast day. The Shrine in Lourdes, France is the most visited Marian pilgrim site in the world, attracting millions of Christians of many denominations. Its popularity is in due, in part, to the many reported miracles and healing properties of the water there. The miraculous water of Lourdes flows from a spring that bubbled up during an apparition of Our Lady to fourteen year old Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.
I would like share some of the background about the apparition of our lady, in Lourdes (France). The first apparition take place on February 11, 1858. Bernadette, her sister, and a neighbour friend had gone outside to gather wood. At one point, while trying to cross a brook, Bernadette heard a great wind and turned her head to the grotto of Massabieille. There, a most beautiful young woman appeared with a Rosary on her right arm. Bernadette would later describe her as someone "lovelier than I have ever seen." As Bernadette prayed the Rosary, the woman remained silent but passed the beads through her fingers. Afterward, the lady disappeared. That evening, Bernadette had to tell her mother about the apparition. Her mother said to her it was an illusion and forbade her to return to the grotto, but after a few days, her mother changed her mind. On the third visit, the woman, Bernadette called 'the beautiful lady' asked that Bernadette return to the same site daily for fifteen days. On the thirteenth visit, the lady asked that a chapel be built and that people come in procession.
Bernadette was told that the chapel could not be built until the lady's name was known. It wasn't until the sixteenth apparition that the lady identified herself , stating, 'I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION'.
Interestingly, Pope Pius IX had formally declared and defined Mary's Immaculate conception as a dogma of the Catholic Church four years prior, in 1854. In his proclamation, he states that Mary , from the moment of her conception, was free from all stain of original sin.
The Catholic Church celebrates a Mass in honor of ' Our Lady of Lourdes' in many countries on February 11 of each year, the anniversary of the first apparition.
I'm glad that I got a chance to partake in this wonderful procession this year.
This is the wonderful experience that I had for this wonderful festival. The inner peace that I get, where, no one else can give you on earth.
