My Parish--- Our Lady of Lourdes 4 Years Plan.

Today, I'm going to share with you a video of my Church, Our Lady of Lourdes.
I love this video a lot, particularly the background music and the video that is shoot.
This video describe the 4 years plan of my parish.
I hope all of you will enjoy it!

Thank you.
Have a blessed day :)

Our Universal Mother

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.

Celebration of the Immaculate Conception

It is often noted that pregnant mothers have a certain radiance and 'glow' about them, physically attributed to the extra flow of blood around their bodies. But of course, it is well to think that this is a beautiful external sign of the inner joy that an expectant mother experiences in her spirit as new life grows and develops within her womb. During Advent, the Church focuses her attention on several persons, and one of these is a pregnant mother, who is not just aglow with joy and her pregnancy, but also beautiful and radiant with divine grace. This person, of course, is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

During this advent season, this coming Saturday we will be celebrating the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception is a dogma of the Catholic Church maintaining that from the moment when she was conceived the Blessed Virgin Mary was kept free of original sin and was filled with the sanctifying grace normally conferred during baptism.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates belief in the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is universally celebrated on December 8, nine months before the feast of the Nativity of Mary, which is celebrated on September 8. We will be celebrating this wonderful feast day tomorrow during Mass as well as other Catholic Church around the world.

As you can see the top part of my church,Our Lady of Lourdes, which written : 

'I am the Immaculate Conception'

My Church, which name as Our Lady of Lourdes, is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary invoke by Roman Catholic in honor of the Marian Apparition in Lourdes, France. 

Most prominently among these is the apparition of February 11, 1858, when Saint Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant girl admitted to her mother that a "lady" spoke to her in the cave of Massabielle, (a mile from the town) while gathering firewood with her sister and a friend. Bernadette Soubirous was later canonized as a Saint.

On 11 February 1858, Bernadette Soubirous went with her sisters Toinette and Jeanne Abadie to collect some firewood and bones in order to buy some bread. After taking off her shoes and stockings to wade through the water near the Grotto of Massabielle, she said she heard the sound of two gusts of wind (coups de vent) but the trees and bushes nearby did not move. A wild rose in a natural niche in the grotto, however, did move. From the niche, or rather the dark alcove behind it, "came a dazzling light, and a white figure." She was dressed all in white, apart from the blue belt fastened around her waist and the golden yellow roses, one on each foot, the colour of her rosary. Bernadette, knowing the local area well, managed to visit the barricaded grotto under cover of darkness. There, on 25 March, she said she was told: "I am the Immaculate Conception"

On Easter Sunday, 7 April, her examining doctor stated that Bernadette, in ecstasy, was observed to have held her hands over a lit candle without sustaining harm. On 16 July, Bernadette went for the last time to the Grotto. I have never seen her so beautiful before, she reported. 

St.Bernadette in-corrupt body. 

 Our Lady of Lourdes with St.Bernadette.

Hail Mary, full of grace.

the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women,

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,

Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

This is the sharing of me today. I hope it benefited those(particularly some of my friends )who  keen to know about the Catholic Faith. 

Sources: Wikipedia, Catholic Resources (many thanks )