ST BERNADETTE AND RAISING UP THE LOWLY - FEAST DAY 16TH APRIL 2026

Fr Billy Swan

In her wonderful prayer of the ‘Magnificat’, Mary glorifies God who has “brought down the powerful from their thrones and raised up the lowly” (Luke 1:52). With these words, Mary testifies to the reversal of order inaugurated by the kingdom of her Son whereby worldly power structures and expectations would be turned on their heads as God chooses instruments that the world considers most unlikely and unsuited. We see a perfect example of this paradox in the life of St Bernadette Soubirous to whom Our Lady appeared eighteen times from February to July 1858 at Lourdes in the south-west of France. It set in motion an extraordinary chain of events that transformed Lourdes into a place of pilgrimage visited by millions of people every year including the sick, the wounded and those with special needs – the lowly that God’s power raises up and chooses for great things.

Bernadette Soubirous was born in Lourdes in January 1844, the daughter of a poor miller and the oldest of nine children. As a child she suffered from chronic asthma which impeded her growth and development. By the time she was fourteen in 1858, she had very little education, due to the time she was absent from school because of illness. On 11^th February that year, while scavenging for wood in a place where rubbish was dumped near the river Gave, Our Lady appeared to Bernadette in a rocky cave. She directed Bernadette to pray and to do penance for sinners and to have a church built at the grotto. When Bernadette asked the young woman who she was, she responded by saying “I am the Immaculate Conception”. This name perplexed the young Bernadette who was unaware that only four years previously in 1854, Pope Pius IX had infallibly proclaimed the dogma of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception.

The change in Bernadette’s life after the apparitions caused her great suffering. With great courage and integrity, she withstood intense interrogations by civil and Church authorities about her experiences. Finally, in 1862, Bernadette’s account of her apparitions was declared ‘worthy of belief’ and the chapel Our Lady asked to be built, was opened in 1876. Ten years previously in 1866, she entered a convent of the Sisters of Charity at Nevers where she died on 16th April 1879, aged thirty-five. It is on that date that the Church celebrates her feast day. Bernadette was canonised on 8^th December 1933, the feast of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception.

The grotto where the apparitions occurred developed into a major international pilgrimage site, attracting around five million pilgrims of all denominations each year, including thousands of pilgrims from Ireland.

St Bernadette is a saint, not because of her experience of the apparitions, but because of her simple faith and unblemished integrity. Her life invites us to take seriously the words of Jesus that the “the humble will be exalted” as Bernadette was during her lifetime and after her death, and as Lourdes grew to become a place of prayer, healing and hope.

Her example of God choosing the lowly for something extraordinary is repeated in the lives of other saints too. We think of the children of Fatima in 1917 and the spiritual fruitfulness that continues in that special place. Although St Francis of Assisi lived for only forty-four years (1182-1226), his deep faith in God, love for the poor and all God’s creation, continues to inspire millions around the world today. Therefore, whether it be the life of Bernadette, Francis or the children of Fatima, we believe that the whole of our lives is much greater than the sum of their parts and that God can and will bring forth tremendous good from our lives long after their earthly course have ended. Our task is to be faithful to the Gospel, to be holy and to fulfil the vocation that God has given us. After that, God will do the rest.

Going on pilgrimage to Lourdes opens your eyes to see that the sick and the little ones are the first in the kingdom of God. The place that was once a rubbish dump was the place God chose to be a place of international pilgrimage; a poor uneducated girl was the person God chose to be a messenger of Our Lady’s call to prayer and penance. If God raises up the lowly as He does, should we not compete for the lowest places, rejoice in our limitations, let go of control and concentrate on being faithful instead?