BERNADETTE SOUBIROUS, THE MAID OF LOURDES

New Zealand Tablet, 7 August 1919, Page 19

BERNADETTE SOUBIROUS, THE MAID OF LOURDES

(By Archbishop Redwood.)

, In my article upon the Canonisation of Joan of Arc, I showed her Providential mission to France in the fifteenth century, and how admirably and heroically she fulfilled it. But another saintly maiden, in the nineteenth century and the memory of many of us,, was also conspicuously a Providential, instrument in God’s hands to enhance the imposing character and the grandeur of the manifestations which magnificently glorified the Mother of God, in her Immaculate Conception, by many miraculous cures and striking conversions. I mean Bernadette Soubirous, to whom Our Blessed Lady vouchsafed to appear as many as 18 times. And, as in the fifteenth century Heaven sent Joan of Arc to deliver France from foreign oppression, so in the nineteenth century He entrusted a lowly child with the mission to raise souls from their indifference and rescue them from the yoke of unbelief. The present moment seems, therefore, appropriate to pay deserved honor to Bernadette. Her cause for Beatification has been introduced, and though we cannot forestall the judgment of the Holy See or give to the saintly maiden any cultus properly so-called, we deem it fitting to bring her into comparison with St. Joan of Arc, and to show similar features in the character of both these virginal messengers of Heaven. We know that Our Lord proved His Divine mission by His holiness and by the splendor of His miracles, confirmed by His Resurrection from the dead, and when He uses certain chosen creatures here below as the intermediaries of His power, and the executors of His designs, He gifts them with a supernatural force, He marks them with Divine tokens which clearly exhibit them as the envoys and instruments of His Providence. So it was with Bernadette Soubirous, who showed forth the supernatural side of her mission all the more markedly because of her natural weakness and ignorance. Down the course of ages from Joan of Arc to modern times, we come to the year 1858, when another envoy of Heaven is about to stir the world and strive to bring it back to God. At that time prosperity seemed everywhere to prevail, and yet a grave danger threatened France, a danger the more formidable because better able to, scheme and dissemble. The enemy is not foreign, as in the days of Joan, but internal and domestic, a deep evil whose ravages attentive eyes easily perceived. No doubt, at that time, there was no talk, as was afterwards the case, of creating a new mentality, but de facto, the work was going on, the work of assailing and de-Christianising the .French mind. Atheism had not yet unmasked its hideous mien and yet atheism was at work under the guise of positivism and ultra-criticism. Many of the writers of the day threw doubts on the soul, on good, on evil, on the future life, on God and all religion. Infidelity, still shy and cunning, was striving, in reviews and newspapers, to conquer the high regions of the mind, to invade youth in schools, to captivate the opinion of the masses. Positivism, pantheism, naturalism, independent morality, all that kind of philosophy was only masquerading under the motley guise of atheism. And in the storm gradually raised against the basal truths of faith and even of reason, one can gather a fair insight into the state of minds at that period. The apostasy of the mind would naturally lead to the apostasy of the heart, and this was the whole scope and drift of the philosophical movement. This was surely a tremendous peril for society and religion. Everything tended to aggravate it— categorical admissions of the leaders, and the novel means of propagandism and publicity. Tlx© explosion of these direful doctrines coincided then with the accepted order of the day in social questions; the evil found a most potent complicity in the ideas of progress falsely understood, of unbridled luxury’,; of material enjoyment favored by . public and . private wealth. The risk which faith and morality were then running inspired the : Bishop of Orleans, Dupanloup,

with those eloquent and ever-memorable pamphlets, Avertissement a la jeunesse et aux peres de famille and Atheisme et le peril social, in which he denounced thethreats of “intellectual barbarism, and . the unbridled tyranny of the mob, and with that tyranny, impiety, atheism, war against God and the Church, the subversion of public order and of the principles-underlying society. Cardinal Pie also wrote : “Towards what goal is - the world loudly professing to tend, if not towards complete secularisation, that is, in plain language, towards the absolute rupture between society and Christian principle ?” ( Oeuvres de Monsynr. Pie, iv., p. 527.) It is clear, then, that the enemy which, at an interval of some centuries, rushed upon France, was as formidable as the one combatted by Joan of. Arc. It was a whole army in battle array, the army of materialism in serried x'axxks : Christians calling themselves independent and eliminating Jesus Christ from social life; secularisoi's admitting nothing supernatural; rationalistic deists excluding from the world any Divine action; pantheists, ■jxxatex'ialiats, atheists of many and changing shades. This army was more to be dreaded than the invadexs of the fifteenth centux'y. To overcome it Heaven worked a more astounding miracle than the mission of Joan of Arc. The daring affirmation of uri-. belief, the audacity of naturalism, the denial of the supernatural was axxswexcd by the Blessed Virgin, the Immaculate Conception, by appearing to a lowly little shephex d girl, a poor child of the people, axxd through that child proclaiming Hex-self to the world. The messenger of this marvel, the one who stirred, up in France and the whole world a religioxxs movement towards the place of the apparitions, such as was never seen before, is Bernadette Soubirous, a flower of the field like Joan of Arc, as ignorant, as unknowxx, as simple as was the Warrior Maid of Domx'exxxy. Like Joan, Bernadette delights ixx prayer ; her piety is neither affected nor exalted, her good sense unaltex-able; she is the edification and the guide of her companions; the seriousness of her dispositioxx wax-rants the vex-acity of her affirmations, until they are confirmed by irrefutable witnesses and accredited by 50 years and more of mix-acles. Between the two earthly angels sent by Heaven, at times so different, yet equally critical in French history, likenesses abound, and a comparative exposition of them brings them out with striking effect. The mission of both, ixx the designs of Providence, was, not to subvert the Divine plan and effect revolutions which change the face of the earth, but to bring back to Jesus Christ, the principle and centre of Catholic life, the French nation in the act of departing from His guidance. . Like Joan of Arc, Bernadette was charged with being over-excited, hallucinated, hypnotised, axxd so forth. The men of law and science endeavored, by the most captious questions, by threats, by every means of intimidation, to find her in fault, concerning the reality of the apparitions. But the gentle seer, with modest and invincible assurance, to which were united in her, as in Joan of Arc, keenness and shrewdness of mind, persisted in her simple, precise, and categorical answers. The Church, on hex" side, ever, prudent, ever slow and reserved in her decisions, formed judgment only after she had acquired, by irrefragable proofs, the certainty that Bernadette spoke the truth. And, as the judges at Poictiers had affirmed the mission of Joan of Arc, so the Church— the voice of her representative. Bishop -recognised, in her canonical and solemn judgment, submitted to the Pope and accepted by him, the truth of the apparitions and miracles of Lourdes, and thereby confirmed that which Bernadette had witnessed. Thus Joan and Bernadette both triumph, on the examinations of the Church, which proclaims the supernatural character of their mission. Miracles have accredited the apparitions of Bernadette, but her life was subjected to many trials. She became a butt for the sarcasms of unbelief and the threats of the civil authority, nay, as the climax of disfavor for a time, she was mistrusted by the very priests whom she devoutly reverenced. But here comes the marvel: this simple and ignorant child, with no defence but her conscience, rose victorious from the snares

set her by the official world. She overcame the lawyers who strove to intimidate her' the men of science who set .traps for her simplicity, the functionaries of all ranks who were determined ■ to imprison her as mad, the hesitations and doubts of the clergy. Strong from her mission, strong from the help of Mary Immaculate, whose ineffable beauty she had seen, and whose order she had received, she knew, herself to be, like Joan of Arc, invincible. No, the cherished voice, the august voice, the sovereign voice of Heaven’s Queen did not deceive her any more than did Joan’s celestial voices. The child of Domremy overcame the Dauphin’s hesitation by revealing to him a secret known to him alone. The child of Lourdes overcame the doubts of the priests by relating to them the words and behests from Mary’s mouth. And how many extraordinary facts were accomplished, and continue to be accomplished at the place of the apparitions,-testifying the truth of Bernadette communications ! Is not the greatest marvel the continuous movement which .brings the whole world to the grotto' of Massabiellc? As much as, and even moie than, Joan’s victories, the pacific triumphs of faith, and the crusades of prayer due to Bernadette’s action, .have caused the admiration and amazement of the Christian universe.' If Bernadette had not, like Joan, the glory of consumating in flames her sublime destiny, she had a large share of tribulations: for the last years of ' her life, tortured by continual infirmities, were one long martyrdom. The Immaculate Virgin who gave her this promise, “I promise to make you happy, not in this world, but in the next,” did not remove from Sister Mary Bernard, in the cloister, either sickness 01 anguish of soul. But,- like Joan whose voices had said. ‘'Tremble not about your martyrdom —out of it shall you come into the realms of Paradise,” Bernadette always showed great fortitude in suffering, and always proved in her very agony the faithful witness of Heaven’s Queen. W hat practical advantages do we derive from her life She intercedes for us and extends her protection ovei her devoted and faithful clients. Though we are as yet prohibited from tendering any open worship to Bernadette, ,we are doubtless allowed to unite her to Joan in the depths of our hearts, and to hail her through Lourdes as the guardian of France, and the guardian of the Catholic world.