Took Bel to the open market at Maubert Mutualite. She bought goat cheese from Tours, along with another kind; some apricots and cherries. Visited St. Germain des Pres and St. Sulpice churches.
St. Etienne is a place you go to when you’re very, very tired and simply need a pillow under your head. But it’s on the Grotto boulevard. Just go straight ahead, cross the bridge (you can’t miss the raging waters of the Gave) and you’ll see the Grotto.
On our way to the Grotto, a man stopped us and asked if we were Filipinos. I checked my forehead if I had a Philippine flag on it. “Your smile,” he said. Right behind him was his wife, a Filipina. Leona said she’d been married to Lars Andersson, a Swede, for 32 years. “I was 30 when I got married,” she said, betraying her age. “Bata ako nagasawa.”
They live in Copenhagen, Denmark, and this was their eighth trip to Lourdes. “Punta kayo sa Calgary,” she advised, pointing up. I knew the Pyrenees could make for good skiing, but I couldn’t imagine the French naming one of their sites after a city with a very English heritage. (OK, she meant the Way of the Cross, on the hill. Calvary.)
“Siguro mayaman kayo.” “Tapos na naming hulugan yung apartment namin.”
The sight of the Grotto.
Martine Guenard. The office of OCH – the Office Chrétien des Personnes Handicapées – was very visible from the entrance. Sabine said Martine was a very busy woman but to try anyway. I opened the door and asked, “Martine est là?” I was led to a woman who right away gave us her time. I recognized her from the images I saw on the Internet. We introduced ourselves as having been sent by Sabine and Flavien de Rouville of Tours.
The Rosary Basilica is one of three basilicas at Lourdes. The other, just on top is the Immaculate Conception. The Lady that identified herself in 1858 to the future St. Bernadette as, “Que soy era Immaculada Conceptiou” did so when the dogma had barely been proclaimed. The other basilica, named after St. Pope Pius X, is underground
Pizza for me, lasagna for Bel.
Evening Rosary at the Grotto.
12 May 2009
Breakfast. Fit for a monk on fast.
The crowd. I purposely avoided the weekend to avoid the crowds. But even on a Tuesday, the crowd was large. An Irish man I met at the baths said there were seven plane loads from his parish. (“If anything happened to us here, me parish would be gone.”) There were other delegations from Switzerland, Scotland, Wales, even Sri Lanka. We met a US-based couple originally from Surabaya, Indonesia.
Lourdes is partial to the elderly and the sick. Senior citizens get to ride the buses free. Italian nurses and male volunteers affiliated with UNITALSI wheeled around those unable to walk.
Headed for the sanctuaries. At the Immaculate Conception basilica, Mass was being said in German. At the Grotto, in English. At St. Bernadette church, the bishop of Bergamo was presiding at a Mass for Italian pilgrims. I’d never seen anything like that: Masses everywhere, that. The closest was the 1982 Manila international film festival, where great movies were playing one after the other if not simultaneously.
Baths. The taps. Water, water every where. Free. Drink as much as you can. But bring your own water. If you have a rushing Gave. Plus the Lady said to drink from the fountain – and bathe in its water.
This is how it went, for me. Fall in line at 1:30. Sit in line for the next 30 minutes. The rosary is recited in Latin, Italian, German, French, Spanish, Dutch and English. At 2 p.m. we were ushered inside the “piscines.” An Irish guy whose place I held when he had to go to the toilet returned the favor by explaining what would happen. Strip to your underwear. Sit, wait and pray. When it was my turn, the bathing assistants called me in, asked me to remove my underwear, a man was ready to wrap me in a white cloth. I was asked to take one step down into the bath and to recall my prayer intention. Then we said the Hail Mary – one guy in French, the other in Italian. Then they asked me to sit waist deep in the freezing water, and in one expert move they immersed my body. And that was it. No towels. “The amazing thing,” the Irishman said, “is that you come out of it bone dry.” I still had droplets as I put on my clothes.
‘Calgary.’ Fifteen stations. The 15th is the Resurrection.
Mass in English at 5 p.m. at the Rosary basilica.
Dropped the prayer petitions in a box at the Grotto. Bel prayed on a box marked “Place where Bernadette prayed on 11 February 1858.” <
Dinner at Au Roi Albert. Fish and chips. Omelet.
13 May
9 a.m. Mass at the Chapel of St. Cosme and Damian. Then another Mass (9:50) at the Basilica of St. Pope Pius X. (Sandwich lunch). Video at 2:30. Confession. 5 p.m. Benediction at Pius X. (Dinner au Gourmand Buffet). 9 p.m. Rosary procession.
This was definitely not tourism.
14 May - train left at 7:45
