What Is the Lesson of Our Lady of Lourdes?

We have story after story of the miraculous things that happen when men and women obey God. Nations are converted, people are healed, faith is restored, the vulnerable are served…and the ordinary people who carry out their callings are named saints

But do you ever wonder what happens when we don’t follow through on what God asks of us? Not blatantly disobeying Him, where we fall into such obvious sin and destruction that we actively tear down His kingdom on earth; but simple apathy, where we may respond with “maybe later” or “when I’m stronger/smarter/more energetic” instead of “Yes. I will do it, Lord.”

Several years ago, a friend I met through homeschooling circles was preparing to move out of town. Our children had become friends, and she and I connected on one of those easy, sit-and-stay-awhile levels. It was a sweet friendship, and a few days before they moved away, she made a plan to come over and say our goodbyes. The morning of her visit, I had a very clear thought that I should walk outside, cut a few roses from the rosebush in front of our house, and put them into one of the little glass jars I save for just such an impromptu give-away opportunity.

I had never cut roses from that bush before, so the thought seemed to come out of nowhere. I immediately silenced it, and my human reasoning kicked in with all the reasons not to listen to this prompting. Give her a tiny vase of flowers? What is she going to do with them? She has just packed away more belongings than she probably cares to deal with. I’m not going to burden her with yet another thing to get safely to her final destination. I could not think of a single reason I should hand her a tiny glass bottle filled with roses.

Except that the Holy Spirit was nudging me to do so.

She arrived a few hours later, and we were outside to greet them. She opened her car door and started walking toward me, right past the rose bushes, when she suddenly stopped and smiled. “These are beautiful! They’re my favorite color of rose - these remind me so much of my mom!” She teared up. Her mother had passed away years before and had been unable to see her through so many transitions in life - including this one.

I was stunned. It had never been more clear to me that I had been given an assignment, and had fallen short. This seemingly small task with which I had been entrusted opened my eyes to the movement of God in the world. Like so many mysteries, the “opening of my eyes” led to more questions than answers, yet the unknown was still spiraling toward truth.

On the simplest level, I was certain that God had wanted to make my friend feel His love and care through my actions. On a more complex level, I’ll never know the fullness of what God wanted to carry out through that one small action. The reason I couldn’t find an explanation for giving her a vase of roses was because I didn’t have the whole story. He did. And He wanted me to be part of it. I know that God doesn’t NEED us to accomplish His work - He is omnipotent. But neither does He go about arranging the world regardless of our actions. We are co-creators with God, asked to participate in His work rather than passively observing it. 

Over 160 years before my encounter with God in the rose bushes, a French teenager met Our Lady amid the roses in the Grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes, France. She, however, had a faith that did not insist on having all the answers. Her name was Bernadette Soubirous, and while collecting firewood with her sister and a friend, she had a vision: A “small young lady” appeared above a rose bush in the grotto, praying the rosary. Bernadette knelt to join her, astonishing her companions who saw nothing. Despite the concern and embarrassment of her parents over her claims, Bernadette returned to the grotto several times to visit with the lady, who always appeared as a girl of 16 or 17, with a blue sash over her white robe, yellow roses at her feet, and a rosary in her hands. Over the course of these visits, she did use discernment (in one instance, by throwing holy water on her vision to see if she would disappear, only to have her smile and bow), but never required answers. When the lady asked her to dig in a spot in the grotto, and then wash and drink of the water, she did so. The act couldn’t have made sense to her at the time, but the same spring still flows with the miraculous water for which Lourdes is now known. Finally, after asking Bernadette to build a chapel on the site of the grotto, she revealed her identity: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

Bernadette’s claims were bold, and the 14-year-old came under scrutiny by church leaders. The community had varied reactions as well, many thinking that Bernadette should be treated for hallucinations while others were curious enough to drink from and wash in the water at the Lourdes grotto.

The first miracle at Lourdes occurred just a week after Bridget dug the spring. A young woman pregnant with her fourth child came to the grotto with faith that her hand, two fingers of which had been paralyzed during a fall, might be healed. Indeed, she walked away with the full function of her hand as it was before the accident. This, and other miracles in those early months, substantiated Bernadette’s claims and led to the eventual building of the chapel. To date, 70 miracles have been validated from Lourdes since 1958, and there are still 6 million visitors a year to the healing waters at the grotto.

All of this, from Bernadette’s simple obedience. It could not have made sense to her, born in ill health to a poor family, that she should petition priests to build a new church. It must have given her pause to wash and drink in water that was murky upon first rising from the earth. At fourteen she had likely only ever taken orders from others, and here she was telling people to make a procession to the place where only she had experienced a vision. 

We will never know what would have become of that grotto if Bernadette had been too timid to share her visions. We can’t know how things would have turned out for the 70 people who received a miracle, or what might have happened to the millions of pilgrims if they hadn’t taken the journey. God may have appointed a different messenger, or perhaps the miracles would have occurred through other means, but maybe the world would have been irrecoverably lacking if not for Bernadette’s humble faith.

When God leads us to our rosebush, whatever and wherever and for whomever it may be, let us listen. Let us lay down self-doubt and reach for faith. Let us silence insecurity and lean on the certainty that God’s plan is beyond our understanding. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declared the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) God explicitly tells us His thoughts and ways are beyond our own. He asked me to trust him with some flowers and a friend and I couldn’t, lest she think it strange. Through Our Lady of Lourdes, He asked Bernadette to risk her reputation, ridicule, familial disapproval, and the comfort of a quiet life - and she did. 

What is God asking of you? What ridiculous, radical, imperfectly executed task is He nudging you toward, in hopes that you will trust Him? What might God give to the world through you?