Pope tells sick in Lourdes to discover Mary’s smile amidst suffering and pain
(September 15, 2008) Pope Benedict anointed and prayed for 10 ailing Roman Catholics
on Monday during his final mass at the Lourdes shrine in southwestern France, urging
the faithful to discover the smile of the Virgin Mary amidst suffering and pain.
Patients on wheeled stretchers and elderly in wheelchairs, many huddled under blankets
against the morning chill, joined an estimated crowd of over 60,000 faithful outside
the basilica built over the grotto where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared
in 1858. The Sept. 15 feast of the Our Lady of Sorrows provided an apt starting
point for Pope Benedict’s homily at the Mass for the sick in Lourdes. “Today, as
we celebrate the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, we contemplate Mary sharing her
Son’s compassion for sinners,” he said. “Just as Jesus cried, so too Mary certainly
cried over the tortured body of her Son,” the Pope noted. But the tears shed at the
foot of the Cross have been transformed into a smile which nothing can wipe away,
even as her maternal compassion towards us remains unchanged. This smile of Mary
is for all, the Pope said, but it is directed quite particularly to those who suffer,
so that they can find comfort and solace therein. Scripture itself discloses
Mary’s smile to us through her when she sings the Magnificat: “My soul glorifies
the Lord, my spirit exults in God my Saviour.” Every time we recite the Magnificat,
we become witnesses of her smile. Here in Lourdes, in the course of the apparition
of Wednesday 3 March 1858, the Pope said, Bernadette contemplated this smile of Mary
in a most particular way. Before introducing herself, some days later, as “the Immaculate
Conception”, Mary first taught Bernadette to know her smile, this being the most appropriate
point of entry into the revelation of her mystery. In the smile of the most eminent
of all creatures, looking down on us, the Pope explained, is reflected our dignity
as children of God, that dignity which never abandons the sick person. This smile,
a true reflection of God’s tenderness, is the source of an invincible hope. Unfortunately
we know only too well: the endurance of suffering can upset life’s most stable equilibrium,
it can shake the firmest foundations of confidence, and sometimes even leads people
to despair of the meaning and value of life. Within the smile of the Virgin lies
a mysteriously hidden strength to fight against sickness, in support of life. With
her, equally, is found the grace to accept without fear or bitterness to leave this
world at the hour chosen by God. To seek the smile of the Virgin Mary is an aspiration
like a child seeking to elicit its mother’s smile by doing what pleases her. And
we know what pleases Mary, thanks to the words she spoke to the servants at Cana:
“Do whatever he tells you.” Mary’s smile is a spring of living water that irrigates
human history - water which purifies and heals. The spring that Mary pointed out
to Bernadette here in Lourdes is the humble sign of this spiritual reality. By immersing
themselves in the baths at Lourdes, many people have discovered and experienced the
gentle maternal love of the Virgin Mary, becoming attached to her in order to bind
themselves more closely to the Lord! Suffering, the Pope explained, is hard to
bear, and harder still to welcome or to accept it, as Bernadette expressed it, to
“suffer everything in silence in order to please Jesus”. To be able to say that,
it is necessary to have travelled a long way already in union with Jesus. Christ
imparts his salvation by means of the sacraments, especially in the case of those
suffering from sickness or disability, by means of the grace of the sacrament of the
sick which Bernadette herself received foru times because of her poor health. In
this sacrament Christ the healer eases suffering by coming to dwell within the one
stricken by illness, to bear it and live it with him. Christ’s presence comes to
break the isolation which pain induces. Without the Lord’s help, the yoke of sickness
and suffering weighs down on us cruelly. The Pope thus invited the 10 who were to
receive the sacrament of the sick during the Mass to enter into a hope of this kind. At
the end of the homily, pope Benedict had a word of encouragement and gratitude for
those working in the areas of public health and nursing, as well as those who, in
different ways, in hospitals and other institutions, are contributing to the care
of the sick with competence and generosity. He also remembered the numerous volunteers
from France and around the world to assist the sick who come on pilgrimage to Lourdes,
saying they are the “arms of the servant Church.”