John Arnold: Tears of pain, tears of gladness - Lourdes is such a special place

It was absolutely bucketing rain in Lourdes last Monday morning. A Bank Holiday at home in Ireland, but in the village of St Bernadette, just another extraordinary day.

I suppose for anyone that’s never been, it’s difficult to understand or even contemplate what the ‘experience’ is all about.

I’ve been to Rome and Lanzarote a few times, and to Fuengirola in Spain, also and Killarney and San Marino. Writing about these places has never proved problematic to me but Lourdes - it is so, so difficult to describe and summarize.

The more often I come, you’d think ’twould be easier, but no!

Look. I freely it I’m ‘hooked’ on it – no apologies to anyone, and it’s a great addiction to have!

We arrived here - I mean the Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage - last Friday in blazing heat. That afternoon as I walked down Rue de Grotte the temperature reached 36C - I thought my shoes would melt.

Since I started to travel to Lourdes annually in 2007, I’ve seen huge ‘peaks and troughs’. For the 150th anniversary year of 2008, the crowds were massive and held up well for most of a decade, but then the scourge of covid reared its awful head and the whole world was changed, utterly changed. Pilgrimages to holy places like Lourdes went by the wayside.

It’s only with the last two years that some degree of normality has returned. We saw a noticeable change this year with a surge in numbers obvious everywhere. It isn’t back to what it was, but going in the right direction.

Organised Lourdes pilgrimages usually have a set ‘programme’ of events lined up - Opening Mass, Confession Service, age through the actual Grotto, Torchlight and Blessed Sacrament processions, Statins of the Cross and a Healing Mass.

For those not familiar with travelling to the village near the Pyrenees in the south of , that list might seem like a religious overload. Then, Lourdes is all about religion - more especially, I think, about Christianity, and lads, when Christianity is practised to its fullest, there’s nothing better than it in the world - and that’s pure true!

Of course, Lourdes is about prayers, petitions and lighting candles, holy water, and also pain and suffering.

How often people say, ‘If there’s a God there - or somewhere - how come there is so much war, disease, and anguish in the world?’

It’s a great question, and a mere mortal like me cannot provide an answer. This much I know, however, that in Lourdes over the last week - yes, I’ve seen huge weights of physical and mental suffering being endured by young and old - but absolutely amazing happiness and joy also. I know, I know, that where suffering abounds you might think ’twould be all doom and gloom.

Believe me, I’ve seen as many tears of gladness as tears of pain in the last few days.

On Monday morning last, as the clouds were crying here in Lourdes, we had our Mass with the Anointing of the Sick in St Bernadette’s Chapel.

Clerical student Tiernan Burke spoke some profound and humbling words - “All I have seen here is love”.

He explained that each of us has a different vocation in life - something unique for everyone, not to be hidden away but put out there every day.

He spoke of the experience of joy and peace here in Lourdes, a peace the world cannot give. Tiernan gave us all a challenge - to share this peace with others. Peace is not simply lack of war, no, it’s much more than that.

If you have 20,000 or 50,000 people milling around, as we do every day in Lourdes, yet there is a calm and serenity here - surely in human that’s not logical? Spot on, but then what was logical about a 14-year-old illiterate girl from a poverty-stricken family being the means by which Our Lady could and did convey a series of messages to the world in 1858?

In January of that year, Bernadette Soubirous was minding sheep on the hillside at Bartres, a few miles from her home town of Lourdes. Working for the Lagues family that had reared her as an infant, Bernadette said: “Tell my parents that I am bored here. I want to come back to Lourdes and go to school to prepare for my First Holy Communion.”

Back she came to the family ‘home’ – a disused, dingy dwelling, the Cachot - a former prison.

On February 11, she experienced the first of 18 apparitions at the Grotto of Massabielle.

We walked through that Grotto in the heat last Saturday, touching the smoothness of the cold, black, damp rock.

Bernadette was told to ‘drink the water’ and ‘wash her face’ - she was puzzled as all she saw at the grotto was a tiny muddy, dirty pool of water. She scooped it with her hands and a spring rose up - to this day thousands of gallons of water still flow from the same spot.

On Tuesday, we awoke to a dull and grey morning - but thankfully dry. With our Grotto Mass scheduled for 8.30am, there was a sense of trepidation because Monday’s torrents of rain had forced one pilgrimage to move their Mass indoors.

Our Lady and St Bernadette smiled on us and we had a most beautiful celebration. Our pilgrim group this year was just over 400 people. For the Grotto Mass we were of course ed by others, but the vast majority of those in the wheelchairs, voitures, on the wooden seats were drawn from parishes of our diocese stretching from the Waterford border to the Kingdom of Kerry. This Mass is so special and really emotional as we gather on the spot where Bernadette came to gather kindling that bleak February morning in 1858.

What she saw here between then and July 16 that year changed the lives of so many - including me - and continues to do so.

Bernadette was a simple, uneducated girl who suffered hugely during her short life - but never complained. On the contrary, she had a sense of humour and loved playing practical jokes on people, and you know her sense of fun still pervades in Lourdes today.

Since we left Cork Airport last Friday, we have prayed and cried a lot, but we have laughed a lot as well! The fun and craic we have had was just mighty. I saw a girl leaving our hotel with a pint glass of soup, songs and stories recited, and everyone just helping everyone else.

On our pilgrimage, we have doctors, nurses, male and female voluntary helpers, and a huge youth group. In truth, we are like a jigsaw and only when ‘all the pieces fit’ do our days in Lourdes become truly magical.

Ye all know I love ‘tracing’ relations and I met more cousins over the last week in the South of than I’ve met with years! Then again, we really are a ‘Lourdes family’ and that sense of togetherness and camaraderie was inspiring these last few days.

Central to our pilgrimage were our 50 Assisted Pilgrims - our guests in the Accueil Notre Dame. The miracle of Lourdes year after year is the happiness, joy and contentment that the pilgrimage brings to them. This year, we had some on their first ever visit whilst others had been in Lourdes on multiple occasions, but it makes no difference - the experience is just amazing and truly awe-full.

On July 4, 1866, Bernadette stood on the riverbank across from the Grotto and bade farewell to Lourdes for the very last time. She was leaving for the convent of Nevers, where she died aged just 35.

It’s a special place, Lourdes. Last Monday night, we gathered there to special friends who have died recently. Stones from their graves in Ireland were brought by relatives and friends.

Ye know the reading from Ecclesiastes, all about time and ‘a time for everything under the sun’, well, we said the line, ‘A time to gather stones together and a time to throw stones away’, and put the stones from home into the River Gave - linking our loved ones forever with Lourdes.

“Now we are home and happy to be telling of places we happened to see, but there’s one little town we’ll never forget - it’s Lourdes the Village of St Bernadette.”