Virgin and Visionary of Lourdes
Feast: April 16
Patroness of: the sick, shepherds, and Lourdes, France
Early Life
Saint Bernadette Soubirous was born on January 7, 1844, in Lourdes, a humble town nestled in the Pyrenees of southern France. She was the eldest of nine children in a poor but pious family. Her father, François Soubirous, was a miller, and her mother, Louise, labored tirelessly to provide for the children.
Bernadette suffered from ill health all her life, enduring asthma and various physical ailments. Despite her physical weakness, she was marked from youth by simplicity, humility, and a quiet endurance of suffering—virtues which would blossom fully through divine providence.
The Apparitions at the Grotto
On February 11, 1858, while gathering firewood near the Grotto of Massabielle, Bernadette was graced with a vision of a “Lady, clothed in white,” who bore a golden rosary and a blue sash, with two roses at her feet.
The Lady would appear eighteen times over the next several months, revealing herself eventually as “the Immaculate Conception”—a title dogmatically defined only four years earlier by Pope Pius IX in 1854. During these visions, Bernadette was instructed to pray for sinners, to do penance, and to encourage the building of a chapel at the site.
In one apparition, Our Lady told Bernadette to drink from a spring hidden in the grotto; as Bernadette obeyed, a miraculous spring welled up from the earth, soon becoming the source of countless cures and spiritual conversions. Lourdes would henceforth become a great site of pilgrimage and healing.
Life in the Convent
Desiring to flee worldly fame and seeking union with Christ in silence and hiddenness, Bernadette entered the Convent of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers in 1866. There, she took the religious name Sister Marie-Bernard.
Her health continued to decline, and she offered her suffering as a victim soul. Despite being often misunderstood and even humiliated within the convent, she bore all with remarkable patience. Her spiritual directors noted her unwavering fidelity to prayer, obedience, and the rule.
Her final years were marked by intense suffering, particularly from bone disease and asthma, but she clung to her crucifix and the Blessed Virgin’s rosary. She died at the age of 35, on April 16, 1879, after having murmured, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me, a poor sinner.”
Canonization and Legacy
Bernadette’s body was found incorrupt when exhumed for canonical examination, a sign of her purity and sanctity. She was canonized by Pope Pius XI on December 8, 1933, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.
Today, millions make pilgrimage to Lourdes each year, and the miraculous spring continues to be a source of both physical and spiritual healing. Saint Bernadette is revered not for the grandeur of her works, but for her fidelity to grace, her humility, and her total surrender to God’s will.
Quotations from Saint Bernadette
“I was nothing, and of this nothing God made something.”
“My job is to inform, not to convince.”
“I shall spend every moment loving.”