This Sunday I’m thinking of the life of a young Catholic girl who was born in very humble circumstances. Her father, Francois, was a poor miller. After being raised by a wet nurse for the first two years of her life, this young girl returned home to her family. They didn’t have much, but their faith helped them to trust that God would take care of them. They prayed, shared meals, and generally took care of those around them. In fact, the generosity of Francois ended up getting the family into a tough position financially. He allowed too many people to take their grain without payment and so the family was forced to move into a damp, dirty former jail.
While the family was living there, this young girl, who didn’t even speak French very well, was determined to receive sufficient religious education to receive her first Holy Communion. She tried and tried to learn, but poor health often kept her away from classes. Childhood tuberculosis had permanently damaged her lungs. But eventually she became sufficiently prepared in the eyes of the local parish priest. She was 14.
It was around this time that she ventured out one day with her sister and a friend to collect firewood near the river. They approached a cave called Masabielle and then something extraordinary happened. The young girl, who had learned her catechism lessons only with difficulty, heard what sounded like a gust of wind, even though there wasn’t a wind blowing. She heard it again, and looking toward the caves where she thought it was coming from, she saw a beautiful, shining young woman there wearing a white dress and blue sash. She was holding a gold rosary and on each of her feet was a gold rose matching her rosary. This cave was the site of the apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes, and the young girl who saw her was named Bernarde-Marie, but everyone called her Bernadette.
St. Bernadette, like so many of those to whom Our Lady has appeared over the last several centuries, was not someone the world would consider an ideal candidate to be a messenger of the Mother of God. But Jesus sent His mother to this poor, humble girl because He knew that she, with His help and the Blessed Mother’s encouragement, would be faithful to the task at hand–encouraging the local clergy to have a chapel built there so that people would come in procession to that place. Humble Bernadette was attentive and faithful to our Lady over the 18 different times she appeared. She kept persistently reporting the details of the apparitions to the skeptical local pastor. For a long time, the celestial Lady didn’t reveal her identity to Bernadette, even though she asked. Then, at the sixteenth apparition on March 25, 1858, the Feast of the Annunciation, Bernadette finally got her answer. After asking her four times what her name was, the Lady finally looked toward heaven and responded, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Bernadette ran back to the rectory repeating the words over and over to herself so she wouldn’t forget them: ”I am the Immaculate Conception. I am the Immaculate Conception.” When the parish priest heard those words come from Bernadette, the girl he knew could barely read or write, he was convinced of the truth of the apparitions. Only several years previously had Pope Pius IX solemnly defined the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception for the Church. There was no way Bernadette would’ve known this on her own.
Because of Bernadette’s persistence, today there is not only a chapel built at the sight where Mary appeared but a grand basilica that I was recently blessed to visit. Because of the faithfulness of humble Bernadette, who was declared St. Bernadette by Pope Pius XI in 1933, millions upon millions of people have come in pilgrimage to that cave in Lourdes, France to seek God and to bathe in the waters that sprang up where Mary instructed Bernadette to dig and bathe during the apparitions in 1858. And just like Mary said, people have come in procession. In fact, thousands gather at the site every night to pray the rosary and carry candles in procession.
Stories like that of humble Bernadette should give us great hope, because they show us how God chooses to work powerfully not through those methods and means that the world would use, but through the humble and the lowly. This makes sense when we consider the humility of God Himself, who was unashamed to come among us as the foster son of a simple carpenter and born of an obscure virgin in a backwater town. God doesn’t need the tools that this world considers important: fortune, influence, reputation, and connections. He chooses to work through those that have nothing because he himself chose to have nothing when He became human.
Those humble ones show how much God’s power can do if we simply are attentive to what the Lord is about in our lives. Look at what Bernadette did. The world would have had her talk to the press, get out the word, and tell her story to whoever would listen. Instead, she did exactly what the mysterious lady in the woods asked her to do. She prayed the rosary, did penance for sinners, returned again and again to the cave, and persevered in asking the priests to believe her and have a church built there. Even without a PR team, hundreds and then thousands of people began to gather when she would go to the cave, so much so that local authorities fenced off the site for a time. The final apparition happened when Bernadette was kneeling across the river from the cave, and she said it seemed that Mary was just as close as before and more beautiful then she had ever seen her.
The humble saints like Bernadette, the children at Fatima, Juan Diego and so many others throughout history through whom God has worked powerfully break through our false notions of power and influence. Jesus struggled with the crowds in his hometown who took one look at the carpenter’s son and wrote Him off. As the Gospel for this Sunday tells us: “So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.”
I wonder whether we approach Jesus like those people sometimes. We look at this man who seemingly lived a long time ago, preached a message which seems out of touch with today’s world, and was betrayed by a friend, handed over by his religious leaders and crucified by the powers that be. But he did promise some seemingly crazy things, like the fact that those who ate His flesh and drank his blood would live forever, and that he would rise from the dead. This carpenter’s son proved himself when, to the shock of even His disciples, he did rise from the dead, and then he promised to remain with them always.
The problem for most of us is our lack of faith to believe in Jesus’ promises, to trust that he can work through us even though we are weak, sinful, and mostly just ordinary people. But we are precisely the kind of people that Jesus has always chosen to be with. Jesus isn’t impressed by worldly power, and without any of it He continues to work miracles in the church through the most lowly people: people like St. Bernadette, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Francis of Assisi, Blessed Carlo Acutis, and many many others. The saints are those ordinary people who walked in the way and the power of the ordinary man from Nazareth who also happened to be the Son of God.
When we let go of our preconceived notions of how God should work in the world, then we can begin to open ourselves to how God wants to work in each one of us. He is inviting you to do simple things like so many of the saints: pray, do penance, listen for His voice in prayer and the scriptures, and share what He tells you with others. With the power of God’s grace in His word and in the Sacraments at work in us, God can do amazing things! Mary, the Queen of saints is a perfect example: a humble, uneducated woman whose ‘yes’ to God brought us the Savior of the world! God doesn’t need anything more complicated than our openness to Him and His life-changing power. Will we humble ourselves to follow Mary’s example of faithfulness and that of all the saints? St. Bernadette, pray for us!
+ Father, thank you for giving us the ability to do great things through you regardless of our worldly situation. Jesus, our humble savior, constantly help us with your grace not to be distracted by the passing riches of this world so that we can be rich in You and in your love. Holy Spirit, humble our hearts so we can follow Jesus more faithfully day by day. We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. +