LOURDES: SOURCE OF IMMENSE GRACES.

SECOND APPEARANCE. (continuation)

On Sunday after Mass the companions surrounded her. She confessed to them that she felt like going back to the grotto, but her mother wouldn't let her. She missed the dozen girls' time to go ask her mother's permission. She this she didn't want; ¿However, who can resist such a group, ¿all begging for it? She chose to hide behind her husband: "Ask your father for permission." They ran to Cazanave's house, where he has found work taking care of the stagecoach horses. "No," she replied dryly. What was the boss going to think of her being there? But it was this one who interceded for the girls: «Let the little ones go; "A lady with a rosary can't be anything bad."

Once permission was obtained, and communicated to the mother, one of them decided to bring holy water in case the apparition was something bad. They took an irasco and filled it into the parish's holy water font. When they arrived at the grotto, Bernadette ordered them to kneel and take their rosaries. After the first mystery she said: "Look at her, she has the rosary in her right arm, she is looking at us." She got up. "If it comes from God, stay." And she poured the holy water on it. The more the celestial girl sprinkled it, the more she smiled, until the bottle was gone. Bernadette continued the rosary, but she became so pale that the others thought she was dying; Unresponsive when moved, her face was lit up and she couldn't stop smiling.

Frightened, some ran to the nearby mill to ask for help. Juana went to tell her mother. The miller and her sister came; They could not all take Bernadette, and they went to look for the son of one of them, Antonio, a robust young man of 18 years old (married for two years), and with great difficulty they almost dragged her to the mill. He was not in a cataleptic state, because, although he resisted, he walked and smiled while shedding tears. Upon entering the mill he came to. Shortly after her, her mother arrived with the staff in her hands. Angry at the people who had gathered around her daughter, she went to hit her. The miller rebuked her: «¿Luisa, what are you going to do? Your daughter is an angel from heaven. Then her mother began to cry and sat down on a chair. Then they returned to her “dungeon.”

The girls told what happened at home, Antonio told it at night in the tavern. All of Lourdes was already aware, and news reached the nearby villages that same day.

Basilia, Luisa's sister, went to see her. "Don't let your daughter leave the house." And addressing Bernadette: "You will make us all sick, seeing how much people care about you." The father assured again: "Our daughter will no longer go to Massabielle." But the man proposes... On Monday the 15th, when Bernadette arrived at school in the morning, the reverend superior in front of everyone asked her: "Have you finished your carnival yet?", and she repeated the "prudent" advice: "It's a illusion, like a dream, we must ignore it. How ridiculous that little nun must have felt before the Queen of Heaven, when she later realized how foolish she was, ruling without knowing! When he was leaving class, a forty-something lady, a gendarme of good manners, slapped him without warning. "Take it, rascal." And one of her Sisters, shaking her by one arm, remarked: "You rascal, you rascal, if you return to the grotto they will lock you up." Had Bernadette followed such wise and forceful recommendations, we would not have Lourdes today. (Another reprehensible thing, which also occurs, is to irresponsibly encourage delusional or false seers: "Examine everything, keep what is good." 1 Thes. 5,21).

THIRD APPEARANCE

  (Thursday, February 18). On Tuesday the 16th, Mrs. Milhet, in her fifties, opulent since she had married her former master, pious, was curious to know what those apparitions were. She used to employ Luisa Soubirous, so she could not help but agree to her wish for Bernadette to visit her. Her questioning intrigued her more, and she wanted to go with her to the grotto. Her mother resisted, but the Virgin was choosing her pawns well. Naturally, it wasn't about her going out in broad daylight with a group of unruly girls; They would go at dawn, only with her and her seamstress Antonieta, the sheriff's daughter. Luisa and her husband had to allow it. The next day, Ash Wednesday, her seamstress suggested: Could the young woman who appears in Massabielle be the president of the Daughters of Mary, whose death was last October had made a deep impression, and had been buried in white? ? —Oh, if she's a soul from purgatory she can't wait. And she again went to the Souborous house. They would go the next day.

At 5:30 on Thursday both women wake up Bernadette and go to the first Mass, then to the grotto. Mrs. Milhet carries a blessed candle; Antoinette paper, pen and inkwell. In the grotto they begin to pray. Bernadette sees the Virgin, but she does not fall into ecstasy (loss of senses). When he finished the rosary, Antonieta gave him the paper, pen and inkwell; "Tell him to write what he wants." Bernadette came forward. She spoke loudly, but her companion only saw her lips move; The apparition began to laugh and for the first time she heard her firm and sweet voice:

—What I have to say is not necessary to write. Would you like to do me the favor of coming here for 15 days?

—When I have asked my parents for permission I will return.

—I don't promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next.

The appearance lasted just under half an hour. The strange thing is that the Virgin did not address him like everyone else. Which, in addition to deference, was further proof that the words were not invented by the psychic.

La Milhet asked if they could return: "Nothing prevents it." On their return they found her mother alarmed because when she told them that her daughter had returned to the grotto, the teacher warned her: "That will cause trouble with the police commissioner." — «What does the commissioner have to do with this? Milhet reassured her. Nobody has noticed Bernadette. Also, she has committed to going 15 days in a row. "The girl will come to live at my house, so they won't bother her." Luisa refers again to her husband. Bernadette runs to Cazenave's block, and her father gives her consent.

There is also Aunt Bernarda, the godmother. They tell her what is happening and she decides to go carrying her sister Lucila's Daughter of Mary candle.

In short, that same Thursday everyone in Lourdes knew what had happened in Massabielle; It is market day, and so many are heading there that it draws the attention of the gendarmes, who ask questions and write the first report.

FOURTH APPEARANCE

 (Friday, February 19): Bernadette, who had slept at the Milhet house, went with her protector to Mass. It was very cold and she put a larger black one over his white hood. Then they pick up her mother, others join them, there are already ten of them in the grotto, at six in the morning. On the third Hail Mary Bernadette falls into ecstasy, which lasts for half an hour. She smiles and greets with such grace that they don't get tired of looking at her, she is transformed, although so pale that they fear she will die. "My God, I beg you, don't take my daughter away from me," her mother begs. During the vision, as it is proven that she later recounted, she suddenly heard howls coming from the river Gave, like the shouts of a fighting crowd, and an angry voice imposed itself on the others: “Go away; Go away!», words that were not addressed to her, but to her vision: it was enough for her to turn her gaze of sovereign authority towards that place, for silence to fall.

On her return, Bernadette entered her aunt Basilia's house to greet her. The aunt reprimanded him: “There is too much talk about you; "You must not return there." But when her niece, without flinching and smiling, invited her to join her too - what her aunt was longing for - she accepted, but with the condition that she go when there were few people. They agreed to go early the next day, at the time the others will go to the first Mass.

FIFTH APPEARANCE

  (Saturday, February 20). When the rosary begins, there are about 30 people, despite the time and the cold. After a quarter of an hour the apparition, which lasts another quarter of an hour. The smiles and greeting of the psychic, all without blinking. "I didn't recognize my daughter," her mother later declared. Perhaps it was in this apparition of hers that the Virgin taught her a prayer "word by word", for herself alone and that she would recite every day of her life, but whose content she never revealed.

Aunt Bernarda, in addition to being Bernardita's godmother, was "the heiress." This title of being the first-born conferred a special role within the family, according to the customs followed then in Lourdes (also Bernadette, because she was "the heiress", believed throughout her life that she had the right and duty to care especially for her siblings. ). She judged that the case of her goddaughter was a family matter, and she should not be her protector, precisely Milhet, the clever maid turned conceited mistress. That same day – providentially – Bernadette returned to her miserable house.

SIXTH APPEARANCE

  (Sunday, February 21): They are also going to the grotto very early, although there are already a hundred people: it will be the beginning of the large crowds that Massabielle will attract. The simple people, in their Christian sense (vox populi vox Dei: the voice of the people is the voice of God) are convinced that the apparitions are supernatural, that the Virgin appears; However, today among the people there are "guests": three gendarmes, two of them who came from Tarbes the day before, who leave after a quarter of an hour; Furthermore, next to Bernadette is Dr. Dozous, an esteemed doctor, and an incredulous; The night before in the circle (or casino) he thought that it was a curious case of neuropathy, and to check the alteration of her pulse and breathing, her hypersensitivity and mental imbalance, he observes her, takes her arm..., but everything is normal.

Bernadette heads towards the grotto while two tears fall down her especially beautiful face. She will later explain: "She looked into the distance, and turning to me she said":

—Pray to God for sinners.

What did you see that made you cry? During her life she will not cease to be always concerned about the conversion of "poor sinners."

Given the increase in attendance and discussions in the square about the events in Massabielle, that morning, despite it being Sunday, Mayor Lacadé (notary, practicing Catholic), Imperial Prosecutor Dutour (first instance judge, 45 years old, a good Christian, with two sisters in the Daughters of Charity), the chief of gendarmes Renault, the investigating judge Rives and the police commissioner Jacomet (37 years old, married, intelligent and kind, friend of the clergy, attended the religious functions). Under Napoleon III France was officially Catholic, as were its officials; Therefore, it was not about opposing the Church, but about putting an end to what could degenerate into a breach of public order, so jealously protected by imperial decrees. They decided to intervene, first Dutour, then Jacomet, his hierarchical inferior.

After Mass, an usher told Bernadette to go to the courthouse. Dutour questioned her. According to the report that she wrote that same night for the attorney general of Pau, she could not find "material elements of a criminal act." He was convinced of the girl's sincerity when he told her that she was not seeking benefit from her, that she had already left Mrs. Milhet's house, that she planned to continue going to the grotto because she saw something of herself there.   But it would be delusional or managed by others.

At the end of Vespers, the commissioner told Bernadette to follow him. In her home office he interrogated her for two hours, with her neighbors and friends present, the Estrade brothers (both single, he, Juan Bautista, 37 years old, tax collector, and she, Manolita, 34 years old; they will be qualified witnesses of the events, specifically with his book Apparitions of Our Lady in Lourdes, 1899), the commissioner's wife was listening behind the door.