In The Grotto Of Massabieille

On a Friday evening during my first year as a Jesuit novice I wandered into the TV room to see what video was being served up. Television watching was a popular pastime for novices still on a $35.00 monthly stipend. In typical Jesuit style, our TV room consisted of fifteen individual recliners lined up in front of a large television, an admittedly strange setup that once prompted my brother-in-law to ask if we took a vow against sofas, too. "What's on?" I said.

"The Song of Bernadette ," said one, glancing up from the TV.

"What's it about?" I asked. Everyone else looked up from their chairs, apparently aghast.

"You're kidding, right?" said another novice. "Please tell me you're kidding."

I shook my head dumbly.

One thing I realized soon after joining the Jesuits was how little Catholic culture I had grown up with, or at least absorbed. While the other novices were raised in families that went to daily Mass, attended novenas, said grace at meals, and knew the difference between the Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart, I was still trying to remember how many sacraments there were. (Seven, by the way.)

My ignorance extended not only to weightier theological matters but also to pop culture. In the space of a few months I had already been teased for not having seen Going My Way , The Nun's Story, and The Trouble with Angels and I feared that this was another instance of not knowing about a movie that everyone else had seen when they were ten years old.

"Sit down," he said. "You can't say that you're Catholic and not have seen this movie."

Based on the bestselling novel of the same name, The Song of Bernadette tells the story of the events that occurred in the small French town of Lourdes in the latter part of the 19th century. Starring Jennifer Jones as Bernadette and Charles Bickford as her initially doubtful but eventually supportive pastor, the movie is a perennial Catholic favorite. But The Song of Bernadette stints a bit on the actual events, and as moving as the film is, the real story is even more so.

In 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, age 14, was living in appalling poverty. Her father's milling business had recently failed and, desperate for lodgings, the family took up residence in a room that until recently served as the local jail. In this cramped hovel, no more than ten-by-ten feet square, lived Bernadette's parents and their four children.

On February 11, Bernadette went with her sister, Toinette, and a friend to fetch some firewood for her mother. The family's poverty prevented her mother from buying wood in the town. Only a few months prior, Bernadette had returned to her family after working as shepherdess in a nearby town to earn a little money.

Her destination was a grotto on the outskirts of Lourdes at a place called Massabieille (the name means "old rock" in the local patois ) on the banks of the fast-flowing Gave River. In her superb study of the apparitions and their consequences, Lourdes, the Oxford historian Ruth Harris reminds readers of the unappealing state of the now-famous grotto. From as early as the 17th century, the town's pigs came to forage at Massabieille, and eventually took up residence there. Far from the well-tended and even manicured place that contemporary pilgrims know, the original site was "a marginal and even filthy place."

While the two other girls crossed the river to gather wood from the other bank, Bernadette, a sickly and asthmatic child, lingered. Eventually, she began removing her stockings, to prepare to wade into the river and join them. As she did so, she heard the sound of a wind, though she saw nothing moving around her. Bending down to remove her other stocking, she looked up again. This time, the wind swayed a small rose bush in the niche of the grotto, and a "gentle light" emanated from the spot. In that light she reported seeing a young girl, dressed in white, smiling at her. (Later representations, including those in The Song of Bernadette , typically misrepresent Bernadette's testimony by depicting the vision as a mature woman.)

Frightened, Bernadette took a rosary from her pocket and tried to make the sign of the cross. Fear got the better of her and she found herself unable to do so. But when the young girl made the sign of the cross, Bernadette did the same, and began to pray. "When I finished my rosary," said Bernadette, "she signed for me to approach, but I did not dare. Then she disappeared, just like that."

This would be the first of several apparitions that Bernadette reported. Like the rest of them, no one with her had heard, seen, or experienced anything.

On the way home, Bernadette told her sister what she had seen, swearing her to secrecy. But upon entering their house Toinette burst out with the news to her mother: "Bernadette saw a white girl in the Grotto at Massabieille!" Her parents, furious at their daughter's lies, beat her, and forbade her to return.

A few days later, still confused about what happened at Massabieille, Bernadette told a local priest in the confessional about her vision. Astonished by her composure and the clarity with which she related the story, he asked her permission to speak of this to the pastor, Abbé Peyramale. According to Fr. René Laurentin's exhaustive biography, Bernadette of Lourdes , all that Peyramale had to say was, "We must wait and see."

Neighbors and friends tried to convince Bernadette's parents to change their minds. One town notable told her father, sensibly, "A lady with a Rosary -- that can't be anything bad." Eventually her parents relented and Bernadette returned, this time with a few other children.

Once more the girl in white appeared. Bernadette asked the vision to "stay if she came from God, to leave if not." Hedging her bets, Bernadette threw holy water in the direction of the apparition, who merely smiled and inclined her head. Bernadette's demeanor during the apparitions -- she was pale and immobile throughout -- so frightened her companions that they raced to a nearby mill for help. Eventually, the girl's mother, in obvious distress, ran to the grotto from town. Embarrassed by Bernadette's actions, she had to be restrained from beating her daughter.

By the time of the third apparition on February 18, many in Lourdes were taking a keen interest in Bernadette's tale. Some pressed her to ask the vision who she was. But when Bernadette came to the vision with a paper and pen, and asked for a name, the vision merely laughed, and spoke for the first time. "Would you have the goodness to come here for fifteen days?"

During the next two visits, the vision appeared to Bernadette, now accompanied by the growing crowd. After the sixth apparition, on February 21, Bernadette was harshly questioned by the dubious local police commissioner, who tried to ascertain if she was merely pulling a childish prank. During the investigation, he tried to get her to say that she was seeing the Virgin Mary, but Bernadette persisted in referring to the vision, in the patois, as Aqueró (that thing). When pressed to elaborate, she described the vision as wearing "a white robe drawn together with a blue sash, a white veil over her head and a yellow rose on each foot."

Reading the actual transcripts one discovers the honesty, simplicity, and persistence that would later impress her supporters. "Stalwart," Ruth Harris calls her. When the police commissioner took notes, he slyly changed the record, and read it back to her. "The virgin smiles at me," he said.

"I didn't say the virgin ," said Bernadette, correcting him.

For me, this is one of the most compelling aspects of Bernadette Soubirous. She is uninterested in impressing anyone. She avoids saying, until almost the final apparition, that she is seeing the Virgin Mary (though others in the town claim this almost from the beginning). She is, despite her family's poverty, unwilling to profit in any way from her experiences, refusing any and all gifts. In all of her testimonies, Bernadette simply tells what she saw and what she didn't see, what she heard and what she didn't hear. In this way she reminds me of Joan of Arc who said, in essence, this is my experience, believe me if you like.

On February 25, after two intervening apparitions, Bernadette returned to the Grotto. The assembled crowd saw Bernadette not in an ecstatic state, as in previous visits, but suddenly clawing at the ground in the grotto, drinking some muddy water that she had uncovered, and stuffing her mouth with weeds. Bernadette explained her actions: "She told me to drink of the spring and wash yourself in it. Not seeing any water, I went to the Gave. But she indicated with her finger that I should go under the rock . . ." The eating of the weeds was an act of penance, said Bernadette, for sinners.

But to onlookers Bernadette was merely scratching at the dirt and eating weeds. They were, predictably, horrified. "She's nuts!" someone shouted out. Her aunts, who had accompanied her gave her a sharp smack as they left the grotto.

In the movie The Song of Bernadette , Bernadette's humiliation leads to the film's dramatic highpoint. After the protagonist and the rest of the crowd leave the grotto, a townsman sits down to rest at the site. As the camera focuses on his hand resting on the dry ground, a few drops, then a trickle, and then a little stream, flows past. "Look, water!" he shouts to swelling music. In reality, as René Laurentin describes it in Bernadette of Lourdes , a small group of townspeople stayed behind to examine the hole Bernadette had begun, and the more they dug, the more pure water gushed forth. But even the movie's account underlines the significance of the day: Bernadette had uncovered the fountain that would become the focus of later pilgrimages and hope for healings.

Again Bernadette was questioned, and annoyed officials redoubled their efforts to frighten her into recanting. Again, she stuck to her story. Two days later, Bernadette returned to the grotto and drank from the spring. On March 1, a local woman whose fall from a tree had left her with a permanently crippled arm, went to the spring and plunged her arm in the water. In a few moments her bent fingers straightened and the arm was healed. It would be the first of the many miracles attributed to the spring at Lourdes.

Interest over Bernadette's vision continued to mount, and by the time of the 13th apparition, Bernadette was accompanied by over 1,500 people. After this apparition she raced to Abbé Peyramale, to tell him what the vision had said to her: "Go, tell the priests to come her in procession and build a chapel here." As René Laurentin notes in Bernadette of Lourdes , the alarmed priest was appalled, imagining the opprobrium that would descend on him if he were to authorize a ridiculous request from a poor young girl. So the practical Peyramale demanded some answers from the vision. Ask her for a name, he said bluntly. And, as an added test, ask her to make the wild rose bush in the grotto to flower.

During the next apparition, Bernadette did just that, but the vision merely smiled. No rose bushes bloomed and no names were given. The priest told her again. "If the lady really wishes that a chapel be built, she must tell us her name and make the rose bush bloom."

On March 25, the rose bush was still not in bloom, but a name was given. According to Bernadette, the vision clasped its hands and said, " Que Soy Era Immaculada Concepciou ." I am the Immaculate Conception. Bernadette, whose religious training was rudimentary at best, had no idea what this meant. She kept repeating the phrase over and over, lest she forget it, as she rushed to Abbé Peyramale.

The film's depiction of her meeting with her pastor corresponds well to what happened next. Charles Bickford, as Abbé Peyramale, questions Bernadette severely. "The Immaculate Conception," he demands. "Do you know what that means?"

Jennifer Jones shakes her head.

He explains (in reality he writes this in a letter to the bishop) that the name is nonsensical. A few years before, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception had been proclaimed by the Vatican, holding that the Virgin Mary had been conceived without the stain of original sin. But to say, "I am the Immaculate Conception" was ridiculous. Like saying not "I am white," but "I am whiteness." But both the movie Bernadette and the real one stuck to their stories.

After this there came two more apparitions, and by the time of the final one, the police had boarded up the front of the grotto to prevent any gatherings of the faithful. On July 16, on the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Bernadette was forced to view the grotto from across the Gave River. But no matter. "I saw neither the boards nor the Gave," she said. "It seemed to me that I was in the Grotto, no more distant than the other times. I saw only the Holy Virgin."

With this final apparition, Bernadette's life changes once again. Greatly admired, hounded by the faithful, and even pressed to perform miracles in her hometown (she resists, of course), Bernadette becomes the object of fascination for increasing numbers of pilgrims. In 1860, partially to escape her growing fame and partially to receive more of a formal education, she enters a small convent school in Lourdes. But her candor and straightforward attitude remain. In 1861 she is photographed for the first time, and urged by the photographer adopt the precise pose and expression that she had during the apparitions. "But she isn't here," Bernadette protests.

A few years later, at age 22, she enters the convent of the Sisters of Charity in Nevers, hundreds of miles from Lourdes. Before leaving, she pays a last visit to her beloved grotto. "My mission in Lourdes is finished," she says.

Even in the convent, Bernadette is reluctant to discuss her experiences. She tells the story of the apparitions only twice to her community, hoping in vain to "hide" herself among her sisters. Always sickly from her childhood asthma, Bernadette is unable to assume many of the tasks of the other sisters, and even finds it difficult to pray. "Oh dear," she says, "I don't know how to meditate." Nonetheless, she is a cheerful person, even in the face of illness, always teasing and laughing with her sisters. In the infirmary one day, she takes to embroidery, favoring patterns of small hearts. "If someone tells you that I have no heart," she jokes, "tell them I make them all day long."

Gradually, she weakens and is increasingly confined to her bed. A cancerous tumor is discovered on her leg, and she declines rapidly. On her deathbed, her mind returns to Massabieille. "I have told the events," she tells her sister. "Let people abide by what I said the first time. I may have forgotten and so may others. The simpler one writes, the better it will be." At her death, Bernadette is 34 years old.

For most of her life, Bernadette patiently endured endless questions about her visions, consistently refused gifts, and occasionally faced jealousy from some of her sisters in the convent. Always an obedient person, she tried to do her best in a difficult situation, but grew weary of repeating the same details to both the faithful and the doubtful. Reading her story, with its details of a poor and hungry childhood, constant demands to answer questions about the apparitions, and even a difficult life in the convent, Bernadette seems at peace only when she is in the grotto. As Ruth Harris writes, "Like the photographs that tried to capture her during the apparitions, Bernadette obeyed, but seemed to leave her heart somewhere else."

The story told by Bernadette Soubirous is difficult for even devout Catholics to accept. Of course, it's not essential that a Catholic believe in this story or in the apparitions at Lourdes, as one needs to believe in, say, the Resurrection. But the beauty of the story, and Bernadette's character, has always made it easy for me to accept.

Excerpted from My Life With the Saints , by James Martin, S.J.

In the Grotto of Massabieille