We went to Sanctuaire de Notre-Dame de Lourdes. They have healing water in a spring there under the church that you can walk right up to. The story of the healing spring and the cathedral goes a little like this: Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant girl, on 11 February 1858 saw a vision of Mary, the mother of Jesus and was told to go and drink water from a spring which was to appear inside the grotto and wash herself with it. She did and she kept going there and by mid-July had seen Mary 18 times. She was also told to tell the priests to build a chapel at the grotto site. They did. The Cathedral was built over the spring and people – like us - still visit today.
God is a God of miracles even today. There is a whole community built up around that healing. The rocks with healing water running from them – the Cathedral is built on top of those rocks - and people line up to touch the healing water flowing through them. There are also fountains with taps and troughs where people can touch the water. (This actually reminded me of a trip we took to Santuario de Chimaya in New Mexico in the USA – but there it was healing dirt instead of healing water - I have both healing dirt and holy water from there in my office.) In Lourdes, where we just were, there were nuns in habits everywhere. There were physicians and caretakers everywhere. There were patients, sick, and infirm everywhere. People in search of God and people in search of healing everywhere: People come from all over the world to hear God and be healed by Him. It reminds me of Luke 13.
Luke 13: 29-30: People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the Kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”
Here is a picture of the lantern procession. People from the east, west, north, and south gather to take part. It was quite something. The Cathedral was right below our hotel room. We went down, got ourselves a couple of lanterns and joined them. There were thousands of people there – from all over the world, speaking in all kinds of languages, singing in all kinds of languages, praying in many languages. It reminded me of Acts 2
Acts 2:5-8: Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?
Now I did not notice the gift of tongues or more accurately the gift of hearing languages that is mentioned in Acts Chapter 2 but I did hear the words sung, recited and prayed in English, German, French, Spanish, Latin… and people were gathered from far away places. Groups would be there flying their national flags in the holy procession showing that they are part of the gathering of the nations like in Acts 2, Matthew 25 or Revelation. Nations from all over the world were gathered here together, today, on that day, expecting a miracle and many received miracles and they were worshipping our Lord at the Cathedral in Lourdes, France.
One of the things that was quite moving about this whole experience was just like the pericope we read from John Chapter 5 about the man wasn’t able to be healed because no one would bring him to the healing water. I am sure this passage must have been in the minds of so many people there: for at the front of the line of the procession were nuns and nurses and others pushing people in wheelchairs bringing them to the front of the line of people cueing up for the healing at the waters. This love and compassion also reminded me of Luke Chapter 5. Do you remember this story?
Luke 5:17-25: One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. 18 Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19 When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”
21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
22 Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 24 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. 26 Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”
I was really impressed to see the parade of nuns in habits and others each pushing someone in a wheelchair in the morning to the healing water and in the evening to the parade of worship and praise. People for more than one hundred years have loved their neighbours, their family members and others enough to save up enough money for a trip and travel, enough to take time off from their lives and their day-to-day responsibilities; people since the 19th Century and even now are sacrificing and putting everything on hold to bring others to the water in Lourdes to be healed and to be saved. This is a perfect parable, an accurate analogy for our responsibility as Christians, as friends, as family members, as people who know the healing power of God and from where it comes. John Chapter 4, that we read earlier tells us Jesus is the Living Water!
Now we all probably know that God doesn’t heal everyone how and when we expect as they are brought to the water in Lourdes. And, we all probably know from experience and other ways that God doesn’t heal everyone here, how and when we expect – even when they are brought to the Living Water of our Lord (sometime before Jesus’ return, of course, each of us will still have to die of something) but sometimes, so we know it is a miracle and so that we know that God is sovereign and sometimes so that we know God loves us, sometimes He heals us, through the Lord’s Living Water like He has healed many people through the Cathedral healing water in Lourdes.
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