“The child at her feet looks at her in awe,the sign of cross she learns without flaw”

No apparition in the history of the Church has been recognized as quickly as that of Lourdes. The Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous for the first time on 11 February 1858 and the Bishop of Tarbes, Monsignor Laurence, pronounced on the truth of the facts barely four years later.
But the figure of Bernadette is still little known today. Her personality appears all and only in the light of the apparitions of which she was the witness and the person involved. Then she withdrew, disappeared, blended into the shadow of the convent in which she decided to spend her life, up to her death, on 16 April 1879, at the age of 35, consumed by tuberculosis.
Pius XI canonized her in the extraordinary Holy Year of 1933. In that of 1925 he opened his pontificate by raising to the altars little Teresa of Lisieux, who has characteristics in common with Bernadette: they both lived in nineteenth-century France, both died young, both of consumption. But Teresa, who grew up in the bosom of a middle-class and deeply Catholic family, lived from childhood surrounded by affection, safety, examples of Christian life that led to her choice of the cloister.
Bernadette’s childhood was very different. At fourteen, when Our Lady appeared to her, she still hadn’t been able to attend Catechism since extreme poverty had forced her to work from childhood to contribute to the maintenance of the family. And if she preferred the mountain pastures to the damp and unsanitary “hovel” where the indebted Soubirous were constrained to live, she got nothing for her labor other than a roof and food. In the periods in which Bernadette did not watch the flock of her nurse, Marie Lagües, her father François was forced to send her out onto demesne land to gather firewood to sell.

«That which I saw and heard»
The Abbé Pomian, vicar of Lourdes, was later to be stunned that this girl didn’t know “even the mystery of the Trinity”. Nevertheless, Bernadette lived in a society still imbued with the forms of popular piety, kept a two-penny rosary in her pocket that she recited while driving the sheep to pasture. And when the “Lady” appeared to her the first time, her instinctive gesture, dictated by fear, was to grip her rosary. Mary’s response was a smile and a tenderness that Bernadette was never to forget. But she did not ask the Lady her name. She didn’t know who she was, she spoke of her, in dialect, as “Aquero”, “That thing”. Only later was she to reveal her name, in the apparition of 25 March: “I am the Immaculate Conception”, using the words of the dogma defined by Pius IX four years earlier, in 1854, exactly 150 years ago. An expression that, among other things, Bernadette at the time did not understand. What she did know was that, after the first instant of fear, “That thing” attracted her and filled her with a peace she had never known. She was to see her 18 times up to the last apparition of 16 July. Mary entrusted three secrets to her, invited her to tell everyone to pray for the conversion of sinners, asked the priests, through Bernadette, to build her a chapel beside the grotto. Bernadette obeyed exactly.
Bernadette was used to seeing things for what they were. To the Abbé Fonteneau, who questioned her insistently and seemed distrustful, she answered: “I’m not forcing you to believe me, but I can only answer you by telling what I’ve seen and heard”. Two years later the members of the ecclesiastical commission headed by Monsignor Laurence told her: “It doesn’t seem an idea worthy of the Holy Virgin to make you eat grass”. “Yet we eat salad”, she replied.
Bernadette did not get puffed up by the sudden curiosity that made her the center of the attention first of a village, then of the civil and religious authorities, finally of all France. In 1861 the Abbé Bernadou wanted to photograph her in the pose she had during the apparitions. He was grumpy: “No, it won’t do”, he told her. “No, it won’t do. You didn’t look like that when Our Lady was there”. And she: “But now she’s not here!” Despite herself, for the eight years from 1858 to 1866, Bernadette was to be a public figure: was asked to recount a thousand times the history of the apparitions, and did it in her way, with scant, essential, direct words.

“I’m satisfied with what he sends me”
During that period the nuns of Nevers took her into their pension in Lourdes, to give her decent surroundings and protect her from the assault of the curious. And at the moment of deciding which road to take in life, Bernadette decided to become a religious in their institute, with the name of Sister Marie-Bernard. She had not received a regular education, she was “good for nothing”, as she was to tell her bishop. But on the eve of her departure for Nevers, when she was asked whether she was sorry to leave Lourdes, she answered: “The little time we have in the world needs to be made good use of”. She knew well that the special grace she had received did not exempt her from trying to live the time given her as a good Christian. And when she reached the mother-house, after repeating to the nuns, for the last time, the story of the apparitions, the superior forbade her fellow nuns to ask any more questions on the happenings at Lourdes.
Thus, with the novitiate, the last phase of Bernadette’s life began, from the age of 22 to that of 35. A hidden life, far from the clamor of notoriety. She had no particular plans. She wanted to follow Our Lady’s invitation to pray for the conversion of sinners. She also knew that, in accord with the mysterious promise of Mary, she would not be happy “in this world, but in the next”. Her life passed in the ordinary course of the days, according to the rhythms and the times of the convent. She had the resources available to every Christian: prayer, the sacraments, daily duty. And she did not hold back from the rule. The suffering, that was to mark almost all of time in Nevers, she accepted without any hint of mysticism. “There was in Lourdes a woman, named Mademoiselle Claire,” Sister Vincent Garros, a childhood friend of Bernadette’s, was to remember, “very godly and a long time ill. On my arrival at the mother-house, Bernadette asked me for news of her, and I said: «Not only does she suffers with patience, but she says something that really surprises me: “I suffer a great deal, but if it isn’t enough, may the Lord add more yet!”» Sister Marie-Bernard made a remark: «She’s very willing; I wouldn’t do it. I’m satisfied with what he sends me»”.

The mill of Boly, her birthplace

“I only fear bad Catholics”
People continued to seek her out, to knock on the convent door to get to speak to her. Some, bishops and priests, could not be refused. But her liking went elsewhere, for example to a companion such as Bernard Dalias, who on her third day of probation, getting Bernadette pointed out to her, said: “Is that all?”. With her she could feel at ease, without having people looking at her, in her expression, “like a rare animal”. “I was able”, said Sister Brigitte Hostin, “to admire a great piety in her, a temper always the same – something rare – the simplicity of a child, and above all a great humility; this – when she was forced to answer the letters written her by important people about the favors Our Lady had granted her – made her say: «If it wasn’t for obedience, I wouldn’t answer»”.
During the Franco-Prussian war, in 1870, Count Lafond related: “The Chevalier Gougenot des Mousseaux, who saw Bernadette at that time, asked her some questions: «In the grotto of Lourdes, or afterwards, have you had any revelation relating to the future and the fate of France? The Virgin didn’t by chance charge you with passing on warnings or threats for France?» «No.» «The Prussians are at the gates: don’t they frighten you?» «No.» «Then there is nothing to fear?» «I only fear bad Catholics.» «Don’t you fear anything else?» «No, nothing»”.

Devotion to Saint Joseph
Meanwhile Bernadette was put in charge of the infirmary. For many years, while her health permitted, she carried out her task conscientiously and with charity, smiling, willing, affable. Then, as time passed, the consumption, that had long undermined her, increasingly prevented her from doing active work. Bernadette liked the work, but she didn’t turn it into a problem. Sister Casimir Callery, who took care of her in the last stages of illness tells us: “Sister Hélène gave me Easter eggs to decorate with a penknife. I drew. Sister Marie-Bernard scratched, so making the designs. One day I complained because the work got on my nerves. «What importance can it have», she said, «whether one gains heaven by scratching eggs or doing something else!»”.
Bernadette left almost nothing written, but the episodes, the answers, the actions reported in the testimony of her fellow nuns reveal her humble and cheerful spirit, though tried by suffering. Hilarity, a contained joy, an ironic feeling in the face of the difficulties that even the life of the convent presented, a deep love for Jesus and Our Lady, and a fondness for Saint Joseph are transparent in her words: “I know that, among the saints, Bernadette had a particular devotion to Saint Joseph. She repeated these invocations: «Grant me the grace of loving Jesus and Mary as they want to be loved. Saint Joseph, pray for me. Teach me to pray». And she told me: «When you’re unable to pray, then turn to Saint Joseph»”.

“Why close your eyes?”
“Sister Marie-Bernard had a sweet, simple piety,” a fellow nun remembered, “with nothing unusual to it. She was very conscientious, she didn’t break silence, but at recreation she drew people by her sparkle. She didn’t like exaggerated piety. One day she said to me laughing, pointing to a novice who always closed her eyes: «Do you See X Sister? If she didn’t have a companion to lead her, there’d be an accident. Why close your eyes, when you need to keep them open?»”.
Her prayer was marked by loving attention to the simplest gestures: “One day Bernadette pointed out that I made the sign of the cross badly,” reported Sister Emilienne Duboé: “I replied it that I certainly didn’t do it as well as she who had learned it from Our Lady. «One has to be careful,» she told me, «because it means a lot to make the sign of the cross well»”. And Sister Charles Ramillon affirmed: “The way in which she made the sign of the cross struck me deeply; we tried many times to copy it, but without result. Then we said: «You can well see that Our Lady taught her»”. In the Hail Mary at Lourdes the faithful sing a verse that seems to sum up the whole of Bernadette’s life: «The child at her feet/ looks at her in awe,/ the sign of cross/ she learns without flaw»”.
When she was asked if she didn’t regret being distant from Lourdes, she answered: “I’m not to be pitied, I’ve seen something very much more beautiful”. Certainly, she could not have forgotten “the eyes by God beloved and venerated” (Paradiso, XXXIII, 40) that she had had the privilege to admire many times, even if over a brief period. And all her life she carried with her, as she moved away in time, the yearning to see those eyes again.
She took hold of the crucifix, looked at it, and that was it.”
“If you only knew what beauty I saw there”, she once to said Sister Emilienne Duboé. “When one has seen her one can no longer be attached to earth!” Perhaps that was the reason Our Lady had told her she would not be happy in this world, but Bernadette never claimed special rights in view of heaven. One day a superior asked her whether she’d ever felt self-satisfaction about the favors that the Virgin had granted her. “What do you think of me? Do you think I don’t know that if Our Lady chose me, it’s because I was the most ignorant? If she had found somebody more ignorant, she’d have taken her.”
Even in her sickness, which had lately been growing more serious, she retained a sobriety her fellow nuns did not fail to notice. “I have seen her suffer morally and physically”, Sister Joseph Ducout recounted. “In her suffering, never a word to express her pain. She took hold of the crucifix, looked at it, and that was it.”
The last testimony we have of her comes from Sister Nathalie Portat, who was near her in her last moments. While her fellow nuns were reciting the rosary around her, “at these words of the Hail Mary: “Holy Mary, Mother of God…”, Bernadette revived and in a particular tone… twice repeated: «Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me, a poor sinner»”.
It was the part of the Hail Mary that she had always stressed during her recital of the rosary. Some time afterwards, on a page written in 1866, was found this prayer:




Diary devoted to the Queen of Heaven
How happy was my soul, O Good Mother,
when I had luck to contemplate you!
How dear to me it is to remember
those sweet moments
passed under your eyes
full of goodness and of mercy for us.
Yes, tender Mother, you stooped to the ground
to appear to a weak young girl.
You, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
decided to make use
of what was most humble, according to the world.