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Lourdes, France. is one of the world’s great Catholic pilgrimage sites. This is a story of what happened there:
The Virgin Mary had been appearing to a young girl, Bernadette, at Lourdes, France, in 1858, but she hadn’t told the girl who she was. The parish priest, who didn’t believe Bernadette was really seeing Mary, told the girl to ask the lady appearing to her to identify herself and tell him what the lady said.
Then, when she saw the lady again, she told Bernadette “I am the immaculate conception.” Bernadette had no idea what these words meant.
Lourdes, France. is one of the world’s great Catholic pilgrimage sites. This is a story of what happened there:
The Virgin Mary had been appearing to a young girl, Bernadette, at Lourdes, France, in 1858, but she hadn’t told the girl who she was. The parish priest, who didn’t believe Bernadette was really seeing Mary, told the girl to ask the lady appearing to her to identify herself and tell him what the lady said.
Then, when she saw the lady again, she told Bernadette “I am the immaculate conception.” Bernadette had no idea what these words meant.
Code:
The account below of what happened next is from Rene Laurentin's leading
biography of Bernadette, "Bernadette Speaks. A Life," pages 98-100.
When she came away from this vision, people on all sides asked
Bernadette what Mary told her. But she didn't understand Mary's words.
"They would slip her mind, like the words in class...especially the second.
What was it now? 'Conception?'
Meanwhile, Bernadette had gone up the Rue de Baous, and crossed the
'Place du Porche,' repeating the words she didn't understand...
She pushed the rectory door open and flung her words in the Cure's face,
almost at the top of her lungs, 'I am the immaculate conception.'
Peyramael the parish priest, the rock, wavered under the shock whose
significance he had miscalculated. His authoritarian anger, which rose
up within him in trying circumstances, clicked in like an automatic reflex.
He was about to say, 'You are the immaculate conception!' or 'You little
show-off!' But the words stuck in his throat. Having just realized the
bluntness of her message, Bernadette repeated more precisely, 'she
said, "I am the immaculate conception!'"
You're mistaken he said, "do you know what that means?
Bernadette pathetically shook her head."
'Then how can you say that, if you don't understand?'
'I repeated it all the way here.'"
After this, this parish priest began to believe Bernadette was seeing
the Virgin.
Pope Pius IX had declared a little more that three ears before, in 1854,
that the immaculate conception of Mary is a dogma of faith, a belief
Catholics already had, but knowledge of the Pope's action had not yet
come to Lourdes, and Bernadette, who heard Mary say this of herself,
though they were words this simple girl didn't understand, gave a
confirmation of the Pope's declaration about immaculate conception of
the Virgin Mary then.
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