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We did indeed return with our candles and paper lanterns last night for the Marian procession.  It was an evening I shall never forget.  We joined a group forming behind banners bearing the name, Abbeyleix, an Irish group it seemed.  We thought they would be singing in English and we could sort of follow along. The thousands that joined us on that windy evening were quiet folks, the chairs carrying the crippled pushed by attendants, families of all sorts, young and old.  We began at the Basilica and moved up the Esplanade, singing our chorus triumphantly, Ave Maria.  The Lourdes tune is lovely, Ave, Ave, Ave Ma-ri-a, with a final accent on the last a.  With each Ave, the candle is thrust higher in the air.

Dark clouds were forming in the distance over St. Michael’s Gate, and the wind picked up, snuffing our candles.  A neighbor relit mine, again and again and I wondered how she kept hers going.  Finally, I held my candle up with the song, lit or not, my heart alight, my mind full of the moment.  We followed the crowd, singing and stepping slowly, moving forward in time, and somehow moving in faith too, with all these brothers and sisters, a great family.  We returned to the Basilica with all of its light and color, where final prayers were said.  By 10 p.m. the crowds dispersed quietly to their beds for a good night’s rest.

This morning we woke to heavy mist, nearly a rain, and umbrellas in hand walked through the old town of Lourdes, pausing at the sights of Bernadette’s life – the house where she was born, the cachot, former jail, where the family lived in poverty at the time of the apparitions.  The cachot was just like the pictures, and you can walk right in, see the fire place, the two windows, the white walls, the smallness of the space for a family of six.  I recalled she had asthma, and her mother worried, but I also recall theirs was a loving family, and the first years of Bernadette’s life, until this year of misfortunes when her father lost his job and they moved to the cachot, were happy ones.  Her father had been a miller and they lived in the mill, alongside the rushing River Gave.

We walked farther up into town to the parish church with its triple nave and stained glass depicting Bernadette’s life.  A woman was singing before the Reserved Sacrament in the north aisle, another group was reciting the rosary.

The Tourist Office across the street was helpful with maps and information.  Folks spoke English.

We headed back for lunch, the sun breaking through the wetness and scorching the air, and later ventured out again, the rain clearing, the skies brightening.  This time I carried my last two copies of Offerings, thinking to leave them with the Information Center, addressed to the English Chaplain of Lourdes, a Father Martin Moran.

But first we had one more offering of thanksgiving: placing flowers at the feet of Our Lady of Lourdes, who faces the basilica, anchoring one end of the Esplanade, the giant crucifix standing tall at the other end, Saint Michael’s gate, facing the crowds coming in.  We bought two pink roses outside the gate and placed them in the wrought iron fence surrounding Our Lady.  I said a Hail Mary and a prayer of thanksgiving.  We continued to the banks of burning candles, and placed our candles, purchased nearby, in the iron stands and prayed for our Church, our clergy, and our people in these difficult times.  Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

We then went to the Information Office in search of Father Martin.  A lovely lady behind the desk, Christina, came to my aid and phoned Father, and he soon arrived, greeting us with a smile and a handshake.  Father Martin Moran is a tall man, gracious and friendly.  He was most encouraging, taking my novel with thanks and chatting with us about Lourdes and the many ways folks are healed here.  “Everyone leaves changed,” he said, smiling.  And I could see that.

Father Martin suggested I take my second copy back into town to the English bookshop, run by the Griffins.  Which we did.

We walked back up the hill, crossing the river into town, up the rue de la Grotte, turning on the rue du Bourg.  There were several book shops on this quiet street, and we spotted the one with the folding sign outside that read “English Book Shop.”

The Griffins were most welcoming and accepted my little book.  I hope to send them a few  more copies, and wish them blessings with their store in these difficult economic times.  The shop is lovely, with icons and an excellent selection of books in English.  Wish I had spent more time there, although I tend to load my suitcase too readily when it comes to books and icons.  http://www.lourdes-books.com/

I thought my day was nearly perfect, and our last event in Lourdes was yet to come.

Pilgrims meet at the Grotto each day at 5 p.m. for the Eucharistic Procession.

Around 4:30 we walked toward the Grotto to say goodbye to Our Lady, the image poised on the ledge looking down upon the flaming candelabra, the pilgrims moving quietly (silence requested here) in a somber line along the cliff face, into the dark cavern where one can see Bernadette’s bubbling spring through a window in the floor.  Nearby the candles in the sheds were flaming too, and we passed the baths next, closing for the day now, and crossed the rushing river to the other side.  It was here groups were gathering, opposite the Grotto and the gothic basilica, its spires shooting into the afternoon sky.

The blue chairs carrying the sick and handicapped had their awnings pulled out to protect the patients from the sudden hot sun.  Many were grouped under the shade trees.  A gathering of clergy was forming near one of the modern halls on this side of the river.  Perhaps as many as a hundred priests in white robes with stoles waited quietly or listened to assembly instructions.  I guessed most were visitors, and each day a few leaders resident here in Lourdes would instruct their charges in the rituals of this procession.  I wondered how they would proceed, how the procession would proceed.

A canopy was carried by four priests, and soon, the assempled clergy moved to a white tented pavilion nearby where a large monstrance holding the Eucharistic Host was on the altar.  Many in the watching crowd genuflected, some kneeling on the hard pavement.  I did both for a time, then rose, for I do believe that God is in the Host, a reality sometimes difficult to fathom.  Once again I was glad for the help of ritual to deal with such a mystery, and I relied on custom to guide me.

They soon were singing a familiar Easter hymn, one from our Anglican hymnal, and I sighed my thanksgivings for the familiar tune, and joined in theAllelulia!  The procession, the Host carried solemnly, left the altar pavilion toward the waiting crowds with their banners and chairs.  The long swathe of white robed clergy followed the canopied Host, leading the congregation along the rushing river, across the stone bridge to the Esplanade.

It was a smaller group than the Marian procession, perhaps five hundred or so, and we filed toward Saint Michael’s Gate, then crossed the Esplanade to the other side.  This was a different route, I thought, then saw that we were descending into a massive underground chapel.  I had seen pictures of the Chapel of Pius X, but had not visited.

We walked into the earth, and I gasped.  The space was huge, like a football stadium, with an altar in the center raised on a dais.  Like theater in the round, the congregation was assembling everywhere, and I could see many had arrived before us.  The space seats 10,000 and it was nearly full.  I soon sensed my mouth had dropped open and my eyes were bulging.  We found seats.

The clergy had taken their places to the side of the raised dais and a few gathered around the Host in the monstrance now on the central altar.  Large video screens in the congregation gave us closeups of what was going on.  There were readings and songs and finally Adoration, as we sang the wonderful Saint Anselm’s hymn, Now we before him bending… , a second familiar tune, one which I used in Offerings in the scene of Adoration at Sacre Coeur in Paris.

God is good, I thought, weaving together my loose ends, and Mother Mary has watched and loved and cared for me like a good mother.  I was grateful.

Last  night we joined the 9 p.m. procession, as the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary were sung in six languages, the “lanugages of Lourdes.”

The crowd moved slowly, some ten abreast, with handicapped in wheelchairs, children stepping solemnly, elderly with knowing faces, most carrying candles protected by small paper lanterns purchased in town.  Each mystery – each scene from the sorrowful period of Christ’s life, his Way of the Cross – was read in six languages, broadcasted through loudspeakers along the oval esplanade route that would lead back to the Basilica.  We said an Our Father and sang the Ave Maria chorus, candles lifted into the air.

It was still light when we began, but by the end of the route, about an hour later, the flames began to light up the dark.  As we walked I looked at the faces of my neighbors.  They held purpose and devotion to be sure, but there was also a sense of amazement that they were there with so many like-minded Christians.  Many of us live in this world as strangers, sojourners, and to have this sense of “solidarity,” of union with our fellow believers, outside in the balmy air, processing and taking part in praise, strengthens us.  To be together like this, to sing toether, to walk together, to pray together en masse, uplifts us, gives us courage and joy.

The first night we watched the procession from the sidelines, dazzled.  Last night  we took part in the procession as individuals, and thus joined the group at the end of the line, an Italian group, I believe.  We hadn’t located our lanterns yet, so we raised our hands to God.

Tonight we shall return after our supper, this time candles and lanterns in hand and join the throng of praise, song, and lanterns lifted high.
Will we recite the Glorious Mysteries?  I do not know.

Ave Maria, Gratia Deos.

We woke this morning to a warm humid day with high gray skies, and, after breakfast, set out for the Grotto of Massabielle, where the Virgin Mary appeared eighteen times to Bernadette.  As we worked our way along the crowded Rue de Bernadette to Saint Joseph’s Gate, past curio shops (which today seem quaint) and accompanied by white clad nurses pushing wheel chairs and pulling small carts carrying the malades, I thought about Bernadette’s amazing story.  Here is an adaptation from my account inOfferings.

On February 18, 1858, fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous saw a “beautiful Lady” in the Massabielle Grotto on the River Gave southeast of Bordeaux.

The nearly destitute Soubirous family had moved from a mill to a former jail, the cachot.  A chronic asthmatic and of simple intelligence, Bernadette was unschooled until age thirteen.  On that extraordinary day in February, as she gathered firewood with her sister and a friend, a “gust of wind” drew her gaze to the grotto where she saw “a Lady in white.”  Bernadette prayed the rosary with the Lady.  The Lady asked her to return for fifteen days, and Bernadette obeyed, finding a way to get to the grotto when she felt she must.

On February 24, Bernadette witnessed the eighth apparition.  The Lady asked her to kiss the ground, scratch the soil, and wash in its waters.  A curious crowd had gathered by this time, and they watched the young girl eat dirt and smear her face.  The following day a spring bubbled from the earth.

Healings began.  On March 1, Catherine Latapie, thirty-eight, thrust her deformed hand into the pool from the spring, and the hand returned to normal.  Bouriette Louis, fifty-four, was cured of blindness in his right eye, and Henri Busquet, fifteen, was healed of tuberculosis tumors of the neck.

On March 2, during the thirteenth apparition in the grotto, the Lady commanded, “Let the people come in procession and let a chapel be built here.” Bernadette reported this to her parish priest, but he did not believe her.  She urged him again that evening.  He replied she must ask the Lady her name.  On March 25, the Lady answered, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

When Bernadette reported this, the priest said, “But what are you saying?  Do you know what that means?”

“No, but I kept saying the name to myself all the way here,” Bernadette replied.

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, decreed by Pope Pius IX four years earlier and a popular belief since the early Middle Ages, claimed that the Virgin Mary was conceived without sin, a condition necessary, it was thought, for her son to be born without sin.  Bernadette’s clear ignorance of this doctrine convinced the priest that the apparitions were real, and he told his bishop.

The healings continued.  On July 6, two-year-old Justin Bouhort was cured of terminal paralysis when his mother immersed him in the spring.

The local authorities began to interrogate Bernadette.  Throughout months of intense scrutiny and badgering (for the popularity of the spring had drawn thousands, threatening civil unrest in the village of Lourdes), she remained simple and straightforward.  Finally, she was believed.

The devout Empress Eugenie in nearby Biarritz heard about the miraculous waters and gave some to her child suffering from tuberculosis.  The boy recovered the following day.  On October 5, 1858, his father, Napoleon III, opened the grotto to the public.

The waters of the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes continue to heal, the sixty-fifth documented miracle announced September 21, 2005.  It is estimated that approximately four thousand were cured in the fifty years following the shrine’s opening (see http://www.lourdes-france.com/).  The waters draw pilgrims, sick in soul as well as body, and healings of the heart would be impossible to document and too numerous to count.

From Easter through October, Lourdes, population seventeen thousand, hosts five million pilgrims and tourists from all over the world, including seventy thousand sick and handicapped.

A long parkway with an oval shaped path connects Saint Michael’s Gate with the great basilica that rises over Bernadette’s Grotto.  We entered from the side through Saint Joseph’s Gate and found ourselves in front of the Rosary Basilica.

The massive parkway called the Esplanade serves as the route for the evening processions, as well as gathering points for the many pilgrimages from around the world.  But what struck me about this morning wasn’t the many languages and banners and brightly colored identifying shirts and scarves.  What struck me was the singing.

Everywhere we strolled, gaping at the church facades and interiors, everywhere we went, past the water taps and candles flaming in prayer alcoves, everywhere people were singing.  For the most part, they were singing favorite hymns, modern hymns, sounding like old folk songs, but tuneful songs of praise as they gather in the open air before the grerat churches on the cliff.

The basilica is really three layered churches – the Crypt, the Rosary Basilica, and above that, the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. We climbed the stairs, a sweeping arc to a terrace, to the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, and halfway up turned to look down upon the Esplanade.  Directly below us, in an outdoor alcove chapel, a Mass was being said for the malades.  Eight white-robed priests con-celebrated before a dozen rows of handicapped and ill, who, confined to wheelchairs, waited, praying the prayers, for their communion.  Others have been healed in Lourdes by this simple action of union and belief.

Did they think they would be healed?

I looked at their faces.  Some held hope, others devotion, but all seemed to be filled with a peaceful joy.  When they said the Our Father they held hands, sisters and brothers in their suffering, soon to receive the suffering one Himself.

I thought about miracles.  Why couldn’t all of these sick be healed?  Why was it only one person every now and then, and why that person in particular?  The answer came as soon as I asked the question – free will.  God cannot interfere in man’s freedom, so to preserve that freedom of choice, he can not intervene too often.  Those times when He does intervene, those times of overwhelming love and testimony, are to help us see Him, and see His love for us.  Since Adam’s fall, Adam’s terrible choice, sickness and suffering would be part of humanity.  We must choose to offer that suffering to God for His purposes.

We filled our bottles with water from the taps.  I wondered if the water would heal me of my strange chronic and undiagnosed condition, recurring dizzy spells.  I thought of all those confined to their chairs, their bent limbs, their drooping hands and fingers, the young and the old.  Not me, Lord, but let my small seizures be offered for them.  Heal them, Lord.

For they are the true saints, and Lourdes bears witness here to the sanctity of their lives, no matter their condition.  We can only pray that we have their courage and hope, and that we too, bear such a witness.

We walked the Way of the Cross this morning, climbing the mountainside behind the Grotto and its basilica, following a wide path through a forest of shade trees dappling the pathway.  Larger-than-life sculptures depict each station, and we read the meditative prayers from our booklet.  I left understanding love a little better, that when we fall we pick ourselves up as Christ did, that we each have our own Way of the Cross, one which when fused with Christ’s, becomes a way of joy.  I left thankful.

This visit to Lourdes has indeed been a pilgrimage of thanksgiving for me, having come to the famous shrine many years ago for half a day and been entranced even then.  But on this visit, this pilgrimage to Bernadette’s home and vision of Mary, I am giving thanks especially for the publication of Offerings, with its chapters set here.  Indeed, a theme of the novel is the theme of Lourdes: the offerings God has made to us through His Son’s incarnation, death and resurrection, through His Mother Mary with her many apparitions of hope, particularly in France in the 19th century.  Through these offerings, mankind is given the chance, the choice, to be redeemed.

I would like to leave a copy of my novel here with someone who reads English, as an offering of thanksgiving.

The day was warm, the temperatures rising, the skies a dome of blue.  We descended through the forest of the Way of the Cross, down to the Grotto where candles burned in the giant candelabra.  We washed in the waters pouring from the spigots alongside the cliff face, and purchased candles to add to the many flames of the others.  The cave is kept the same as it was in Bernadette’s time.  Masses are often said there, below the image of Mary where she appeared on a small ledge above and to the right of the cave entrance.  The waters come from the spring Bernadette found when she obeyed the strange instructions of Mary – to scratch in the soil and eat the soil of sinners.  She scratched and tasted, and a spring bubbled up through the earth.  These are the same waters of that spring, found to be chemically pure, that have been routed through pipes into taps throughout the grounds, and into the baths where pilgrims are immersed by careful attendants.

Wash. Repent. Be healed.

We flew Nice-Paris-Lourdes, and finally arrived in time for a late dinner.

My first reactions are such a mix… loud music blaring on the taxi radio as we passed through peaceful forested foothills.  An old Victorian hotel set on a street of neon kitsch shops selling plastic figurines next to lovely icons.  The hotel dining room traditional, carved paneled wood, chandeliers, white linen table cloths. Bustling with pilgirms and tourists – many in the white garb of the “hospitaliers” those nurses who push the wheelchairs and help with the processions.  After dinner the procession itself, heard and seen from our balcony, winding along the Esplanade of green lawn, singing in many languages (one after the other) the Ave Maria.  Strolling over to the Basilica where the processions were now arriving, the sun just going down (it’s 9:30 p.m.), their paper lanterns starting to light up the dark.  The thousands of pilgrims, sick and well, helping one another, singing to Mary and Our Lord words of hope and joy.

We walked up a wide path leading to the Gothic church to a place where we could see the pageant of song and light and utter delight, the lights of the church appearing in the dusk, the pilgrims lights answering in some mysterious way, a kind of couterpoint.  Further on, the river rushed below the grotto, high with the rains of last year, the snowmelt of the nearby Pyrenees.

Then we walked back through town, along the neon path of shops, to our old hotel and took the lift, the long cables visible through the shaft to the floors above.

What will tomorrow bring in this miraculous place where the young Bernadette saw and spoke with the Virgin Mary?

Here on the lawn, high above Cannes, surrounded by lavender, a nearby waterfall rushes in the distance, a soothing sound.  I’ve been reading about Mary Magdalene’s time in the Marseilles area, a few hours west of here.  She sailed from Jerusalem with Maximin and many others, escaping persecution, and retired to a cave in the Sainte-Baume Massif between Toulon and Marseilles.

This story is one of French legend, promoted by medieval chroniclers, but I’ve always sensed the kernel to be true.  I was familiar with the dripping cave-chapel, the local Dominican monastery, the meditative walk up the mountainside.  I had never climbed beyond to the top, Mount Pilon, where they say Mary was carried by angels to hear them sing.  A chapel sits on the edge of a rocky promontory, a destination of many papal and royal pilgrimages over the last 1200 years, their names recorded by an 18th-century French historian.

The scholar Michael Donley examines the legend, and has come up with some interesting evidence.  The valley below the cave, and for that matter, in the greater region stretching from the town of Saint-Maximin and its basilica to Marseilles itself, is dotted with hermitages and abbeys dating to the fourth century.  These monastic communities were founded by monks from the Saint Victor monastery in Marseilles, a sort of “monks school” begun (we know from historical sources) by Saint John Cassian.  Records refer to the “Cassian way.”  The fact that there is such a congregant of these hermitages and abbeys near the site where Mary’s grave and oratory would have been is not conclusive but certainly indicative that the area was considered to be particuarly sacred.

John Cassian, too, is an interesting figure, for he was involved in the heady debate of the time about free will (Pelagius) versus grace (Augustine), landing firmly in the middle, which seems to me appropriate.  Donley argues Cassian was from this area, became a follower of John Chrysostom in the East and when this saint was banished from Constantinople, Cassian was ordered out as well.  He returned to his Provencal homeland where he founded two schools for monastics in Marseilles, and possibly spent his last days as a hermit in these hills.  His name marks the Cannes airport – St. Cassien – and a town nearby as well.

Fascinating clues to the mystery of the amazing Mary Magdalene, who, Donley also argues, was not only Lazarus’s sister, but the woman who washes the feet of Jesus with her hair, the woman whose demons are cast out, and the woman called a “sinner.”  In spite of recent statements by Church scholars to the contrary, and admitting there is no concrete Gospel evidence for the fusion one way or another, he makes it appear most likely they are all the same Mary.

I feel closer to Mary Magdalene, here in the country of her last years, when she preached in Marseilles about her Lord’s resurrection and her own salvation, then retired to the quiet of the mountain cave.  I’m carrying in my luggage my little novel, Offerings, that talks about her, and hope she approves my account.

In the meantime I shall read some more, inhale the lavender, and listen to the distant waterfall.

High above the Mediterranean Sea, west of Nice, hilltop villages look over the coastline.  These medieval walled villages were built for defense, but today have become havens for tourists seeking quaint alleyways, cobbled lanes, and walker-friendly towns.  Saint Paul de Vence, our neighboring village, is such a town, today an artist’s haven.  Indeed, you must park outside the walls and walk into the village, for the roads are too narrow for traffic.

These hills, at the base of the Alps Maritime, sit between the mountains and the sea.  The skies are large, with dramatic changes of weather as clouds are blown down from the peaks, and mist settles over the waters far below.  Yesterday was clear with a dome of blue above us, a light breeze.  Perfect.  Today gray skies carry brisk winds that swirl around our auberge.  A bit of sun tries to burn through.  A good day to read and reflect.

This is Mary Magdalene country, for legend claims she sailed to Marseilles with her companions, escaping persecution in Jerusalem.  She preached for thirty years in the area, then retired to a cave in the Sainte-Baume Massif, a low mountain range to the east.  We have visited her cave in the past, walking through an ancient protected forest, up the mountainside to the chapel grotto in the cliff face.  I told Mary’s story in Offerings and I wish to return to the legend in my work-in-progress, hoping to set a scene in the cave itself.  As part of my research, I’m reading a wonderful book, St. Mary Magdalen in Provence, the Coffin and the Cave by Michael Donley (Gracewing, 2008).  So I sit in the garden watching the weather change and reading about Mary Magdalen who spent her last years not so far away from here, also on a mountainside in Provence.

Time sometimes disappears, folds together, becomes one.  Soon we will be in Lourdes, where another Mary, the Mother of God, spoke to a young girl, also in a grotto.

Such miracles, tres miraculeuse.

We took the 10:43 ferry from Cernobbio to Bellagio, stepping carefully on the swaying metal gangplankbridging the Victorian station and the white steamer.  We headed upstairs to the top deck and sat in the stern.

The boat cleaved the deep blue waters, the sun warm upon us, the wind cool and brisk, and followed the shoreline to the many ocher-roofed villages, stopping at wrought-iron landing stations, letting folks off and others on.  The villages nestled along the water’s edge, each with its church and Lombard steeple, its yellow-painted hotels with orange geraniums trailing from windowsills, its cobbled lanes.  Beyond the shore, the villages spread up the green flanks of the lower Alps, to more churches and convents hugging the cliffs, villas with terraces and awnings, some shuttered.

Lake Como hangs from the Alps like an upside down “Y”, the western arm anchored by the main town of Como, the eastern arm ending with Lecco.  Bellagio perches on the peninsula reaching north through the center of the lake.  Byron called Lake Como the “Garden of the World.”  Many artists and statesmen have visited: Shelley, Longfellow, Verdi, Bellini, Listz, Puccini.  Winston Churchill painted; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor spent time here.

It is a blue and green landscape with scuttling clouds emerging from behind tall peaks, sudden winds ushering rain into the tranquil air with fat drops and swirling weather changes.  The beauty, the drama, takes my breath away, these sudden changes of weather.  Then, the storm gone, the sun bakes the wet grass and oleander trees.  Summer has returned.

We glide up the narrow lake bordered by the forests rising steeply on either side, passing white villas surrounded by gardens, cypress spires in rows, broad shady plane trees.  Church bells chime, echoing from village to village.

Arriving at Bellagio we take the ferry across one more stretch of water to Varenna, a quieter town, fewer tourists.  The waterfront path passes numerous restaurants, tables set in gardens overlooking the lake with awnings and umbrellas.  We finally reach the Hotel du Lac where we sit on a terrace under shade trees.  A mist has settled over the sun, and the view has been obscured, and we gaze into the whiteness as we nibble on salad and pasta.

Varenna is famous for its “Villa Monastero” and I had hopes of an interesting chapel somewhere.  It turned out the monastero was a convent of Cistercian nuns that was closed by the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century because the nuns were too lax.  The white Villa Monastero remains along the water’s edge and, having passed from owner to owner, is a Scientific Center today.

As we finished our lunch, a storm came in, and rain splattered through our leafy arbor, driving us inside to the lobby.  Thirty minutes later it let up and we ventured into the puddled town square, up steep cobbled stairs to the main road.  There we found the Church of San Giorgio.  A red candle flamed, and we prayed thanksgivings in the first pew before the Blessed Sacrament.  The Romanesque/Gothic church was lovely and well cared for, with many pieces from the closed convent, and a lovely fifteenth-century polyptych of Saint George over the high altar.

We descended along cobbled lanes to the docks and our 3:30 ferry home, full of color and sweetness, content with the day given to us.