This month marks a singular anniversary: on February 11, 1858, Bernadette Soubirous announced her encounter with "the Lady dressed in white with a blue sash." One hundred fifty years ago, the story of Lourdes began—and with it, one of Christianity's most vital centers of spiritual life. Six million pilgrims travel there each year. Sixty miracles have been officially recognized by the Church. The stream of writings, testimonies, and initiatives shows no sign of slowing.
I have never been to Lourdes. I have never lived in that particular climate, that atmosphere of faith, joy, and fellowship that everyone describes—the air that settles over days and places where pilgrims gather and share. Yet I can testify to having witnessed with my own eyes countless small and large miracles, depending on how one reads the world. I have seen young people with severe and painful disabilities come alive and throw themselves into preparing for pilgrimage with joy. I have seen parents of disabled children depart, armed with enthusiasm and hope, ready to face the hardship and exhaustion that travel demands. I watched them return transformed, tireless in recounting the emotions and experiences they had lived through, the small moments that made them laugh or smile, the bonds of friendship forged, the inevitable minor misadventures. I have seen groups of young people immersed for months in organizing the journey, inventing everything—selling used books, soliciting generous friends' donations—to bring every single friend to Lourdes, even those without enough money of their own.
And finally, or perhaps first and foremost: I saw a small group depart for Lourdes in April 1971—parents still alone and discouraged, struck along with their children by a disability almost impossible to bear, reluctant to follow an invitation that came from afar. I watched them return transformed into a kind of comet, luminous from the start and, over the years, trailed by an ever-widening stream of parents, young people, and friends to whom it pointed a new path, a new way of living born directly from the heart of that journey to Lourdes.
And so I hope I have explained why I, who have never been to Lourdes, can call myself an eyewitness to its miracles.
Maria Teresa Mazzarotto, 2008