crowded streets, seeing once more the patient _brancardiers_ and the
pitiful litters on their way to the _piscines_. I could not have
believed that I could have become so much attached to a place in three
summer days. As I have said before, everything was against it. There was
no leisure, no room to move, no silence, no sense of familiarity. All
was hot and noisy and crowded and dusty and unknown. Yet I felt that it
was such a home of the soul as I never visited before--of course it is a
home, for it is the Mother that makes the home.
We saw no more of the Grotto nor the churches nor the square nor the
statue. Our road led out in such a direction that, after leaving the
hotel, we had only commonplace streets, white houses, shops, hotels and
crowds; and soon we had passed from the very outskirts of the town, and
were beginning with quickening speed to move out along one of those
endless straight roads that are the glory of France's locomotion.
Yet I turned round in my seat, sick at heart, and pulled the blind that
hung over the rear window of the car. No, Lourdes was gone! There was
the ring of the eternal hills, blue against the blue summer sky, with
their shades of green beneath sloping to the valleys, and the rounded
bastions that hold them up. The Gave was gone, the churches gone, the
Grotto--all was gone. Lourdes might be a dream of the night.
No, Lourdes was not gone. For there, high on a hill, above where the
holy city lay, stood the cross we had seen first upon our entrance,
telling us that if health is a gift of God, it is not the greatest; that
the Physician of souls, who healed the sick, and without whom not one
sparrow falls to the ground, and not one pang is suffered, Himself had
not where to lay His head, and died in pain upon the Tree.
And even as I looked we wheeled a corner, and the cross was gone.
* * * * *
How is it possible to end such a story without bathos? I think it is not
possible, yet I must end it. An old French priest said one day at
Lourdes, to one of those with whom I travelled, that he feared that in
these times the pilgrims did not pray so much as they once did, and that
this was a bad sign. He spoke also of France as a whole, and its fall.
My friend said to him that, in her opinion, if these pilgrims could but
be led as an army to Paris--an army, that is, with no weapons except
their Rosaries--the country could be retaken in a day.
Now, I do not know whether the pilgrims once prayed more than they do
now; I only know that I never saw any one pray so much; and I cannot
help agreeing with my friend that, if this power could be organized, we
should hear little more of the apostasy of France. Even as it is, I
cannot understand the superior attitude that Christian Englishmen take
up with regard to France. It is true that in many districts religion is
on a downward course, that the churches are neglected, and that even
infidelity is becoming a fashion;[7] but I wonder very much whether, on
the whole, taking Lourdes into account, the average piety of France, is
not on a very much higher level than the piety of England. The
government, as all the world now knows, is not in the least
representative of the country; but, sad to relate, the Frenchman is apt
to extend his respect for the law into an assumption of its morality.
When a law is passed, there is an end of it.
Yet, judging by the intensity of faith and love and resignation that is
evident at Lourdes, and indeed by the numbers of those present, it
would seem as if Mary, driven from the towns with her Divine Son, has
chosen Lourdes--the very farthest point from Paris--as her earthly home,
and draws her children after her, standing there with her back to the
wall. I do not think this is fanciful. That which is beyond time and
space must communicate with us in those terms; and we can only speak of
these things in the same terms. Huysmans expresses the same thing in
other words. Even if Bernadette were deceived, he says, at any rate
these pilgrims are not; even if Mary did not come in 1858 to the banks
of the Gave, she has certainly come there since, drawn by the thousands
of souls that have gone to seek her there.
This, then, is the last thing I can say about Lourdes. It is quite
useless as evidence--indeed it would be almost impertinent to dare to
offer further evidence at all--yet I may as well hand it in as my
contribution. It is this, _that Lourdes is soaked, saturated and kindled
by the all but sensible presence of the Mother of God_. I am quite aware
of all that can be said about subjectivity and auto-suggestion, and the
rest; but there comes a point in all arguments when nothing is worth
anything except an assertion of a personal conviction. Such, then, is
mine.
First, it was borne in upon me what a mutilated Christianity that is
which practically takes no account of Mary. This fragmentary, lopsided
faith was that in which I myself had been brought up, and which to-day
still is the faith of the majority of my fellow-countrymen. The Mother
of God--the Second Eve, the Immaculate Maiden Mother, who, as if to
balance Eve at the Tree of Death, stood by the Tree of Life--in popular
non-Catholic theology is banished, with the rest of those who have
passed away, to a position of complete insignificance. This arrangement,
I had become accustomed to believe, was that of Primitive Christianity
and of the Christianity of all sensible men: Romanism had added to the
simple Gospel, and had treated the Mother of God with an honour which
she would have been the first to deprecate.
Well, I think that at Lourdes the startling contrast between facts and
human inventions was, in this respect, first made vivid to my
imagination. I understood how puzzling it must be for "old Catholics,"
to whom Mary is as real and active as her Divine Son, to understand the
sincerity of those to whom she is no more than a phantom, and who yet
profess and call themselves Christians. Why, at Lourdes Mary is seen to
stand, to all but outward eyes, in exactly that position in which at
Nazareth, at Cana, in the Acts of the Apostles, in the Catacombs, and
in the whole history of Christendom, true lovers of her Son have always
seen her--a Mother of God and man, tender, authoritative, silent, and
effective!
Yet, strangely enough, it is not at all the ordinary and conventional
character of a merely tender mother that reveals itself at Lourdes--one
who is simply desirous of relieving pain and giving what is asked. There
comes upon one instead the sense of a tremendous personage--_Regina
Coeli_ as well as _Consolatrix Afflictorum_--one who says "No" as well
as "Yes," and with the same serenity; yet with the "No" gives strength
to receive it. I have heard it said that the greatest miracle of all at
Lourdes is the peace and resignation, even the happiness, of those who,
after expectation has been wrought to the highest, go disappointed away,
as sick as they came. Certainly that is an amazing fact. The tears of
the young man in the _piscine_ were the only tears of sorrow I saw at
Lourdes.
Mary, then, has appeared to me in a new light since I have visited
Lourdes. I shall in future not only hate to offend her, but fear it
also. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of that Mother who
allows the broken sufferer to crawl across France to her feet--and then
to crawl back again. She is one of the Maries of Chartres, that reveals
herself here, dark, mighty, dominant, and all but inexorable; not the
Mary of an ecclesiastical shop, who dwells amid tinsel and tuberoses.
She is _Sedes Sapientiae_, _Turris Eburnea_, _Virgo Paritura_, strong and
tall and glorious, pierced by seven swords, yet serene as she looks to
her Son.
Yet, at the same time, the tenderness of her great heart shows itself at
Lourdes almost beyond bearing. She is so great and so loving! It affects
those to whom one speaks--the quiet doctors, even those who, through
some confusion of mind or some sin, find it hard to believe; the strong
_brancardiers_, who carry their quivering burdens with such infinite
care; the very sick themselves, coming back from the _piscines_ in
agony, yet with the faces of those who come down from the altar after
Holy Communion. The whole place is alive with Mary and the love of
God--from the inadequate statue at the Grotto to the brazen garlands in
the square, even as far as the illuminated castle and the rockets that
burst and bang against the steady stars. If I were sick of some deadly
disease, and it were revealed to me that I must die, yet none the less I
should go to Lourdes; for if I should not be healed by Mary, I could at
least learn how to suffer as a Christian ought. God has chosen this
place--He only knows why, as He, too, alone chooses which man shall
suffer and which be glad--He has chosen this place to show His power;
and therefore has sent His Mother there, that we may look through her to
Him.
Is this, then, all subjectivity and romantic dreaming? Well, but there
are the miracles!
FOOTNOTES:
[7] It must be remembered that this was written six years ago, and is no
longer true.