A PILGRIMAGE TO HEALING

Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes
Jn 2:1-11

The Gospel today is particular to the memorial we celebrate every 11th of February. Today marks the first of the eighteen apparitions of the Blessed Mother, who introduced herself as the “Immaculate Conception”, to a sickly, illiterate, peasant girl named, Bernadette Soubirous, at the banks of the river Gave in Lourdes, France, from February to July of 1858. Through Bernadette, the Blessed Mother called upon the people to convert from sin, pray always, and practice deeds of charity towards one another. She sent Bernadette to the local pastor with the instruction that she wanted to have a chapel built right on the spot where she appeared and that a procession be held in her honor. Asking Bernadette to dig on a dry spot near the grotto, the Blessed Mother likewise gave to the world the miraculous spring of Lourdes where many continue to obtain healing even up until today.

As pilgrims continue to flock at Lourdes, the word “Lourdes” is already synonymous with the word “healing”. Many who are sick and handicapped go to Lourdes to take a bath or drink from its miraculous spring. Countless of them testify to the miraculous healing they received from doing so. Still many, however, return to their homes without being healed from their illnesses or handicap.

There are two kinds of healing: physical and spiritual. Physical healing is verified by medical science while spiritual healing is attested to by conversion of life. It is said that while not all who go to Lourdes are healed physically, no one returns from Lourdes without receiving spiritual healing. That makes the pilgrimage truly worth making whether it heals the sick from his or her physical or biological infirmities or not. After all, physical healing is always temporary; for our bodies may be healed now but eventually, they will still have to return to the dust of which they are made. Spiritual healing, on the contrary, lasts beyond the grave because it affects not only the body but the soul as well. Thus, if given a choice between physical healing and spiritual healing, the latter is always better than the former.

What kind of healing do we pray for? Bathing in or drinking from the miraculous spring at Lourdes may heal us physically, but spiritual healing may be obtained without fail even without going to Lourdes. All we need to do is make a pilgrimage to the confessional and, as the Blessed Mother says in the Gospel today, “Do whatever He (Jesus) tells you.”