“The cures of which I have so often been the ocular witness, and which I am about to relate, have convinced me, beyond the possibility of doubt, of the importance of Bernadette’s visits to the grotto of Massabielle, and the reality of the visions she was there favored with.”
M. Artus, an Alsace refugee at Bordeaux, whose niece had been miraculously cured of a serious malady by recourse to Notre Dame de Lourdes, has offered ten thousand francs to any one who will prove the falseness of any of the statements in M. Lasserre’s book, but, though two years have since passed, no one has been found quite ready to take up the offer.
Miracles are so constantly wrought here, that not half of them are recorded. Five occurred the day before our arrival, one, a deaf-mute to whom the faculty of speech was instantaneously given. We dared not hope to witness anything of the kind, nor did we need it to increase our faith in the power of Omnipotence, though human nature is always seeking some sign. But the piety of the multitude around obtained the grace we should not have ventured to ask for ourselves. We were praying one morning in the grotto, when suddenly there was an unusual movement in the crowd without, and an increasing wave-like murmur that broke at last into a tumultuous shout. A gentleman beside us seemed to catch the meaning, for he sprang up and exclaimed at the top of his voice, Vive Marie! which was answered by hundreds of voices. The effect was electrical, and the feeling that came over us was something new in our experience. Tears sprang to the eye. We hurried out of the grotto, and the movement of the crowd brought us close to a young girl raised above the excited multitude, pale, smiling with joy, and waving a hand covered with the marks of ineffectual human remedies, and that had been utterly paralyzed an hour before. Every one crowded around her to see, examine, test the use of her arm, and assure themselves of the truth of the case. She had been fourteen months in a hospital at Marseilles, and had come with a large number of pilgrims from that place who were ready to testify to her previous helplessness. The whole scene was thrilling. Bands of pilgrims with blue badges of the Virgin sang hymns of joy. A wave of excitement every now and then passed over the crowd and found vent in repeated vivas. The girl was finally released from the examination and admitted into the grotto, when the Magnificat was intoned.
The cliff of Massabielle has been cut down and levelled off to serve as the foundation of the church, which stands on the top at a distance of seventy or eighty feet directly above the grotto. The title of minor basilica was conferred on it by His Holiness Pius IX., in March, 1874. A path leads up to it from the shore, its windings along the edge of the cliff forming the monogram of Mary, among hedges of roses and arbor-vitæ, glistening with dew, and overhung with acacias and evergreens—a charming ascent, each step of which leads to a rarer atmosphere, a lovelier and more extended view, and nearer the altar of Mary.
There are two churches, one above the other; the lower one, dim and solemn with penitential gloom; the upper, radiant with the light and purity that ought to surround
“Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”
Let us first enter the crypt. In the vestibule is a statue of S. Germaine of Pibrac with her crook and legendary apron of roses, and a lamb at her feet—the gift of a band of pilgrims from Toulouse. An arched passage leads each side of the crypt with banners hung over the confessionals in the recesses. Passing through one of these, we found ourselves in a low, gloomy nave crowded with columns to support the upper church. It is chiefly lighted by the numerous lamps hanging on every side, and the large stands of candles that burn before the Virgin, who is over the altar embowered among roses. The pavement is covered with kneeling forms—ladies, soldiers, peasants. You hear the whispered prayer, you catch glimpses of devout faces, quivering lips, and upturned eyes. Everything here is solemn and mysterious, and inclines one to serious reflection. On the pillars hang the different scenes of the great Passion in which we all had so sad a part. They strike new terror into the soul in this sepulchral church that seems hewn out of the living rock.
“Low I sit,
In sorrow, penitence-stricken, and deep woe,
’Mid shades of death, thine arrow drinks my blood;