The Encounters with the Blessed Virgin Mary

1st Apparition
Thursday 11th. February 1858 : the meeting
     Accompanied by her sister and a friend, Bernadette went to Massabielle on the banks of the Gave to collect bones and dead wood. Removing her socks in order to cross the stream, she heard a noise like a gust of wind, she looked up towards the Grotto : "I SAW A LADY DRESSED IN WHITE, SHE WORE A WHITE DRESS, AN EQUALLY WHITE VEIL, A BLUE BELT AND A YELLOW ROSE ON EACH FOOT." Bernadette made the Sign of the Cross and said the Rosary with the lady. When the prayer ended the Lady suddenly vanished.

2nd Apparition
Sunday 14th. February: Holy Water
     Bernadette felt an inner force drawing her to the Grotto in spite of the fact that she was forbidden to go there by her parents. At her insistence, her mother allowed her; after the first decade of the Rosary, she saw the same lady appearing. She sprinkled holy water at her. The lady smiled and bent her head. When the Rosary ended she disappeared.

3rd Apparition
Thursday 18th February : the lady speaks
     For the first time, the Lady spoke. Bernadette held out a pen and paper asking her to write her name. She replied; "It is not necessary" and she added: "I do not promise to make you happy in this world but in the other. Would you be kind enough to come here for a fortnight?"

4th Apparition
Friday 19th. February: short and silent Apparition
     Bernadette came to the Grotto with a lighted blessed candle. This is origin of carrying candles and lighting them in front of the Grotto.

5th Apparition
Saturday 20th. February: In silence
     The lady taught her a personal prayer. At the end of the vision Bernadette is overcome with a great sadness.

6th Apparition
Sunday 21st. February: "Aquéro"
     The Lady appeared to Bernadette very early in the morning. About one hundred people were present. Afterwards the Police Commissioner, Jacomet, questioned her. He wanted Bernadette to tell what she saw. Bernadette would only speak of "AQUÉRO" ("that thing" in local dialect)

7th Apparition
Tuesday 23rd. February: The secret.
     Surrounded by 150 persons, Bernadette arrived at the Grotto. The Apparition reveals to her a secret "only for her alone".

8th Apparition
Wednesday 24th. February: Penance.
     The message of the Lady: "Penance! Penance! Penance! Pray to God for sinners. Kiss the ground as an act of penance for sinners!"

9th Apparition
Thursday 25th. February: The spring.
     Three hundred people were present. Bernadette relates; "She told me to go, drink of the spring (….) I only found a little muddy water. At the fourth attempt I was able to drink. She also made me eat the bitter herbs that were found near the spring, and then the vision left and went away." In front of the crowd that was asking "Do you think that she is mad doing things like that?" she replied; "It is for sinners."

10th Apparition
Saturday 27th. February: Silence
     Eight hundred people were present. The Apparition was silent. Bernadette drank the water from the spring and carried out her usual acts of penance.

11th Apparition
Sunday 28th. February: Penance
     Over one thousand people were present at the ecstasy. Bernadette prayed, kissed the ground and moved on her knees as a sign of penance. She was then taken to the house of Judge Ribes who threatened to put her in prison.

12th Apparition
Monday 1st. March: The First Miracle
     Over one thousand five hundred people assembled and among them, for the first time, a priest. In the night, Catherine Latapie, a friend from Lourdes, went to the Grotto, she plunged her dislocated arm into the water of the Spring: her arm and her hand regained their movement.

13th Apparition
Tuesday 2nd. March: Message to the priests.
     The crowd becomes larger and larger. The Lady asked her: "Go, tell the priests to come here in procession and to build a chapel here." Bernadette spoke of this to Fr. Peyramale, the Parish Priest of Lourdes. He wanted to know only one thing: the Lady's name. He demanded another test; to see the wild rose bush flower at the Grotto in the middle of winter.

14th Apparition
Wednesday 3rd. March: A smile
     From 7 o'clock in the morning, in the presence of three thousand people, Bernadette arrives at the Grotto, but the vision did not appear! After school, she heard the inner invitation of the Lady. She went to the Grotto and asked her again for her name. The response was a smile. The Parish Priest told her again: "If the Lady really wishes that a chapel be built, then she must tell us her name and make the rose bush bloom at the Grotto."

15th Apparition
Thursday 4th. March: The day all were waiting for!
     The ever-greater crowd (about eight thousand people) waited for a miracle at the end of the fortnight. The vision was silent. Fr. Peyramale stuck to his position. For twenty days Bernadette did not go to the Grotto, she no longer felt the irresistible invitation.

16th Apparition
Thursday 25th. March: The name they awaited for!
     The vision finally revealed her name, but the wild rose bush, on which she stood during the Apparitions, did not bloom. Bernadette recounted; "She lifted up her eyes to heaven, joined her hands as though in prayer, that were held out and open towards the ground and said to me: Que soy era Immaculada Concepciou (I am the Immaculate Conception) ." The young visionary left and, running all the way, repeated continuously the words that she did not understand. These words troubled the brave Parish Priest. Bernadette was ignorant of the fact that this theological expression was assigned to the Blessed Virgin. Four years earlier, in 1854, Pope Pius IX declared this a truth of the Catholic Faith (a dogma)

17th Apparition
Wednesday 7th. April: The miracle of the candle
     During this Apparition, Bernadette had to keep her candle alight. The flame licked along her hand without burning it. A medical doctor, Dr. Douzous, immediately witnessed this fact.

18th Apparition
Thursday 16th. July: The Final Apparition.
     Bernadette receives the mysterious call to the Grotto, but her way was blocked and closed off by a barrier. She thus, arrived across from the Grotto to the other side of the Gave. "I felt that I was in front of the Grotto, at the same distance as before, I saw only the Blessed Virgin, and she was more beautiful than ever!

THE MARVELS OF GRACE.
     To complement the testimony of Bernadette, the Bishop recalls "the marvelous things that have been happening since the first event. If one judges the tree by its fruits, we can say that the Apparition as seen by the young girl is supernatural and divine, because she has produced supernatural and divine results".
     The Bishop recalls how the crowds grew and gathered during the Apparitions and afterwards when the Apparitions had ended : "pilgrims came from faraway districts and neighboring countries hurrying to the Grotto...to pray and ask favors from the Immaculate Virgin Mary. Souls already Christian are strengthened in virtue, people frozen into indifference have been brought back to the practice of their religion, obstinate pilgrims are reconciled with God after having Our Lady of Lourdes invoked in their favor. These wonders of grace, which have a universal and lasting character, can only have God as their author, do they not come, as a result, to confirm the truth of the Apparitions?"

     After the wonderful things that happened "for the good of souls", the Bishop moved on to the results produced by way of physical healing, especially among the sick who imitated Bernadette by drinking and washing themselves in the place pointed out by the Apparition, asks if this was not an indication of a supernatural power coming down upon the spring of Massabielle "In this way, sick try the water of the Grotto, and this is not without success, many were sick who did not respond to the most stringent of treatments, and who suddenly recovered their health. These extraordinary cures have had an immense effect...Sick people of all countries request the water of Massabielle...we cannot list here all the favours granted, but what we want to say is that it is the water of Massabielle which has cured those who were sick and who were abandoned or declared incurable. These cures have been obtained by using a water which in itself has no special curative qualities, according to those skilled in chemistry who have carried out rigorous tests." These cures are permanent, specifies Mgr. Laurence, who wonders what had caused them: "Science, which was consulted on this subject, responded negatively. These cures are thus the work of God." Because, the Bishop remarks, they are directly linked to the Apparition which is the point of departure and inspiration of the confidence of the sick."

More information on Our Lady of Lourdes and St Bernadette