Lourdes!

To remind you of where I left off in recounting my travels in France, I had just boarded an overnight train from Paris to Lourdes. It was surprisingly comfortable, especially after the other people in my little 4 seat pod left and I could sort of sprawl out over a couple seats. I arrived in Lourdes at about 7 in the morning, and after a brief map reading failure I made it to the hotel where my friend Sandra was staying. It worked out best for her to come Thursday night, so she had already been in Lourdes for a whole day by the time I got there, and sort of knew her way around the town. The first thing she asked me, though, was "what time do you want to go to mass today?" And I knew it was going to be a good day:-)

The main attraction in Lourdes, of course, is the grotto. Right next to the grotto are a series of three churches stacked on top of each other. (Actually, it's more like the grotto is built into the side of them). The one in the middle is the smallest and I think the one that was built in response to the request of Mary to St. Bernadette. The one of top of it came next, and the one beneath it is the most recent. We started at the grotto, and walked up right as mass was starting. It was in French, but luckily Sandra could translate the homily for me. After mass, we visited each of those three churches, and then went into town. We saw the house where St. Bernadette was born and lived her early life, the one room building where her family was living at the time of the apparitions, and her parish church, including the baptismal font where she was baptized. It was pretty cool to think about how St. Bernadette had actually lived there. I kind of felt the same sort of excitement that I do when I do things like meet my friend's parents or see pictures of their houses--it's cool because it's important to someone that I care about, if that makes any sense.

After that, we got lunch and went back to the big piazza in front of the churches to eat. I suppose now would be a good time for a picture so you actually know what I'm talking about...


Ok, you can't really see the piazza here. This is more of a larger scale view (so you can see the beautiful mountains in the background!) But imagine us eating lunch closer to the church, and then the grotto is on the right side of the church. I didn't take many pictures in Lourdes because my camera battery was getting very low, and I brought my charger but failed to remember that French outlets are different than Italian outlets...

Anyway, after lunch we walked a path with stations of the cross to the left and up a hill from the church. Each station was a statue scene, and they were really well done. We had a little booklet with reflections that were less well done, but mostly because the English translations weren't so great. Some of the ideas were pretty cool, though. I got to go to reconciliation after that, which was cool because I had actually been thinking a few days before that I really needed to go; it had been a while. So what better place than Lourdes, where Mary asked St. Bernadette to pray, pray, pray, for the conversion of souls? There's a short Eucharistic procession everyday at 5 pm, where everyone just gathers across the river from the grotto and the priest says a few prayers, and then everyone processes around the to front of the church and there are a few more prayers. We went to that, and then went back to the grotto to pray properly there for the first time (besideds mass), and then to a restaurant for dinner. After dinner, we went to another procession, this time a Marian one, and it was incredible. It was dark by this time, so everyone had a candle and we walked and prayed the rosary. Between each decade, we sang Aves and held up our candles...it was very beautiful.

When the procession was over, Sandra and I headed back to our hotel and went to sleep. On Sunday, we went to an international mass in an underground basilica. It was kind of cool, but i didn't really care for the architecture--it looked like we were in a basement, because we were, I guess. The best part of the church was that there were huge pictures hung all around of saints. It was a pretty good variety, too, including some popes, classics like St. Terese, and also some more recent saints, like a few of my favorites, St. Josemaria Escriva and St. Maximilian Kolbe. After mass, we went back to the grotto and lit some candles and prayed, then got lunch and it was time for Sandra to get on her train back to Angers. I had the afternoon to keep wandering around. I found a series of reflections on water they had by the grotto (actually, Sandra had told me about it but we didn't have a chance to go on Saturday). It was really cool. I guess I had sort of forgotten the importance that water has in the story of the apparitions at Lourdes (I have a tendency to sometimes forget important facts like that, it's kind of unfortunate--like I won't remember what happens at the climax of a book I've read a few times, but then I get to discover it all over again, so it's not all bad...). Anyway, those reflections and a few of the homilies I heard over the weekend led me to really reflect on how Jesus is the source of life. At Lourdes, Mary revealed the source of a spring to St. Bernadette, and she continues to reveal Jesus, the True Source, to us.

When I got to the train station later that evening, I had a kind of funny revelation (and kind of embarrassing)...when I looked at the clock, I realized that it was an hour off from what my watch said, and then remember that Daylight Savings Time had ended overnight. Sandra and I both completely forgot about it. Luckily, it was "fall back" so I just had to wait an extra hour...I didn't miss my train or anything. The ride was smooth again, as was my transfer on the metro from the train station to the airport in Paris, and then my flight and train back from the airport in Rome (again with the mulitple legs thing). I finally got back just in time for class on Monday!

And now, a series of pictures I've been looking forward to putting up for awhile--Lourdes-inspired grottos that I've been to!


Notre Dame--I promise I've been here, even though I'm not in the picture.


Benedictine--it was just dedicated this year!


Lourdes--the real one:-) I'm wearing the same T-shirt as when I was at the BC one, but I didn't plan that; I just noticed it now, in fact.

Well, that completes my fall break adventures. It was a great week, and I'm looking forward to traveling more!