Cesareo moments were times when, long before I was a Catholic, Cesareo taught me about Catholicism. He did this not to evangelize but because, until he was slowed by a stroke four years ago, Cesareo was always teaching\u2014even when you didn\u2019t want to be taught! And since he was raised in a Cuban hothouse of Catholicism in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the Church and its culture tended to flow out of him like mother\u2019s milk. So if you traveled with him, as I did often in the early 1970s, you were forever seeing and hearing about Catholic stuff.<\/p>\n
So, Lourdes\u2014Cesareo and I traveled together for seven months in 1971, from February thru August. Sometime in May or June perhaps we arrived at this village on the French side of the Pyrenees. I\u2019m sure there was a long build-up by Cesareo as our train snaked its way through the French countryside, but nothing could have prepared me for that experience. There are two episodes I most remember, one intimate, one grandly theatrical.<\/p>\n In 1971, there were in Lourdes, if memory serves, several hospitals or hospices for the care of invalids, thousands of whom come every year in hopes of a cure. On a beautiful late-spring day I was walking alone past one of these buildings when I noticed some kind of vehicle being unloaded and hospital sisters in full habits scurrying about. My attention must have been attracted, and I wandered closer when, suddenly, one of the sisters turned hopefully to me and asked, in French, if I could help for a moment. Mais bien sur! <\/i>She gestured to follow her to the far side of the vehicle, then reached inside, and pulled out a child, whom she immediately placed in my arms, indicating that I was to carry the child up a flight of stairs. Attention \u00e0 la t\u00eate! <\/i>she said. Be careful of the head.<\/p>\n I looked down and only then fully realized what, I should say whom, I was facing. It was a hydrocephalic boy, with \u201cwater on the brain\u201d and a terribly misshapen head. I was frankly shocked. But he was in my arms and there was only one place to go: up the flight of stairs. I cannot remember how much eye contact I made with the child, or whether I even said anything. I know I was trembling. I reached the top of the stairs and mercifully was met by another sister who quickly scooped the child from my arms with a simple Merci, monsieur. <\/i>Feeling my own inadequacy and lack of charity more than anything else, I beat a hasty retreat. Nor did I \u201cvolunteer\u201d again to help the invalids of Lourdes.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_dmDaLWNETzg\/SthjaAzaVgI\/AAAAAAAAAYQ\/KMx526y10aw\/s200\/BlessedAlexandrina\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_dmDaLWNETzg\/SthoABaO3MI\/AAAAAAAAAYY\/F8gfWqYvq_I\/s320\/Bernadette\")
<\/a>That evening, I said my first rosary. At least that\u2019s how I thought of it, though I was not holding beads and the rosary was said in French, with which I was only high-school-fluent. I did know the Our Father in French\u2014Notre p\u00e8re, qui es aux cieux . . . \u2014<\/i>and could chime in pretty well every decade. But the Hail Mary was a work in progress. Yet none of the words mattered ultimately, because I was \u201csaying my rosary\u201d with (I\u2019d estimate) twenty thousand other souls, most of whom held a candle as we processed together in front of the great church that has been built above the grotto where the Blessed Mother, referring to herself as the Immaculate Conception, appeared to St. Bernadette (left) in 1858.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/6738513599344023043-4686649965794586232?l=yimcatholic.blogspot.com\")
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