ESMiracles of Lourdes / Gospel Scenes
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| The Blessing of the sick |
On August 22, 1888, at four o’clock p.m., as the Blessed Sacrament left the basilica, the invocations began with an indescribable enthusiasm. At a distance of nineteen centuries we were assisting at the Gospel scenes. As on the day of His glorious entrance into Jerusalem, thousands of spectators cried, Hosanna to the Son of David! Around the baths the enthusiasm reached its climax. Five or six thousand people with arms extended crosswise repeated: Blessed be He who cometh in the Name of the Lord. Hundreds of sick people had been brought on their pallets. Two of them rose, and walked behind their Divine Master. All the carriers’ energy was required to prevent the crowd from crushing them in their delirium. Several more sick recovered all at once strength to leave their litters, and came to pray beside their brethren.
Burst of applause and enthusiasm greeted those prodigies. It was only with great difficulty that the Blessed Sacrament could be carried through the serried ranks of the multitude. Thousands of faithful talked to Jesus as if they had seen Him in flesh and blood in their midst. Who could tell the number of spiritual resurrections more beautiful than the resurrections of the body! A Protestant lady, smitten with that enthusiasm, made her abjuration right there.
Every year the same manifestations recur with the same crowds and with the same enthusiasm. We all remember the procession of the national jubilee pilgrimage in 1897. All our societies were represented: the hospitalers of Salvation, the hospitalers of Lourdes, and all our religious orders; fifteen hundred priests in surplice walked ahead of two hundred and fifty miracle-favored persons, who filed past us like a vision of Heaven: consumptives snatched from the brink of the grave, paralytics, blind, deaf and dumb, and incurables of all kinds; all kinds of sick, whom God had come to cure or solace; and on the esplanade of Holy Rosary Church, two thousand sick, seated or lying, formed a double row along the passage of the Blessed Sacrament. After Benediction, fifteen or twenty of the stricken ones leaped up, and were cheered by a crowd of thirty to forty thousand people. Never had we witnessed such a matchless spectacle. We were touching the last limit of human emotion; beyond, it is earth no more.
On September 1, 1904, during the pilgrimage of the North, fifteen hundred to two thousand members of the Blessed Virgin’s sodality, arrayed in blue sashes, blue ribbons, and long white veils, passed before us in ranks of six abreast. How much luster this added to the beauty of the procession! To acclaim with the multitude the God of our altars, those two thousand girls adorned the double flight of steps of Rosary Church as with an immense crown of blue and white. The sight was enchanting.
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Our Eucharistic God came from the tabernacle to mingle with His creatures. There was here a more intimate, a more direct contact: it was still Lourdes, with its crowds, and its enthusiasm, but Lourdes talking to her God, who seemed more accessible under His Mother’s gaze. There was in those immense multitudes, in those spontaneous outbursts, in that frame of which there is no parallel on earth, the tableau of the finest homage man can render the Blessed Sacrament.
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Devotion to the Immaculate Virgin is intimately coupled with the worship of the Blessed Sacrament; the fiftieth anniversary of the Immaculate Conception coincides with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Eucharistic Congresses.
Who has thus arranged those divine harmonies? It is the Virgin of Lourdes,- who, for the last fifty years, has been calling the multitudes to the grotto, in order to lead them to her Divine Son. It is no longer at the baths alone, but also at the processions, in broad daylight and under the eyes of thousands of witnesses, that cures take place; here is the miracle called for by unbelievers at a set place and hour, and on a picked subject: all veils are drawn aside.
The nineteenth century has been the century of the Immaculate Conception; we hail at the dawn of the twentieth the reign of the Sacred Heart, and the triumphs of the Holy Eucharist. Henceforth the acclaims on the passage of our processions shall never be interrupted, and these manifestations shall mark a new era in the Eucharistic annals.
Lourdes was privileged to teach us lofty lessons; and God, Himself, has, by more splendid wonders, shown us how He wanted to be glorified.