Yesterday, had it not been a Sunday Holy Mother Church would have celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. I could not let the Feast Day go unmarked. Here the parish we had a candlelight procession. the blessing of the sick and a time of Eucharistic Adoration. We even finished with a Lourdes multilingual hymn – Laudate Mariam.
For those of us who are ‘enfants de la domaine’ – children of the Domaine the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes is one very close to our hearts. I will be forever grateful to the Rev Malcolm Drummond, the Head of RE and Chaplain at my High School who in 1986 invited me to be part of the Salford Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes. Since then, I have made many pilgrimages to Lourdes. if the Lord spares Me this year I will make my thirty fifth visit to the Grotto of Lourdes. I have much to thank Our Lady for.
After discovering my initial vocation in Lourdes, I am grateful to the clergy of the diocese who welcomed me among their ranks when I made the decision to excardinate from the Franciscans. As a former VG at the time commented ‘Francis, Salford was always your first love.’
I am also grateful that through the prayers of Our Lady and the daubing of my eyes with the waters of Lourdes each year my keratoconus eye complaint has remained under control these past many years.
I am deeply grateful for the many friends I have made, both clerical and lay, that I have made over the years not only within my own diocese but reaching out to other diocese whose paths have crossed in Lourdes.
Let us pray for each other and as the Abbé Decha at the end of torchlight procession was wont to say ‘a tutti et a tous – bonne nuit!’
May Our Lady of Lourdes pray for us and bring out the best in us. Here’s to Lourdes 2024.
