Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes

St. Augustine's Exposition on Galatians
Let Christ take shape within you
St Paul says, Be like me – who, though I was born a Jew, have learnt through spiritual insight to look down on things of the body – as I have become like you – that is, I am a man.
Next he very properly reminds them of his love for them, so that they should not think that he is their enemy. My brethren, hear me: you have never done me harm – implying, ‘do not therefore think that I mean to do you any harm’.
My children, he adds – so that they should imitate him as they would imitate a parent. I must go through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you. Now he speaks more in the person of the Church, their mother, for as he says elsewhere, I was gentle and unassuming, like a nurse feeding and looking after her children.
Christ takes shape in a believer through the faith that is in his inmost soul. Such a believer, gentle and humble of heart, is called to the freedom of grace. He does not boast of the merit he gains from good works, for they are worth nothing. It is grace itself that is the beginning of merit, so that Christ, who said in so far as you did this to one of the least of these, you did it to me can call the believer the ‘least’ part of himself. Thus Christ is formed within the believer who accepts the form of Christ, who comes close to Christ by means of spiritual love.
Therefore the believer who imitates Christ becomes (as far as he is permitted) the same as Christ whom he imitates. Whoever claims to abide in Christ, says John, must walk as Christ himself walked.
Human beings are conceived and given shape by their mothers, and once they have taken shape, their mothers go into labour and give them birth; so we may wonder what is meant by I must go through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you. We can take the birth-pangs as meaning the anxiety he felt over them, that they should be born in Christ; or again, that he is suffering because he sees them surrounded by dangers that could lead them astray. The care and worry he feels, which he compares to the pangs of giving birth, may last until they are fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself, not tossed one way and another and carried along by every wind of doctrine.
Hence it is not about the beginnings of faith that St Paul is speaking, the faith by which they were born, but about the strengthening and perfecting of that faith: I must go through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you. Elsewhere he talks of the same labour in other words: My anxiety for all the churches. When any man has had scruples, I have had scruples with him; when any man is made to fall, I am tortured.

The Apparitions of Mary at Lourdes
Bernadette and Lourdes - 1858 The apparitions at Lourdes took place only four years after the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in 1854, and given their nature it is only natural to see a strong link between the two.
On Thursday 11 February 1858, fourteen year old Bernadette Soubirous saw a beautiful young girl in a niche at a rocky outcrop called Massabielle, about a half mile outside the town. She was near a wild rose bush and surrounded by a brilliant light and a golden cloud, smiling, with her arms extended towards Bernadette, who took out her rosary beads.
When she had finished praying the rosary the apparition beckoned to her, but Bernadette did not move and the girl smiled at her before disappearing. She later described how she had seen a young girl of about her own age and height, clothed in a brilliant and unearthly white robe, with a blue girdle around her waist and a white veil on her head.
This was the beginning of a whole sequence of apparitions, eighteen in all, which occurred during the spring and early summer of 1858. Mary first spoke to Bernadette on 18 February when she asked her if she would come to the grotto for a fortnight. Thursday, 25 February, saw a crowd of about three hundred, and the discovery that was to make Lourdes famous, that of the miraculous spring in the grotto.
During subsequent apparitions Mary asked for a chapel and processions, but Fr Peyramale, the local parish priest, insisted that the Lady would have to reveal her name before anything could be done about such matters. Early on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, Bernadette made her way to the grotto, where the beautiful Lady was already waiting for her. Bernadette asked the Lady her name and after joining her hands at the breast and looking up to heaven she said, "I am the Immaculate Conception."
Bernadette hurried off toward the presbytery, repeating the Lady's strange words, so as not to forget them. She met Fr. Peyramale and left him dumbfounded with the words "I am the Immaculate Conception"; he realised that the Lady had indeed answered his request for her name. Although the message of Lourdes was now complete, Bernadette again saw Mary on the Wednesday after Easter, April 7, remaining in an ecstasy for about three quarters of an hour.
She was able to receive her first Holy Communion on the feast of Corpus Christi, and significantly she saw Mary for the last time from outside the grotto, on 16 July, the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
Bishop Laurence set up a Canonical Commission into the apparitions and their cause on July 28. This body first interviewed Bernadette in mid-November, and was impressed by her testimony and by a growing number of cures. It was not until January 1862 though, nearly four years after the apparitions, that the bishop delivered his verdict on Lourdes in a Pastoral letter, a verdict that silenced those hostile to Bernadette.
"We adjudge that the Immaculate Mary, Mother of God, really appeared to Bernadette Soubirous on February 11th, 1858, and subsequent days, eighteen times in all, in the Grotto of Massabielle, near the town of Lourdes: that this apparition possesses all the marks of truth, and that the faithful are justified in believing it certain. We humbly submit our judgement to the judgement of the Supreme Pontiff to whom is committed the Government of the whole Church."

It is extraordinary, considering its importance, how little was said at Lourdes by Mary. Her words could certainly be contained on a single side of notepaper.

"It is not necessary." (On being offered pen and paper by Bernadette and asked to write down what she wanted)

"Would you have the graciousness to come here for fifteen days?""I do not promise you happiness in this world, but in the next."

"Pray for sinners.""Go drink at the spring and wash yourself in it.""Penance! Penance! Penance!"

Bernadette was also told to eat some leaves from a green herb.

"Kiss the ground as a penance for sinners."

"You will tell the priests to have a chapel built here."

A reiteration of the request for a chapel and a further one that people should come to the grotto in procession. Mary explained to Bernadette why she had not seen her because, "there were people here who wanted to see your face in my presence, and they were unworthy of it. They spent the night at the Grotto and profaned it."

"I am the Immaculate Conception."