Lourdes: A Pilgrim After All

In March of 1997, following almost a year of treatment for cancer, I went to Lourdes for the first time. I consider myself a devout, if sometimes uneasy, Catholic. I think it is fair to say that I never seriously thought I would go to a healing shrine like Lourdes, at least not seriously. Perhaps I could imagine going to see the kitsch, but not as a pilgrim.

But beyond a doubt, my experience of illness and healing changed me; I felt strangely drawn to Lourdes, and I wanted to go—as much as I could—on pilgrimage. So, an Italian friend and I enrolled with a group sponsored by the Paolini, a lay ministry specializing in hospitality and pilgrimage, centered in Milan, where I was spending several months.

At Lourdes, I found something that I really needed and that I have replenished by yearly visits since, both in groups and as a solitary pilgrim. These are my reflections, written all at once in two days, in a pouring forth of words, after my return to Italy from that first trip. ¹

Night in the Grotto

The comet of 1997—named Hale-Bopp—blazed across the sky. It was mountain cold and dark full of stars. The cave is wonderfully secret and dark. The rock is worn smooth by the touch of pilgrims. The spring is paved around and sealed over with Plexiglas. There is a marble lady in the rock shelf—"the least bad" one, Bernadette said. It is still a beautiful place, full of mystery. It is Easter night. Praying people, sick and well. Dark. Banks of candles blaze and smoke.

Morning in the Grotto

There were five priests behind the altar in the Grotto at this morning's mass, led by a French cardinal. They want so much to take this place back and make it "theirs." Bernadette wasn't one of them, though. Rows and rows of pilgrims in wheelchairs, all wrapped up in knitted shawls against the cold. Most of them are old. They are attended by volunteers, many women with white cloths on their heads, and a few men without white cloths on their heads. I keep imagining a friend from Como who once came to Lourdes accompanying a group of sick people. She had been before, but said that the experience of being with the sick at Lourdes was unlike anything she had known. This group is from Brescia; they all wear blue and purple kerchiefs tied around their necks with the name of their pilgrimage on them. The cardinal keeps talking about "this, the last day of our pilgrimage" (it's our first day, of course). After mass, this group from Brescia is going to the baths. At communion, the priests fan out; each has a layperson next to him, carrying an umbrella—"Body of God here!" I almost get run over by one of the ladies in our group as I go up to communion.

Don Sergio on the Via Crucis

Our chaplain talks all the time. Talks about himself all the time. Breaks into the litanies printed in the Paolini booklet: "se mi permittette. . . " "if you will allow me . . . " Are we free to say "No!" Not really, so . . . he talks, we listen. He seems to do a lot of these chaplain to pilgrimage group gigs—last night when he met us at the airport he said: "Welcome to Fatima! Oops—Lourdes!" I don't think it was a joke. Sometimes he behaves badly. During the Way of the Cross, he ridicules one of the women who doesn't read the passage very well, breaks in right while she is reading to correct her. I carry the cross for one station, so does Carla. At least he makes me want to assert my presence!

Before we set out to climb the hill of the Via Crucis, Don Sergio tells us something he had been promising since the night...