Our Lady of Lourdes

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Here are some photos in and around Lourdes. Also, check out this recently translated, timeless Marian classic of French spirituality. Enjoy the photos and the Feast day!

P.S. I am posting this on Feb. 11, the actual Feast, but WordPress seems to be dating this post Feb. 12.

The Lourdes Grotto

The place where St. Bernadette prayed on Feb. 11, 1858

The paternal home of St. Bernadette

“Bernadette Soubirous was born in this room on January 7, 1844.”

Le Cachot – the one room dwelling where the Soubirous family had to live for a time

In January 1858, she declared: “I wish to return to Lourdes to go to class there and to make my first Communion.”

St. Bernadette Soubirous

The baptismal font where St. Bernadette was baptized

The burial place of the nun who did not like St. Bernadette

Statue of Fr. Peyramale, pastor of Lourdes

Fr. Peyramale’s burial place

View from my hotel.
http://www.galahotels.com/en/Hotel/France_3/Lourdes_5454/Chapelle_Et_Parc_124026?gclid=CKKvu-nU2sMCFYREaQodvo0AyQ

The place for the sick

The basilica at Lourdes

The end of the evening procession

The building where confessions were heard

St. John Vianney

A view of the fortress from the hotel

The Grotto at night

Trinity Sunday

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity is celebrated today.  The first (recorded) time that God revealed Himself as a Trinity of Persons was at the Annunciation in Nazareth to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  “Behold thou shalt conceive and bear a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus.  He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High.  The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee” (Lk. 1:31-32, 35).

The interior of Mary’s home in Nazareth

“The Word became flesh here.”

The grotto of the Annunciation

St. Maximilian Kolbe (2/27)

“There is not one single heroic act that we are unable to accomplish with the help of the Immaculate.”

St. Maximilian Kolbe (2/19)

“The love of the Immaculate is the most perfect love with which a creature can love God.  With Her heart, then, let us strive to love the heart of Jesus more and more.  Let this be our greatest work.”

St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe (2/15)

“We shall know in a very short time exactly what Heaven is like.  In a hundred years time, surely not one of us shall walk in this world…that is a short time!  Let us, then, prepare ourselves well under the guidance of Mary Immaculate.”

St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe (2/12)

“Let us weigh up the joys and troubles of our whole life and offer them to Mary Immaculate for the conquest of all souls.”

Our Lady of Lourdes

Happy Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes!

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/travels/sub-index2004/trav_lourdes-2004_en.htm

The Massabielle Grotto

St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe (2/5)

“The more and more we belong to the Immaculate, the greater and greater will be our conquest of souls for Her, and through Her for Jesus, and through Him for His Father in heaven.”

St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe (2/2)

“If Mary is the Mediatrix of all graces, then only in proportion to our nearness to Her are we able to become channels of grace, mediators of grace which come from the Father through the Son Who merited them – and the Immaculate who dispenses them, so that as they come upon us, they will through us flow into the lives of other souls.”

St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe (1/27)

“It is important to Satan to divert souls from their unity with the Immaculate.  So doing, he knows that the individual soul will exclude the mediation of the Immaculate from its life, and so offer the Lord gifts that are filled with imperfections, more worthy of punishment than of reward.  And what is worst of all, these gifts are afflicted by the disease of pridefulness, for they testify that one does not need the Mother of God.”