Our Lady of Lourdes It was on February 11, 1858, that the Blessed Mother first appeared to a 14-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France. It was on February 25 that the young Bernadette was told by the lady to scratch at the ground. The lady then asked her to drink and wash in a spring that came up. In a matter of days, the spring began to be the source of many miraculous occurrences.It was a week before Ash Wednesday when the mother of Bernadette noticed that they had run out of firewood in the house. Bernadette and her sister Toinette volunteered to go and pick up branches at the riverside. At first, the mother expressed her disapproval because of the bad weather. Jeane Abadie, their neighbor, offered to go with the two children and the mother consented. They decided to go southward to Merlasse.
The water still flows today, and continues to be a source of God’s healing through the Blessed Mother’s intercession for many people. This is why Pope John Paul II pronounced that February 11, the day the Blessed Mother first appeared to Bernadette in 1858, be specially designated as the World Day of the Sick. The apparition was finally approved by the Church in 1862 and a church in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary was dedicated in 1901. The grotto of Lourdes in France is now one of the most visited pilgrim sites in the whole world.
