News Item: : Behold Thy Mother! Remembering Our Lady's Maternal Love
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
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Sunday 12 February 2017 - 22:05:42

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Superabundant Grace

Feasts like that of Our Lady of Lourdes serve as reminders of the superabundance of God's love, grace and mercy.

As is the case with so many Catholics, I can look back and give thanks for the many ways in which Our Lady of Lourdes has demonstrated Her maternal care in my own life. 

Regular readers will recall that reading Fr. Gabriel Harty's simple little book Make the Wild Rose Bloom played a big part in my conversion story.
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1992

My parents had both converted between 1989 and 1990. They were both praying for me to also convert when, in November 1992, I picked up Fr. Harty's book whilst I was watching a ''rock and pop awards'' show on TV. I suddenly experienced a gentle, yet very powerful, interior encounter with the love of Our Lady of the Rosary. As refreshing as a fall of dew on my soul, this experience caused me to find the noise and garish lights of the ''pop-culture'' to be no longer satisfying in comparison to the gentle peace and love of Our Lady of the Rosary. In fact, I now found them to be really dark and could not bear to watch the rest of that TV show. 

Although this was not the only aspect of my conversion, it was a significant moment of grace, which led up to my reception into the Catholic Church at Easter 1993.

1997

I first went to Lourdes as a seminarian, in order to serve as a brancardier with the Liverpool Archdiocesan pilgrimage in July 1997.   
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When we arrived, my friend Ron took me to the far side of the River Gave for my first-ever look at the Grotto from the vantage point pictured above.

Even from that range, there was an intensity of peace and holiness radiating out from the Grotto to where we were standing in silence. When I eventually turned to Ron, he just smiled and said: ''See what I mean?''

We recrossed the river and joined the long queue which was waiting patiently in the summer heat to enter the Grotto. When we finally entered that holy place, I rested my head against the cool Massabielle rock and looked up at the statue of Notre Dame de Lourdes. The ensuing peace cannot be described. I had a profound sense that, through all the years of my life, I had always been meant to come there at that particular time. It is hard to explain, but it was as though I had always been expected to be there just then. 

The Motherhood of Our Lady was tangible.
  
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Working for the sick, and seeing the hundreds of buggies, stretchers and wheelchairs laid out under the shade of the trees for the Blessing of the Sick with the Blessed Sacrament taught me the centrality in the Church of those who are sick, vulnerable and weak.

It is an indisputable fact of history, that no other single institution has cared for so many poor, sick, vulnerable and dying people, throughout so many cultures and historical periods, as the Catholic Church has done throughout her two millennia since Christ established her on earth. This alone remains an important facet of her claims to absolute truth.

At that point, I was in my mid-twenties. I had grown through my teens in ''Thatcher's Britain'' in the 80's and, prior to joining the seminary, had worked in a high-street bank for almost 9 years. For much of that time, I had aspired to the whole yuppie-culture. Although I had been a Catholic for 4 years by then, and had always been pro-life, I still needed to be weaned from my materialistic attachment to status, power and physical vitality.

There in Lourdes, kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament, near to row upon row of suffering and broken people who were waiting to receive Christ's blessing, Our Lady of Lourdes helped me to see that, in Christ's Kingdom, the elderly, suffering, poor and weak have a high place. Indeed, they are treated like royalty. Here we glimpse something of the mystery of the Church's rich Theology of the Cross.

1998

In the summer of 1998, I returned to Lourdes to serve for a whole month as a pilgrim-guide for English-speaking pilgrims.     
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Living and working so close to the Grotto for all that time was an immense blessing. In my whole life, I have never felt myself to be so emotionally, physically and spiritually healthy as I did in those weeks. I now realize that I was being built up for subsequent crosses!

The Maternity of Our Lady is indeed tangible.

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That summer, Our Lady of Lourdes broadened my horizons to glimpse something more of the Catholic Church's universality.

Four whole weeks were spent living, praying and working with priests from France, Ireland and South Africa; and seminarians from Cameroon, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Vietnam. The international cameraderie was superb. In the above picture, I'm second from the left on the back row. The seminarian on the end in the white shirt had come through a simply amazing conversion experience. He is now Pastoor Nars Beemster; a splendidly orthodox Catholic priest serving in the Netherlands.

In the English-speaking section, I was assigned to serve pilgrims from the UK, Africa, America, Australia, India, Ireland, the Middle-East and the Philippines. It was great to feel oneself to be an active member of the Body of Christ in unity with Catholics from all of these disparate cultures.    
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During that month, several of the English dioceses came to Lourdes for their annual pilgrimages. I even unexpectedly met my own cousin in the Domain one evening! One day, I spotted the late Bishop Ambrose Griffiths of Hexham and Newcastle giving a blessing to the holy little gentleman pictured above. The humility and tenderness of that scene have always expressed something to me of the mystery of Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette. 
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As pilgrim-guides we: assisted people to find their way to Holy Mass, Confession and the baths; gave talks on the history of Lourdes; led groups in devotions up the steep hillside Stations of the Cross; led groups in the Blessed Sacrament and Torchlight Processions; and gave tours of the churches, museum and town.

During those weeks, my own faith was nourished and deepened by meeting so many faithful Catholics from all over the globe. Several had amazing stories of ''little miracles'' and blessings that had accompanied their pilgrimages. I met some amazingly humble and holy families from the Middle East and from the Kerala community in India. One of the most moving memories was of a young Australian ''surfer-dude'' and his girlfriend who came up to our English-speaking gathering point one day and asked, ''Hey mate, what is this place? Me and my girlfriend are back-packing across Europe. We just came out of the mountains and we've never seen anything like it. It's just amazing!'' It was marvellous when this wide-eyed couple joined us in the Blessed Sacrament Procession that afternoon. May God bless them, wherever they are now.

Although my faith was strengthened that summer, I also began to sense that I may, after all, be called to Holy Matrimony, rather than to the Sacred Priesthood. Although this was profoundly unsettling, especially in such a blessed place, I can now see that Our Lady was guiding me and looking after me all the time.

1999

In the summer of 1999, I returned to Lourdes with Mum and Dad for a very different type of pilgrimage: this time I was not there to work, but to receive. I was reaching the point where I was really sensing that marriage was to be my vocation. On top of that, the culture of sacrilegious irreverence and radical dissent in the seminary had wrecked my health and caused me to crash and burn. Big time...

During our stay in Lourdes, a devout old Irish lady sat by us at breakfast in our hotel. She noted quietly to me that she could see that my face was smiling, but my eyes were very sad. She asked if I had ever been training to be a priest. Amazed at her discernment, I agreed to let her pray for me and tell me her own story.

It turned out that, many decades earlier in Ireland, she had tried her vocation in a convent. During her postulancy, it had become clear to her that God wanted her to marry instead. She had to suffer a great deal for a while and few in her family or local town understood her decision. She persevered in her prayer life and, after a few years, met her devout Catholic husband. They married and went on to have several children and many grandchildren. With her husband, she devoutly practiced the Faith for about 50 years. Indeed, this lady said to me: ''Look how many children I now have to give to God!'' She told me to have great trust in the Lord and assured me of her ongoing prayers.    
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Although this was a pilgrimage marked by deep interior suffering, it was also very beautiful to be able to show Mum and Dad all the places and things that I had shown to pilgrims the year before. This was the only time that Dad ever travelled overseas in his whole life. May God rest his soul, he was faithful to his Rosary for all the years he was a Catholic. At the very end of our pilgrimage, we went for a final prayer at the Grotto, before heading off to Tarbes airport. At the Grotto, I received a very clear and tangible direction regarding my vocation. Although I had to process this, through several more weeks of pacing Crosby beach every day with Dad when we got back home, that moment at the Grotto was important.

Yes, truly the Maternal protection of Our Lady is tangible!

I wrote to Archbishop Patrick Kelly of Liverpool and he accepted my decision with kindness and a supportive letter. His Grace's letter included a reference to Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman's Lead Kindly Light. As this had already played an encouraging role in my personal struggles in those months, I took this as a sign of confirmation and that part of my journey came to an end. It was the last part of the summer of 1999.

2008

Those who know us will recall that I met Angie at the wedding of a mutual friend in August 2000. Actually, she caught the bouquet! By God's grace, we had each found our soul-mate in Christ and we were married by Canon Albert Shaw on Merseyside in April 2002.

Six-and-a-half years after we got married, we suddenly had the chance of a last-minute booking to go to Lourdes for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in December 2008. This would be my fourth visit to the holy shrine; but my first as a married man.    
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It turned out to be a time of special blessings for us. When the great feast day was over, the town and shrine of Lourdes basically shut down for the winter season.

As the crisply cold winter air settled over the French Pyrenees, most people departed for warmer climes. This meant that, unlike in the buzy and hot summer months of all my previous visits, we were able to return again and again to the Grotto, without having to queue at all. Indeed, apart from some French schoolgirls singing beautiful chants by candlelight, there was hardly anybody else around.

Having helped us in so many ways, it now seemed that Our Lady of Lourdes was helping us to recognize the great value in withdrawing from the crowd and bustle, in order to enter into the Great Silence.

Yes, the Maternity of Our Lady of Lourdes is truly tangible!

Over to You!

I pray that whoever reads this, be you Catholic or not, will be able to go to Lourdes and experience these things first hand. Even if you cannot get there, the love of Our Lady is already there for you from Heaven. All you really have to do is open your heart and pray.

Our Lady of Lourdes - Pray for us!

St. Bernadette Soubirous - Pray for us! 



This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.1553 )