Lourdes: A Place of Healing

I was sitting near the Bridge of the Arches by the river Gave while I jotted down these words in my diary. This was exactly the same spot where I met a middle-aged Filipina named Helen twelve months ago. She was on her way to Accueil Notre-Dame when she saw me playing the guitar. She greeted me in Tagalog for, as she said, she was quite sure I was Filipino. I soon learned that she had been working in Paris for many years as a care giver and that she was in Lourdes as a volunteer brancardier.

A brancardier is a person who helps other people in need, especially the sick. In Lourdes, the brancardiers offer charitable services to sick pilgrims, like pushing/pulling their wheelchairs, bringing them food and medicine, bathing them, etc. You would be amazed at the number of young people from all over the world who volunteer as brancardiers in Lourdes. What made Helen extraordinary was that her regular job in Paris involved nursing sick people all year long, and the fact that she used her weeklong annual vacation to help sick pilgrims for free. The difference, she said, was that she worked as a caregiver in Paris to earn a living, but she was in Lourdes to help the sick out of love.

I prayed and thanked God for Helen and for the countless other volunteers like her as I walked over the Bridge of the Arches by the river Gave to the Lourdes Basilica. The more I looked at the Basilica from the main square the more I saw that the flying walkways were designed in the form of “open arms” to remind pilgrims that Lourdes is a place of healing, a shrine where everyone is welcome and cared for.

I arrived in Lourdes in the afternoon of July 19th, my birthday. And I stayed there until the following day. I flew all the way from Rome to Paris and from Paris I took a TGV train to Lourdes. In the morning I concelebrated at an international mass held in the subterranean Saint Pius X Basilica. After the Eucharistic celebration, I visited the Grotto, where I prayed in silence as I offered the intentions sent to me by friends and acquaintances. Together with a group of Filipino pilgrims I said mass in the afternoon at the St. Anne Chapel, near the upper basilica and then afterwards went with them to the hill to do the Way of the Cross. In the evening I joined the Torchlight Procession which started at the Grotto and ended at the Rosary Basilica.

Everywhere you go in Lourdes you see sick people in their wheelchairs, stretchers or crutches. At the baths they go to wash themselves praying for a cure or probably just to strengthen their faith and courage. While some people visit Lourdes hoping to find healing, others, like Helen, go there to make it happen. More than the miraculous bathing pools and the hundreds of burning candles at the Grotto, what makes Lourdes a place of healing is the presence of people who express their faith by helping other people.

Gospel Acclamation of the Day: "I have chosen you from the world, says the Lord, to go and bear fruit that will last." (Jn 15:16)