A Holy Life: The Writings of St. Bernadette of Lourdes

by Patricia A. McEachern

Ignatius, 2005

220 pages, $14.95

To order: (800) 651-1531

Ignatius.com

The shrine at Lourdes is a living testament to the loving heart of God. My family knows this firsthand.

Shortly after my first son was born, he was slated for surgery to correct a narrow aorta. As a mother, I couldn’t accept this. I prayed for the Blessed Mother’s intercession. Soon after, my husband and I brought our son to France as part of the annual Lourdes pilgrimage of the Knights of Malta. I dipped my baby in the water on two occasions, praying for healing. When we returned home, the doctors said our child had improved. In time, he was taken off the surgery list. Stephen is now an active 5-year-old with no trace of illness.

This healing experience came back to life for me as I read A Holy Life, which contains the writings of the visionary St. Bernadette Soubirous, some of them appearing in English for the first time. You may think you know enough about Bernadette through the popular movie The Song of Bernadette or the book by the same name by Franz Werfel. McEachern’s book, however, adds to this body of knowledge by presenting the saint in her own words. Did you know, for example, that the saint kept a personal journal filled with daily notes and spiritual insights?

McEachern remarks on the fact that, although Bernadette was a poor student before the apparitions, and could not write or even speak French (the Blessed Mother spoke to her in a peasant dialect), she learned quickly and willingly afterward. She left home a few months after the last vision and lived with the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction, who undertook her education. The author also points out that Bernadette was very much in the world for a number of years after the visions, meeting regularly with pilgrims and recounting her experiences.

Although she had lived with a religious community for years, Bernadette did not formally enter the convent at Nevers until July 1866, almost eight years after the apparitions. She took the name Sister Marie-Bernard. Her letters in these years to her relatives, fellow sisters and priests show a maturity and understanding of the human condition; she describes her efforts to overcome what she saw as personal flaws. She also shows flashes of anger and impatience, for which she later repents.

So many bishops came to see her at the convent, uninvited, that Sister Marie-Bernard remarks in one letter: “These poor bishops would be better off staying in their own dioceses.”

Also included is an endearing letter to her brother in 1872 on his first Communion. “My dear little brother,” she writes, “it goes without saying that from this moment on, your heart, your spirit and your soul should be occupied with one thought alone: preparing your heart to be God’s dwelling place. Oh, yes!”

The saint’s convent life was filled with illness and suffering. She was an invalid in her final years. She died April 16, 1879, at age 35. The last chapter gives the brief account of her death by a fellow sister who said that, in the final moments, those in the room unknowingly fulfilled Sister Marie-Bernard’s private wish by reciting the invocation “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, have pity on her, protect her.”

An excerpt from Bernadette’s notebook from 1873 sums up her life: “From this moment on, anything concerning me is no longer of any interest to me. I must belong entirely to God, and God alone. Never to myself.”

Maria Caulfield writes from

Wallingford, Connecticut.