“In Lourdes, an evangelical message”, the testimony of Sister Bernadette Delobel, nun of the Assumption

“Between 2016 and 2021, I was one of the volunteer guides at the Lourdes sanctuary. I accompanied various groups, including people who came as tourists or curious people. The challenge was to access the pilgrimage process through a route marked by signs: feeling the wind, touching the rock, receiving the light, slipping into the crowd… Through one of the doors of the sanctuary, we first go to the statue of the crowned Virgin, this mother who welcomes all her children. On the way to the grotto, we stop to feel the wind, as Bernadette felt it at the first apparition.

We recall the meaning of the wind in the Bible. At the grotto, gestures are suggested, such as leaning on the rock, moving to the bottom and watching the water flow, and we talk about Christ, presented in the New Testament as the rock from which living water flows. We can lean on him. I encourage: “Let us lay down what weighs us down. We do not leave Lourdes with a heart as heavy as when we arrived.” There, I experienced very strong things with very varied people.

Then we go to the fountains, we drink, we wash, according to the request of the Lady to Bernadette, before crossing the bridge and going to the chapels of light, where candles burn. I pray, for and with all those who have gone before us here. The path of the signs ends on the large meadow, facing the Gave, where we evoke the crowds of people who do not know each other but, in Lourdes, walk together, in procession. We see the grotto from afar, like Bernadette during the last of the 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary, prevented from approaching. “I have never seen her so beautiful,” she nevertheless testified. And the pilgrim can hope, like Bernadette, that Mary will not abandon him.

From this place, we see the altar, in the heart of the grotto. I remind you that Bernadette did not come to Lourdes for the apparitions but to prepare for her communion which she had not yet made, at 14 years old, because she had not learned to read and could not retain her catechism. In a way, Mary prepared her for the Eucharist. And the signs left by Bernadette’s experience can still lead pilgrims today towards the gift of Christ in the Eucharist. I have seen through this experience how much Lourdes carries a message of the Gospel. Bernadette places herself among the sick, the little ones, what she experienced reaches them, and a mission is entrusted to her.”