Lourdes

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Lourdes

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lourdes, by Robert Hugh Benson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Lourdes
Author: Robert Hugh Benson
Release Date: July 1, 2006 [EBook #18729]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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LOURDES
BY
THE VERY REV. MONSIGNOR ROBERT HUGH BENSON
WITH EIGHT FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
ST. LOUIS MO.: B. HERDER, PUBLISHER 17, S. BROADWAY
LONDON: MANRESA PRESS ROEHAMPTON, S.W.
1914

Nihil Obstat:
S. GEORGIUS KIERAN HYLAND, S.T.D., CENSOR DEPUTATUS
Imprimatur:
GULIELMUS F. BROWN, VICARIUS GENERALIS, SOUTHWARCENSI.
15 Maii, 1914.

PREFACE.
Since writing the following pages six years ago, I have had the privilege of meeting a famous French scientist--to whom we owe one of the greatest discoveries of recent years--who has made a special study of Lourdes and its phenomena, and of hearing him comment upon what takes place there. He is, himself, at present, not a practising Catholic; and this fact lends peculiar interest to his opinions. His conclusions, so far as he has formulated them, are as follows:
(1) That no scientific hypothesis up to the present accounts satisfactorily for the phenomena. Upon his saying this to me I breathed the word "suggestion"; and his answer was to laugh in my face, and to tell me, practically, that this is the most ludicrous hypothesis of all.
(2) That, so far as he can see, the one thing necessary for such cures as he himself has witnessed or verified, is the atmosphere of prayer. Where this rises to intensity the number of cures rises with it; where this sinks, the cures sink too.
(3) That he is inclined to think that there is a transference of vitalizing force either from the energetic faith of the sufferer, or from that of the bystanders. He instanced an example in which his wife, herself a qualified physician, took part. She held in her arms a child, aged two and a half years, blind from birth, during the procession of the Blessed Sacrament. As the monstrance came opposite, tears began to stream from the child's eyes, hitherto closed. When it had passed, the child's eyes were open and seeing. This Mme. ---- tested by dangling her bracelet before the child, who immediately clutched at it, but, from the fact that she had never learned to calculate distance, at first failed to seize it. At the close of the procession Mme. ----, who herself related to me the story, was conscious of an extraordinary exhaustion for which there was no ordinary explanation. I give this suggestion as the scientist gave it to me--the suggestion of some kind of transference of vitality; and make no comment upon it, beyond saying that, superficially at any rate, it does not appear to me to conflict with the various accounts of miracles given in the Gospel in which the faith of the bystanders, as well as of sufferers, appeared to be as integral an element in the miracle as the virtue which worked it.
Owing to the time that has elapsed since the following pages were written for the Ave Maria--by the kindness of whose editor they are reprinted now--it is impossible for me to verify the spelling of all the names that occur in the course of the narrative. I made notes while at Lourdes, and from those notes wrote my account; it is therefore extremely probable that small errors of spelling may have crept in, which I am now unable to correct.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON.
Church of our Lady of Lourdes, New York, Lent, 1914

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE BASILICA. FRONT VIEW Frontispiece
DR. BOISSARIE to face p. 16
BUREAU DES CONSTATATIONS " 26
THE GROTTO IN 1858 " 36
THE GROTTO IN 1914 " 46
THE BLESSING OF THE SICK " 56
THE BASILICA. SIDE VIEW " 66
BERNADETTE " 78

I.
The first sign of our approach to Lourdes was a vast wooden cross, crowning a pointed hill. We had been travelling all day, through the August sunlight, humming along the straight French roads beneath the endless avenues; now across a rich plain, with the road banked on either side to avert the spring torrents from the Pyrenees; now again mounting and descending a sudden shoulder of hill. A few minutes ago we had passed into Tarbes, the cathedral city of the diocese in which Lourdes lies; and there, owing to a little accident, we had been obliged to halt, while the wheels of the car were lifted, with incredible ingenuity, from the deep gutter into which the chauffeur had, with the best intentions, steered them. It was here, in the black eyes, the dominant profiles, the bright colours, the absorbed childish interest of the crowd, in