11th February, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.



On the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes there will be Rosary and Benediction at the Holy Ghost Church in Basingstoke at 3pm.

It was at the Grotto in Lourdes that Mary the Mother of Jesus with the permission of God the Father appeared to a 14 year old Girl called Bernadette Soubirous.  Why did the Father give her permission? Surely it must have been something very important.  Mary is someone very special to God the Father and God the Son for she was the bridge between the Father and the Son and without her co-operation and sacrifices the Salvation of mankind could never have happened.

There were two things very important in the message of Lourdes.    The first  was that Mary was conceived without sin.  She was the Immaculate Conception.   In other words we are born with a weakness in our soul which attracts us to sin.   As St Paul reminded us the things we would do we often do not do and the things we should not do we do.   We humans are in a constant struggle to keep close to God.   We call this weakness Original Sin, but that does not mean we are born with an Actual Sin on our souls.   It is a weakness which came about because that first sin changed our nature.   No baby is born hateful to God, as some would put it.    But through His Passion and Death Jesus made it possible to rid ourselves of this weakness and through the grace he poured out on us all, made holiness possible again, but only if we co-operate with that grace.

The second thing that follows this is that many do not co-operate with this grace and the meaning of the Cross.    Mary cried out once "Penance, Penance, Penance"" something she was to repeat at Fatima, and "Pray"she said "for the conversion of sinners".  Again something she was to return to at Fatima.    Just look around you at the appalling rejection of God in the world, the wars, the suffering, the torture and the indifference to human life, is this the Kingdom that Our Lord Jesus Christ and Mary his mother who shared his Passion wanted to build.  

Then if we look at Mary, we see something asa both apparitions which we are inclined to ignore.   She is holding Rosary Beads and praying the Rosary.     Indeed at Lourdes Mary called for processions to come to a newly built Church.   The processions would be people saying the Rosary.   If you see the Rosary as a childish devotion then do not go to Lourdes and insult Mary, my Mother,  who was raised by God to a position of not just giving birth to Jesus, but to take part in his sufferings as only a Mother could.

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