Lourdes at 150 years: 'God is very much the God of surprises here'
Oblate Father Martin Moran issues what sounds like a spiritual guarantee: lives of pilgrims to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France have a “99 percent” chance of improving.
“I would say that almost everyone, 99 percent, of the people who come here leave changed for the better,” said the priest who is Chaplain Coordinator for English-speakers who visit Lourdes.
“Expect to be moved. Expect to be touched,” he said, but quickly added, “but perhaps not in the way you expected.”
“God is very much the God of surprises here,” Father Moran said in an interview the day after nearly 80,000 pilgrims from around the world worshiped at a Mass marking the 150th anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin Mary to a young French peasant girl on Feb. 11, 1858 at Lourdes. She would become a saint – St. Bernadette Soubrious.
“God will break into, will intervene, in people’s lives here in ways they weren’t expecting,” he explained. “They might expect, for example, to have a very moving experience at Mass. And, yes, the Mass was very nice but it might be as they are walking up the hill and they see the smile of a person, or they see another person helping someone who is sick – and they see the work of God there.”
The Oblate calls the well-known destination for millions seeking healing in their or loved-ones’ lives “a great leveler.”
“What Lourdes does is help people to look at things – the ordinary things – in a different way,” he explained. “It gives people a new perspective on life. When we come here we see people who are sick, people who are helping the sick, people who are coming obviously loaded down with worries and burdens. There is something quite humbling about the whole experience. We’re all the same.
“A lot of people come looking for hope, and Lourdes is a place that offers a lot of hope. And it’s not a false hope. People come bringing whatever prayer they bring, bringing whatever people they bring in the sense of the people they carry in their hearts.”
Lourdes has impacted him as well since assuming his post in 2006. “What I have noticed is a greater awareness of people’s vulnerability. The way I describe it is that Lourdes brings about a healthy vulnerability in us. What I have seen is that we all come here with different masks – fronts that we wear. Something about Lourdes, then, helps us to start letting go of those. So it makes me more sensitive to what the real person is like, or that there is something else going on here in the person’s life – a deeper awareness. You don’t just take things at face value.”
Father Moran’s duties center around recruiting, training and coordinating priests to serve as chaplains for pilgrims from the “Anglophone” (English-speaking) world. The goal of his labor is to make English-speaking visitors as comfortable and welcome as possible, to encourage “enough things in their own language” that they do not feel “isolated,” and to help them “have a good stake here in the Sanctuary.”
There are six official languages at the Sanctuary – English, Spanish, Italian, French, German and Dutch.
The priest emphasizes for visitors that the story of the Sanctuary, the apparitions and St. Bernadette “is not an add-on or an extension” to Scripture. “Bernadette wasn’t about setting up her own Church, or anything like that. Mary through Bernadette was fleshing out part of the Gospel message, highlighting the Gospel call for the need for conversion.”
“Sometimes we tend to romanticize the lives of the saints,” Father Moran said. However, he continued, Bernadette’s story “is a very human one” in which her poverty and piety contribute “to the depth of the message.”
Noting parallels between Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of Fatima, Father Moran said it is clear “God calls those on the margins.”
Has he witnessed miracles? While not calling them that, he can recite a number of stories about people whose lives have been remarkably changed, nourished and opened up by Lourdes.
He tells about a couple who came to Lourdes to pray that their daughter and son-in-law could conceive a baby. The young couple “had tried everything.” On their return trip home, the parents received a message there daughter was pregnant, something doctors said was medically unexplainable.
He describes parents who brought their physically and mentally disabled son to Lourdes, “fervently praying for a cure.”
“That didn’t happen,” the priest said. “But what did happen was that the parents left here with a much stronger ability. And to see those parents changing over the week – to see how they changed – was quite, quite remarkable.”
Pope Benedict XVI will visit Lourdes during his Sept. 13-15 trip to France, according to Vatican officials. While at the shrine he will participate in the traditional prayers held at the Marian shrine, including the nighttime candlelight procession and an evening eucharistic procession.
He will celebrate Mass for the general public Sept. 14 and a special Mass Sept. 15 for the sick who come to the shrine seeking healing and strength.
By Dan Morris-Young
