Lourdes
Ponderings of a Lourdes Pilgrim
Pat Murphy has been travelling with us on our Watermead pilgrimages for many years and usually brings friends from Liverpool with her. She also travels to Lourdes each year helping on the Liverpool diocesan pilgrimage and has been writing a regular column of her thoughts and experiences relating to those pilgrimages in their diocesan magazine. Below she has shared with us two of her articles.
At the time of posting, Pat will next be travelling to Lourdes with the Archdiocese from 24th - 31st July 2025.
June 2025
As I write this month’s article, I realise the month of May is moving far too fast. The month dedicated to Mary our Blessed Lady. I can only think of three days during the month dedicated to our blessed Lady though. The feast of Our Lady of Fatima falls in the middle of the month. I was lucky enough to visit Fatima a number of years ago. It was slightly out of season and a much quieter shrine than Lourdes and in fact very different, but reverend just the same. The Lourdes and Fatima apparitions are less than 60 years apart. Our Blessed Lord realised what a troubled world there was, and sent his Mother to pass messages though the children in Fatima and Bernadette in Lourdes.
Many disbelieved Bernadette as we well know but in Fatima many witnessed a miracle. Our Lady promised the children she would perform a miracle, to show people the children were telling the truth. The crowds saw the sun make incredible movements in the sky. In our secular world of today its referred to a “solar phenomenon”.
From Lourdes we don’t need the sun to dance in the sky, we know there have been many miracles – many publicised, such as our own Liverpool miracle Jack Traynor, but everyone who visits Lourdes will have their story of a mini miracle to tell.
Then we have the feast of the visitation on the last day of the month. Mary visiting her elderly cousin Elizabeth who became the mother of St John the Baptist – the forerunner of Jesus. Or as one child preparing for first Holy Communion said to me recently “he invented Baptism” I always think of this feast as being very visual. The joyous meeting of the two expectant cousins, and we read in the gospel when Mary greeted Elizabeth the baby leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
So those of us who will be travelling to Lourdes this year look forward to celebrating once again the miracle of Jack Traynor in the little French village where he was cured of multiple ailments. In this Jubilee year we will remember all those who are sick and who need spiritual and physical support. There is still time to join the pilgrimage – enjoy the feast of our Blessed Mother.
July 2025
I think most of us have a fascination of reading old newspapers, often they are more interesting than the present ones! I recently came across an article from the Times dated Friday 21st May 1858
“A girl named Savy in the Haute Pyrenees gave out at the beginning of the year that the Holy Virgin had several times appeared to her in a grotto near the town”
It continues in a rather disbelieving manner…..concluding “that the persons who pretend to see visions shall be sent to the hospital in Tarbes and be subjected to medical treatment, and that those who spread absurd tales of heavenly visitation shall be prosecuted for propagating false news”
Oh dear oh dear. I wonder what that journalist would write now. There was a slightly more accepting report a little later in June of the same year. The journalist had travelled to Lourdes, and had spoken to Bernadette, her aunt, the police and Father Peyramale. However the grotto was said to be barricaded from people entering. It was an offence to enter the area and drink the water, a heavy fine being incurred for breaking the rules.
Just thinking, since 1858, the millions of pilgrim’s visiting the shrine of Lourdes year on year. The many miraculous cures, the healing waters. Lourdes has been a continued place of pilgrimage from the early days. A place not only of pilgrimage but spiritual, physical and mental healing. If only the Times journalists could have seen into the future, how their eyes would have been opened.
Let us all continue in this jubilee year our own personal pilgrimage, whether it’s a walking pilgrimage within our own deaneries, a visit to a Holy place or joining a jubilee year pilgrimage to Lourdes or Rome. Maybe your pilgrimage of prayer is from your own armchair – but we join together in prayer and unity. Here in Liverpool not only have we welcomed our new Pope Leo X1V, but also our New Archbishop John Sherrington, who will join those of us who are able to travel to Lourdes later this month.
Your petitions and prayers will travel with us on that pilgrimage. Our Lady of Lourdes pray for us. St Bernadette pray for us.
Pat Murphy (Liverpool Archdiocese)
