The value of a saint to a nation

The crowd was amazing! It could be easier to count the number of stars in the sky than to count the number of pilgrims from every corner of the earth. It was as if heaven was re-enacted on earth. Different languages were used during the international mass akin to the first Pentecost experience (Acts 2).  […]

The crowd was amazing! It could be easier to count the number of stars in the sky than to count the number of pilgrims from every corner of the earth. It was as if heaven was re-enacted on earth. Different languages were used during the international mass akin to the first Pentecost experience (Acts 2).  Lourdes is the most visited Marian Shrine of Europe and the second in the world after the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. Apart from the testimony of people healed regularly, the greatest gift of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Bernadette Soubirous is the conversion of the hearts of many people. Saint Bernadette’s body is still visible in the Chapel of Nevers in a glass casket as if she is sleeping. She is the reason why Lourdes is known all over the world. She did this not just because of the apparition but because of her sweetness, fortitude and peace that never ceased to touch all the hearts that experienced her.
Bernadette Soubirous was born on January 7, 1844 in a small town, the most beautiful French Pyrenées Mountains of Lourdes in France. She received several visions from the Virgin Mary starting in 1858. When she reported these visions, it was difficult for the Church and civil authorities to accept but with her consistency and character, the truth of the apparition today echoes in the whole world. The wife of Napoleon III later built a church at the cave of the miraculous spring. Bernadette died on April 16, 1879 and was canonized as a saint in 1933 by Pope Pius XI (http://www.biography.com/people/st-bernadette-of-lourdes).
What lesson can we learn from the life of Bernadette?  From the cradle of her life, Bernadette was blessed with loving parents who were content with whatever they had. Her proper upbringing could serve today as a model for dialogue to beam light into a world that is looming in the darkness of hatred, violence and terror. Her father, Francisco was an honest man even though he was not very successful in business. Her mother, Luisa Casterot even though poor was very generous. She wore hospitality like a royal garment. Bernadette did not draw the world to Lourdes because she had super intelligence. She did not assume to be a person of many colours. Her faith gave her the conviction that God is faithful and that the Blessed Virgin Mary had a message to give to the world through a physically weak and less privileged person. She was simply an instrument in the hand of Our Lady. At the age of thirteen, Jean Barbet, her teacher said that she was very attentive, pious and modest.
The priest of Bartres, Abbe Arder compared Bernadette with the children of La Salette who saw the apparition in Mexico (1846). According to him, certainly, if the Blessed Virgin appeared to Maximino and Melania, she did so in order for them to become as simple and pious as she is. Neither ignorance nor poverty or sickness could affect the virtues of simplicity and piety of Benardette. When she saw that her desire to receive Holy Communion would not be possible in Bartres, she asked Maria Lagues to allow her to go to Lourdes, insisting to her parents to allow her to return home. She wanted to receive First Holy Communion in 1858. Her parents agreed and she returned to Lourdes on January 28th, 1858 only 14 days before the first apparition of the Virgin. The Blessed Mother appeared from February 11th, 1858 to July 16th of the same year.
Bernadette was very prayerful. Her prayer was not mechanical; she would speak to God and the Virgin just as we speak to a person face to face. It was a prayer from the heart: intense, honest and effective. Her life was not like those who are faithful to the regular hours of prayers and still go on killing people thereafter. She had the Rosary in her hands when Our Lady appeared. In her suffering and trials, she responded with humility, abandonment, faith and courage. Even when she was fourteen years old (January 7, 1858), she was wise, firm and extraordinarily courageous. She knew how to make discernments and confront the people trying to dissuade her. This should serve as a lesson to the children and youths today who are daily recruited as suicide bombers. This should also serve as a lesson to parents today to bring up their children to reverence God and respect human dignity akin to the parents of Bernadette. Let us reflect on some of Bernadette’s statements of humility, resilience, patience and humility. After the Chief Prosecutor, Mr. Dutor, made Bernadette and her mother stand for a long time, he finally said to them: “There are chairs. You may sit down.” Bernadette responded: “No. We can dirty them.” On another occasion, when she was asked about the language that the Virgin spoke, Bernadette said: “She spoke to me in dialect.” They responded to her: “The Virgin Mary couldn’t have spoken in dialect, because God and the Virgin don’t speak dialect.”Bernadette responded: “How can we know and speak dialect if they don’t speak it? Do you think she spoke to me in French? Do I speak French?” In the twelfth apparition, Bernadette gave the Virgin a rosary. After the apparition, a priest asked her: “Now you also bless rosaries?” Bernadette smiled and said: “I don’t wear a stole, do I?” Another person asked her: “Well Bernadette, now that the Virgin promised you will go to heaven, you don’t need to worry about your soul.” Bernadette responded, “But, Father, I will only go to heaven if I behave correctly.”  
Bernadette frequently had to confront the Pastor of Lourdes, Abbe Peyramale who was known for his bad temper but each time, Bernadette controlled herself. Her will to accomplish the mission Our Lady gave her was more powerful than the bad temper of the priest. On March 25th, 1858, the Virgin revealed her identity, giving Bernadette the proof her pastor insisted upon. The words of the Blessed Virgin, “I’m the Immaculate Conception,” brought down once and for all the wall of unbelief in the pastor’s heart and thereafter became one of the greatest defenders and supporters of the apparitions, using his same temper to defend the girl against attackers. For Bernadette, the apparitions were an unmerited blessing; this gift by itself did not make her a saint. It was a gift for the world, but at the same time, she received graces leading her to holiness. St. Bernadette did not become a saint because she saw the Virgin Mary, but because she climbed the ladder of holiness through enormous trials and crosses.  It is better for a nation to be known by her holy and saintly people than for a nation to be popular in criminal activities. We pray that the prayers of holy men and women may attract peace to the various nations.
Fr. Professor Cornelius Afebu Omonokhua is the Director of Mission and Dialogue of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, Abuja and Consultor of the Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims (C.R.R.M), Vatican City ([email protected]).