I visited Lourdes again in May of the present year. Much water had
passed under the old stone bridge that spans the Gave since last I
gazed on that swirling stream, and listened to the hoarse music of
its voice. Lourdes has grown a great deal in these fourteen years.
The old town has widened its bounds on the right bank of the river,
and on the left the low meadow land is covered with shops and hotels.
These, indeed, may be said to make up the town. In the shops, as I
also noted when last I was there, the wares are almost wholly of a
devotional character--a fact that gave rise to the following
incident. The joke that gives it point is at my own expense.
I left my soap at Saint Sebastian, the last town in Spain ere you
cross into France. It may be needful to tell the reader that the
traveller in Europe has to carry his own soap. I wanted to buy that
necessary article in Lourdes, but did not know where to get it. The
stores that lined the streets on either side seemed to offer nothing
but beads, medals, statues, etc. What was worse, I could not for the
life of me recall the French word for soap. I tried to get at it
through the Italian "sapone." Cutting off the final vowel, I entered
the nearest store, and boldly asked for "sapon." The salesmaid at
first looked puzzled. But on my repeating the order, her face broke
into a smile of comprehension. Quickly she sped to a corner of the
store, and thence brought me a tiny statue of St. Paul! "Sapon," no
doubt, sounded more like "Saint Pol" than like the elusive "savon"
that I had tried in vain to get hold of. Going into another shop,
where a window bore the legend "English and German spoken," I asked
for soap. They told me the girl who was to wait on English-speaking
customers had not yet joined the staff. I inquired in Italian if
they knew that language, and to my great relief was answered in the
affirmative, and directed to a little shop down a near street, where
I bought an excellent piece of soap that is still in my possession.
Man has wrought many changes in Lourdes. Only the works of God
remain unchanged. The Gave flows merrily on, singing its way to the
sea. Round about are the eternal hills, which change not. The
grotto in the rocks of Massabielle still looks out over the hurrying
river, even as Our Lady, from her quiet niche, smiles down upon the
ever flowing and ebbing multitude at her feet. How mighty has been
that tide of pilgrimage since last I knelt before the statue of Our
Lady there! Day by day, month by month, year by year, it keeps
renewing itself, flowing ever onward like the leaping waters of the
Gave.
I reached Lourdes on the eve of Saturday, May 10, and stayed there
over Sunday. The great Swiss national pilgrimage was there, in eight
trains; a pilgrimage from Metz in two trains; a mixed pilgrimage from
Strassburg, in two trains; the seventeenth pilgrimage from Namur in
three trains; the ninth national Bavarian pilgrimage in two trains;
and the ninth Austrian, also in two trains. There were in all some
fifteen thousand pilgrims, of many nations and many tongues. But one
was the faith that drew them thither; one the devotion. And one was
the hymn they sang in unison in the marvellous torchlight procession
that night. I stood watching it as it wound its way down the great
oval pathway through the meadow of Lourdes. The spire of the stately
basilica that stands over the Grotto, the grand façade, and the
Church of the Rosary beneath, were all ablaze. Then ten thousand
pilgrims, a very torrent of moving lights, poured into the pathway,
circled slowly round it, swaying and singing as they passed along.
The sounds that rose upon the night air, under the listening stars,
were as the voices of the sea.
A thought that saddens comes to me as I write these words, after
three short months. Many, many of the men who walked side by side in
that procession have ere now met face to face on European
battlefields. Man is part beast, and part angel. The angel is of
God, the beast of the earth, earthy. And the beast that is in man,
true to its nature, fights its fellows; the angel can but weep over
the fallen and the slain.
What a sight that was of sick and suffering humanity before the
statue of Our Lady in the rocks of Massabielle! It seemed as if all
the ills that poor human flesh is heir to were brought together
there. One had not the heart to ask favours for oneself, so piteous
was the spectacle of so much misery unrelieved. For out of the
thousands that yearly seek a cure at Lourdes but few are made whole.
Yet all are renewed in spirit, and strengthened to bear their
ailments with Christian resignation. It is not that they want faith;
it is rather that God does not will to free even those who have faith
from all evil here below. "It is appointed unto man once to die."
Through many tribulations, through the gates of death itself, we must
enter into the Kingdom of God, Kingdom of endless ages, whereon, as
St. Augustine so beautifully expresses it, "sits the untroubled
light, and the peace of God that passeth all understanding."
Meanwhile in patience we shall possess our souls.
A year ago one came to Lourdes, a girl from a town in France, sick
beyond all human hope of recovery. She had a complication of
maladies, including consumption in its last stage. Her doctor, an
unbeliever, deemed it madness in her to undertake the long journey.
But go she would. He told her, if she were cured, he himself would
go with her next year to Lourdes. They were both of them there the
Sunday I was there--she to thank Our Lady for the wondrous favour, he
to ponder upon the superhuman power that wrought it, and to find, let
us hope, healing and peace for his soul.
In a corner of France, amid the foothills and under the shadow of the
Pyrenees, Lourdes lies sheltered with its holy shrine. Afar it lies
from the madding strife that now ravages and reddens with blood many
a fair field that was white unto harvest. Let us pray Our Lady that
the war may soon be over--that He who chid the wild waves on the sea
of Galilee may now stay the fierce onset of angry passions, and bring
a great calm.