Nearer, My God by William F. Buckley Jr

Author:William F. Buckley, Jr. [Buckley, William F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80302-3
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

* The English translation I was given is not always idiomatic. I have for that reason taken a (very) few editorial liberties. The extract from THE POEM OF THE MAN-GOD by Maria Valtorta is granted by permission of Centro Editoriale Valtortiano, 03036 Isola del Liri (Fr.), Italy. North American distributor, Librarie Mediaspul, 250 Nord Boulevard St. Francois, Sherbrooke, Quebec JIE 2B9, Canada.

CHAPTER NINE

Experiencing Lourdes

Is the Lord through with miracles?

I traveled to Lourdes in 1994. I was indulging not only the experience of a pilgrimage but a corollary curiosity about what exactly goes on there and what its impact might be on one first-time visitor.

One reason one doesn’t hear so much about Lourdes these days (compared, say, to a generation or two ago) has to be that people don’t really know what more there is to say. The inquirer whose mind turns for the first time to the subject begins by asking the questions one would expect, the first of which is of course, “Was there really an apparition?”

This translates to, “Did the little girl called Bernadette Soubirous actually see something? Or was what she reported no more than the product of an inflamed imagination?”

That question was first posed on February 11, 1858, to her family, whose reply was plainspoken: Bernadette’s mother spanked her and put her to bed.

But there was something about the dogged sincerity in the fourteen-year-old’s recounting of her experience that brought on a grudging acknowledgment, not that Bernadette had in fact come face-to-face with an apparition, but that something was going on worth investigating, even if it turned out to be nothing more than her mental health. Accordingly, three days later her mother gave her permission to return. Back Bernadette went, to the little grotto alongside which, on day one, Bernadette, a younger sister, and a friend had been foraging for firewood.

That was when Bernadette had suddenly stopped, immobilized for a full half hour. When she came out of her trance, she excitedly described “the lady in white,” with the blue eyes, the smile, and the blue belt-sash hanging down the front of her white robe. Now, once again, she had stopped, transfixed.

On that second day at the grotto, once again in the company of her sister and their friend, she lost her composure while in communion with the apparition. The trance over, she opened her eyes and said that the lady in white had come and gone. But she could not rise, nor could her companions lift her up from the ground. They called on a neighboring miller for help. He handled her as a muscular aide might handle a heavyweight boxer who had been knocked unconscious in the ring. Bernadette’s family ruled that the phenomenon was ridiculous and profane and once again forbade her to return to the grotto.

But of course she did. And her third visit, four days later, proved special because, for the first time, the lady in white spoke to her.

What had she said?

She had said that Bernadette should come back every day for the next two weeks.

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