Lourdes remains a powerful and tangible sign of God working in
our lives. It prompts us to rethink our lives and to open ourselves
in faith to the mystery of God’s love. The numerous healings
reported at Lourdes are God’s special message to those susceptible
to liberal and materialistic ideologies.
The miracles at Lourdes are not just cures of physical diseases
and ailments. Healing a man’s heart and soul i.e. absolving
him of his sins and freeing him from the power of Satan, is every
bit as miraculous, even more so. Jesus asks us: “For which
is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven’, or to
say, ‘Rise and walk’?” (Mt. 9:5). Clearly, the
former is more difficult, for only God can heal the human soul.
Probably no place on earth has more people availing themselves
of the sacrament of penance than Lourdes. Here, by the Massabielle
Grotto, Christ’s all-powerful love is constantly at work.
His love brings the most hardened sinners to contrition, and forgives
all sins. This is the greatest of miracles. The physical cures
at Lourdes are merely tangible, verifiable signs of such spiritual
healings. Christ tells us: “But that you may know that the
Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” he then
said to the paralytic “Rise, take up your bed and go home”
(Mt. 9:6).
Between 1858 and 1914, 4445 miraculous cures of physical diseases
were reported at Lourdes. Such cures are registered in the Medical
Bureau after the physicians have thoroughly checked all the facts,
to ascertain that, from the scientific point of view, they are
dealing with a true instance of inexplicable, miraculous healing.
The actual number of recorded cures occurring in the 145 years
since the apparitions is in the tens of thousands. Unfortunately,
for various reasons, only a small number of the thousands of dossiers
concerning undisputed miraculous cures ever reach the International
Medical Commission, and subsequently the bishop of the diocese,
in which the cured person lives. Only after this happens, can
the bishop appoint a special commission studying the matter through
a complicated process of investigation. The commission’s
aim is to certify that a specific case represents an instance
of supernatural act, in other words, that it is a miracle officially
approved by the Church. So far, 65 such official statements confirming
a miracle have been issued.
The events in Lourdes are an eloquent protest against those who
would live as if God did not exist. They are an urgent appeal
calling for the conversion of the soul, an appeal constantly made
to us by Jesus, who truly “loved us to the end” (Jn.
13:1). Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel, who became a believer
after going to Lourdes, observed: “Lourdes is a whole set
of facts that reduces all philosophical and theoretical considerations
to crumbs”. The apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes,
and the miracles occurring there, stand as a sign of contradiction
to a concept of the world that denies a loving, personal God.
Small wonder that the world’s freemasons felt threatened
and began a massive propaganda attack against Lourdes. Their aim
was to ridicule and discredit the apparitions by representing
them as a great deception engineered by the Catholic clergy. To
accomplish this goal, the most treacherous methods were used,
involving the forgery of documents. Fortunately, this was exposed.
The attacks by freemasonry on the apparitions in Lourdes continued
until 1958.
Then the enemies of Church changed their strategy. As American
writer Julien Green observed: “it was the ultimate in satanic
perversity to present the mystery as something quite normal and
mundane”.
As early as 1829, the Pope Pius VIII warned the faithful against
the clandestine activities of freemasonry: “Their law is
untruth; their God is Satan; their ritual is profanity”.
This is only one out of more than 200 papal statements condemning
freemasonry for its attempts at dechristianizing the world and
shaping a new society, in which man lives as if there were no
God, without stable and unchanging moral laws and norms. According
to Masonic ideology, there is no one, universal Truth, there is
no Revelation, and miracles are simply impossible. However, from
time to time, the adherents of this ideology are faced with self-evident
facts that demonstrate the presence and agency of supernatural
powers. This is a loving God’s way of appealing to the consciences
of His prodigal people, summoning them to his fatherly heart,
and to love with a love that forgives all, and spreads eternal
joy.
Lourdes is a gift of God to His people. It is God’s clinic
of souls and bodies. If only people, seeing it, would see. If
only people, hearing its message, would listen to it, and, filled
with love, seek spiritual conversion in Christ the one Source
of Life and Love.
