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“A refreshing and
sometimes fascinating account from a writer who is
at once orthodox and steeped in the teachings of
the Second Vatican Council, about a shrine that is
as oriented to the future as to commemoration of
the past….The most compelling chapters deal with
contemporary ministry at the shrine, especially
the work of the volunteers interviewed by the
author, who do their utmost to make a pilgrimage
to Lourdes an encounter with Christ….Lourdes is a
fine book for the person of faith and even the
casual visitor to Lourdes—anyone who seeks to
understand better its important place in history
and its meaning for today."
—
America Magazine
Lourdes and the
Modern World
Column by George Weigel
One hundred fifty years ago, on Feb. 11, 1858, an
illiterate, impoverished 14–year-old girl received
the first of 18 visions of Mary, who eventually
revealed herself to Bernadette Soubirous as “the
Immaculate Conception.” In mid-19th century
Europe, Lourdes, a small town in the French
Pyrenees, was about as backwater as backwater
gets. Today, as for the past century and a half,
Lourdes is one of the world’s great pilgrimage
sites, a place of decency, fellowship, and
spiritual healing where inexplicable physical
cures have also taken place.
In Lourdes: Font of
Faith, Hope, and Charity (Paulist Press),
Elizabeth Ficocelli tells the story of the shrine
of Lourdes through the prism of the three
theological virtues. Her description of Bernadette
— whom the Church recognizes as a saint, “not
because she saw visions, but because of her heroic
virtue in responding to God’s mysterious call” —
is a powerful reminder that sanctity is for
everyone, and that the extraordinary enters the
ordinary in order to call us to our true
vocations. Genuine conversion, not spectacle, is
what visions are for.
So if you want a
good introduction to the history and spirit of
Lourdes, Elizabeth Ficocelli’s book is for you.
For those interested in examining the phenomenon
of Lourdes through the eyes of a sympathetic
secular scholar, there is Lourdes: Body and Spirit
in the Secular Age (Penguin Books), by the
Oxford-based British historian Ruth Harris.
Professor Harris’s
scholarship is impeccable, but it’s neither
detached nor desiccated: as few secular academics
do, she went to Lourdes as a volunteer aide to the
sick and found herself caught up in a web of human
solidarity, open-mindedness, and “spiritual
generosity” (as she puts it in a fine phrase).
That experience, coupled with the discovery that
modern medicine had no diagnosis (let alone a
cure) for a condition then plaguing her, led Ruth
Harris to question the modern mythology of
scientific progress, according to which phenomena
like Lourdes are mindless and reactionary.
Breaking with the chief unexamined assumption of
secular modernity — that humanity, tutored by the
scientific method, will outgrow its “need” for
religion — Professor Harris found her scholar’s
interest piqued by aspects of the story of Lourdes
that skeptics typically miss.
Like the fact that
Lourdes became one focal point for a new Christian
feminism in 19th century France, as the pilgrimage
to the Pyrenees “offered [women] a world of
opportunity” for service and leadership. “The
hundreds of thousands of Catholic women in the
religious orders, mainly working in nursing and
teaching, and the untold legions of lay women
active in fundraising and charity” demonstrated by
contrast how small and ineffectual were the
initiatives on behalf of women taken by the
hyper-secularist French Third Republic.
Or the fact that
Lourdes became a place of social solidarity immune
from the class divisions and rancors that had
driven French society for centuries. As Harris
puts it, Lourdes “brought different ranks of
society together... [in] the seemingly spontaneous
creation of a Christian collectivity that erased
class and status.” What Marx imagined and Lenin
tried to ramrod into history by mass murder,
Bernadette effected by summoning others to faith,
hope, and charity.
Without making a big
point of it, Ruth Harris’s richly textured book is
a devastating critique of the human emptiness of
the secular city, which can’t deal with pain and
tries to push it off-stage or eliminate it by
scientific advance. Medical pain-relief is, to be
sure, a worthy cause. But it becomes a false quest
— an ultimately inhuman, even demonic, quest —
when it seeks to eliminate suffering from the
human condition. It can’t, because physical pain
is not the only pain, or even the worse pain.
Animals feel pain; only humans suffer. At Lourdes,
you can’t help but recognize that suffering is an
integral part of the human experience, and that
while suffering can’t be eliminated, it can be
transformed and transcended — by faith, hope, and
love.
Lourdes is a Marian shrine. Like all true devotion
to Mary, it points us toward her Son and his
cross.
George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and
Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. Weigel’s
column is distributed by the Denver Catholic
Register, the official newspaper of the
Archdiocese of Denver. Phone: 303-715-3215.
Great read! This is a great resource on the
historical and contemporary Lourdes. The first
chapter of the book presents the story of the
apparitions in a simple, straightforward manner.
Some of the earliest accounts of Lourdes suffered
from exaggeration and lack of full adherence to
the facts. Elizabeth applies her journalistic
skills to create an accurate and factual account
of the historical Lourdes. She tells the inspiring
story of Bernadette and the other visionaries and
outlines how Lourdes grew from a sleepy little
town to a place that attracts on a yearly basis an
estimated 5 million people of all faiths. In
addition, Elizabeth has created a great guide to
the modern day Lourdes that will be an invaluable
resource for anyone planning a pilgrimage to the
site.
— Suzie S., North Caroline
I could not wait to get back to it! Elizabeth
Ficocelli has written a wonderful blend of history
and spiritual truth that has come out of the print
and captured my heart. It is a incredibly balanced
book on events that lead this believer to examine
her own heart and how her own personnel healing
came about.
— Betsy B., Ohio
Forever grateful…My wife and I will forever be
grateful to Ms. Ficocelli for her excellent work
on Lourdes. After having read Font of Faith Hope
and Charity during our Church's Book Club, we were
inspired to take a Pilgrimage to Lourdes and even
worked with the North American Volunteers to host
a Virtual Pilgrimage for our Parish. This quick,
informative, and moving book not only brought a
couple from Los Angeles to Lourdes, it brought the
Lourdes experience to more than 600 parishioners
as well as hundreds of school children, elderly,
sick and imprisoned people needing Our Blessed
Mother's healing love and guidance to her Son.
This is the very definition of a "good read"!
— Dan R., California
This is the best book I have ever read on Our Lady
of Lourdes. First, the author corrects numerous
factual inaccuracies that have been perpetuated
over the many years concerning St. Bernadette's
personal history as well as the origin of this
miracle itself that took place so long ago.
Second, the author refreshingly holds no bias in
simply providing her own account in experiencing
the still-ongoing miracles of Lourdes among the
millions of pilgrims that journey there each year.
Third, there is that wonderful catholic touch of
mystery and mysticism in her writing - an
intangible one might say that lends both
credibility and substance to this definitive
analysis of Lourdes. Last, and what I found most
illuminating about this author's account is how
she so poignantly and accurately connects the
miracles/apparitions of Our Lady of La Salette,
Our Lady of Lourdes, and the inevitable leap one
needs to understand the ever-controversial
apparition of Our Lady of Fatima: specifically,
why is Our Lady often sad, weeping and warning us?
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy a book
that is the real deal, so to speak, at a most
affordable price.
— Katherine G.
Excellent book to learn about Lourdes and the
message of the apparitions. The author is vivid
and clear in her narration. Well-written book!
— Edward S., Indiana
This is a great resource on the historical and
contemporary Lourdes. The first chapter of the
book presents the story of the apparitions in a
simple, straightforward manner. Some of the
earliest accounts of Lourdes suffered from
exaggeration and lack of full adherence to the
facts. Elizabeth applies her journalistic skills
to create an accurate and factual account of the
historical Lourdes. She tells the inspiring story
of Bernadette and the other visionaries and
outlines how Lourdes grew from a sleepy little
town to a place that attracts on a yearly basis an
estimated 5 million people of all faiths. In
addition, Elizabeth has created a great guide to
the modern day Lourdes that will be an invaluable
resource for anyone planning a pilgrimage to the
site.
— Suzie S., North Carolina
I love your books! They are most definitely
speaking to my heart. I'm a cradle Catholic coming
back after thirty years. I hope you are writing
more books for adults. In the past two weeks I've
read your books about Lourdes, Medjugorje, and St.
Therese. They were so interesting, easy to read,
and the words just flowed off the page. I didn't
want them to end! EXCELLENT books and HIGHLY
RECOMMENDED!!!!
— Irene P., Canada
This being the 150th anniversary of the apparition
in Lourdes of the Blessed Virgin Mary to St.
Bernadette, Paulist Press commissioned Elizabeth
Ficocelli to do a book covering Lourdes - Lourdes:
Font of Faith, Hope, and Charity . The author
found that while there was a wealth of books on
the saint and Lourdes in other languages, that
there were not that many in English.
This book is not just another biography on Saint
Bernadette, but goes much farther. The first three
chapters do an excellent job of going over
Bernadette Soubirous early life and the history
and circumstances of the time along with a nicely
detailed description of the apparition and the
reaction by Bernadette and the towns people. You
get easily drawn into the times and the reactions
both positive and negative that occurred. Also
covered is her life in the convent and just how
accurate was the Virgin Mary telling her "I cannot
promise you happiness in this life, only in the
next."
A subsequent chapter covers the growing coverage
on Lourdes and some of the battled between various
authors documenting the events and the errors that
cropped up. I found this chapter highly ironic for
those covering the life of the saint were quite
willing to expose the errors of other authors
while never correcting there own.
The next two major sections of the book cover the
start of the pilgrimages to Lourdes, Bernadette's
canonization, miracles both physical and
spiritual, and the reality of Lourdes today. One
thing I really liked about the book was that it
was pitch perfect in its theological descriptions.
It contained one of the best descriptions of
canonization and sainthood that I have read and
even got the detail right that papal canonization
are in fact infallible. Throughout the book this
same attention to detail is quite evident.
Another aspect of the book I enjoyed was the
descriptions of Lourdes today and the large number
of volunteers that help make possible the throngs
of pilgrims who visit possible in the first place.
Since a large number of people who visit Lourdes
have physical disabilities a lot of care and
attention is needed and these volunteers certainly
see there work as a sacred responsibility and as a
service to Christ himself. These chapters also
cover some of the authenticated miracles in the
history of Lourdes along with an explanation of
the extremely thorough process for recognition and
why only a relatively few number of miracles are
recognized. Also covered are spiritual conversions
at Lourdes and while these would not be considered
officially by the Church as miracles, they are
obvious examples of God's grace. While the large
majority who go to Lourdes will not experience a
physical healing, there are quite a number of
spiritual healings that occur there and of course
sometimes there are both physical and spiritual
healings. One interview of a person who was healed
and his healing recognized as one of the
authenticated cures is quite interesting in that
he had pretty much given up hope and that his
brother was the one who brought him to Lourdes. He
now brings pilgrims to Lourdes everywhere himself.
The is really quite an excellent book even for
those who are quite familiar with St. Bernadette's
biography and even includes an excellent
introduction by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR where
he say he owes much to his recovery after the
accident to Our Lady of Lourdes. Normally I am
quite skeptical to books put out by Paulist Press,
but I have zero qualms over this one and highly
recommend it.
— Review By the Curt Jester (Blog Site)
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