KNOWING that I've been the religion correspondent for The Times these past 20
years, people assume I have contacts in high places.
They seem to have ignored me this weekend, though, because I went to Lourdes
feeling fine and came back with a Biblical dose of the flu. Maybe it was
because I'm not a Catholic.
One of the modern myths about Lourdes is that pilgrims go there in search of a
miracle. This is not necessarily the case, but even so, I hadn't expected to
go there and get so spectacularly sick. It was a shock to spend so much of
my time in Lourdes wiped out on a bench for the “malades”.
Tottering over to the grotto where St Bernadette had her 18 visitations 150
years ago, I wiped my hand across the smooth rock, made shiny by millions of
hopeful hands before mine, doubtless, like me, praying desperately for a
cure.
There was no sign of the Virgin. But I was granted my own special vision, of
my son throwing up all over the steps of the Basilica of Our Lady of the
Rosary during the “blessing of the palms” on Palm Sunday.
I was there to try to understand the true miracle of Lourdes, which is why
people keep returning to this otherwise undistinguished town, where expat
Brits complain about the detritus on the cobbled streets that tangles with
the wheels of the famous blue chariots and their disabled occupants, where
chain-smoking local women sell palms at 2 euros apiece for a procession,
where even Swarowski has a shop selling Virgin-encrusted crystal bottles,
where male beggars with dogs leer threateningly and mutter French expletives
if you refuse to drop them a euro or two.
“A bit too close to heaven for my liking,” is how a colleague describes it,
and in spite of all the tat, the plastic virgins, the flashing blue-and-red
Lourdes badges, the holograms of Jesus, the bucket-sized bottles for
collecting holy water from the spring, there is an unearthly “magic” about
Lourdes. Maybe I had to be temporarily struck sick to see it.
No official “miracle” has been approved since 1987. But real miracles take
place there on a daily basis, and they are chiefly of acceptance. We drove
down into this still-pretty town at the foothills of the Pyrenees, through
glorious countryside bathed in the seductive evening light of spring in
France.
My residual Anglican scepticism threatened to be washed clean away by the
soaring steeple of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. No matter the
all-surrounding evidence of man's sinful nature, Lourdes, like Jerusalem at
dusk, is one of those rare places on earth where the transcendent feels
almost tangible. There is a disorienting sense of the wall between this
world and another all but vanishing into thin air. It is no wonder people
come back time and again, and many choose to settle.
One such is Andrew Edire, a fishmonger from Edinburgh, who has been visiting
for 34 years as a volunteer working with the sick, and who moved to Lourdes
as a full-time resident a year ago. He has found work washing up in
restaurants. His interest in “giving something back” grew after he spent a
year in hospital as a young man with back trouble. Today he has the
contentment he's been seeking all his life, and there are some who would say
that is a miracle. “I have always wanted to live here but my wife did not,”
he says. “Now she does.”
Bernadette Wearing moved to Lourdes eight years ago and with her husband Jim
owns and runs the Holy Family guesthouse. She speaks too of the miracles she
has seen in her own life and the lives of others. “People come to the
guesthouse, tired and exhausted, and a lot of them do share about their
lives. Then by the third day you see the change in that person, there is a
shine about them. The Lourdes grotto has touched them.”
Pedro Gomez, 21, from New York, doing a week as a volunteer for the second
year, describes working in the baths, where the sick and disabled are
immersed naked in the holy waters of the spring. “To share that moment when
someone is so vulnerable is such a privilege,” he said.
Of course I had intended to try out the baths for myself, and to walk the “Way
of the Jubilee”, which takes in the parish church where Bernadette was
baptised, the one-room cachot where her family lived, the grotto itself and
the hospice where she received her first communion. But these simple feats
of pilgrimage just were not physically possible. Legs that the weekend
before had flown me up hill and down vale in Klosters now could barely mount
a flight of stairs.
To have commissioned one of the blue chariots would have been fraudulent, as
this was clearly a temporary affliction. I could barely move my body, which
was shivering and shaking with fever. So instead I found a couple of priests
to have a mint tea with, in the hope that they could bless me better. In
their faces I could see their faith in the healing powers of the waters of
Lourdes do battle with their common sense as I coughed and spluttered beside
them.
Father Armando Benavides was leading a group on a pilgrimage tour. They had
already “done” Fatima in Portugal and Santiago in Spain. After Lourdes they
were headed to Paris, and then the Holy Land. His group was not so much of
the sick, as of people returning to or deepening their faith. They were
walking in the footsteps of Mary as she has “appeared” across the world, and
then of Jesus. “It is a very special experience because we develop bonds
between us,” he says. “It puts us in touch with spiritual values in a
material world.”
Father Martin Moran, from Ireland, works at the shrine for his religious
order, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, providing translations for English
pilgrims. “Miracles happen here all the time in the sense that people allow
God to intervene in their lives in a way they might not elsewhere. People
develop a healthy vulnerability to God.”
Locals here speak of the sick and the poor as the “kings and queens” of
Lourdes. Hundreds of little such kings and queens from Britain will descend
on Lourdes this weekend for the annual Pilgrimate Trust HCPT Easter
pilgrimage. The trust, which specialises in pilgrimages to Lourdes for
children and vulnerable adults, took more than 5,000 to Lourdes last Easter
alone.
Lourdes was quiet during our visit, as the “season” had not yet begun, but as
we sat through Mass in the chapel of St Bernadette, my own son passed out on
one of the front benches alongside dozens of the permanently sick and
disabled: it was not difficult to imagine the transfiguring power of such an
event.
One of the goals of pilgrimage not often discussed these days is penitence. My
pride had taken a hammering but the final insult came when, back at home, a
horribly familiar crawling began across my scalp. This is my proof of a
miracle, that I've written this, not only with a brain fuddled by flu,
Lemsip and Veno's, but assailed by the fumes of the anti-nit treatment
Permethrin. Lourdes truly is the great leveller of the modern age. So dear
God, whatever it is I've done wrong, I am truly, truly sorry.
Need to know
Lourdes Sanctuaries: 00 33 5 62 42 78 78, www.lourdes-france.org
Staying CITEA St Jean (00 33 5 62 46 30 07; www.citea.com)
has doubles from about £32
Getting there British Airways (www.ba.com)
and easyJet (www.easyjet.com) fly to
Toulouse
Getting around CarRentals (www.carrentals.com) has one week's car hire
from Toulouse from £109
Further information www.lourdes-infotourisme.com;
www.tourisme-midi-pyrenees.com;
http://uk.franceguide.com
Different visions: other famous Marian pilgrimages
Knock, Ireland
In 1879 the Virgin Mary, St Joseph and St John the Evangelist allegedly
appeared at the south gable of Knock Parish Church to 15 locals. Since then
Knock has become Ireland's national Marian shrine with more than 1.5 million
pilgrims visiting annually. The Knock House Hotel (00 353 94 9388058, www.knockhousehotel.ie)
is a few minutes' walk away and six of its rooms are suitable for wheelchair
users. A three-night break in April starts at £136, including most meals.
www.knock-shrine.ie
Fatima, Portugal
The Virgin Mary appeared six times to three children in Fatima, north of
Lisbon, in 1917. On May 13, the day of the first apparition, and on October
13, the day of the final one, half a million pilgrims assemble. Tangney
Tours (0800 917 3572, www.tangney-tours.com)
runs monthly pilgrimage tours starting at £465pp for four nights' full board.
www.santuario-fatima.pt
Banneux, Belgium
This year marks the 75th anniversary of 11-year-old Mariette Béco's sighting
of the Virgin Mary on the road to Banneux. Until October 12 there will be a
daily walk on which pilgrims can renew their baptismal promises. Pilgrims
can stay at the Guest House and Spiritual Centre of Notre Dame de la Fagne
(04 360 84 08, www.stjean-banneux.com).
www.banneux-nd.be
Medjugorje, Bosnia Herzegovina
The remote village of Medjugorje has become famous thanks to a series of
visions witnessed by six teenagers on a hillside in 1981. The same six still
experience apparitions, which have not been approved by the Catholic Church
and so official pilgrimages are not allowed - but that hasn't stopped 20
million visitors to the shrine of the Queen of Peace in the past 15 years.
British Airways (0844 4930787, www.ba.com)
flies to Dubrovnik from Gatwick and there are daily buses to Medjugorje.
Tangney Tours (0800 917 3572, www.tangney-tours.com)
tailor- makes tours for more than 20 people.
www.medjugorje.hr
Julia Brookes
