“I shall spend every moment loving.”

Bernadette was born in Lourdes, France on January 7, 1844. She is the first saint to have been photographed.

Her parents were very poor and she was the 1st of 9 children. Early on she contracted cholera and suffered extreme asthma. She suffered poor health for the rest of her life.

When she was 14, she was sent with her younger sister and a friend to gather firewood when a very beautiful lady appeared to her above a rose bush in a grotto called Massabielle. The woman wore blue and white and smiled at Bernadette before making the sign of the cross with a rosary of ivory and gold. Bernadette fell to her knees, took out her own rosary and began to pray.

They revisited the grotto and the vision asked her to return to the grotto each day for a fortnight. With each visit, Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary, the Blessed Mother. Her parents were embarrassed with the visits and attempted to stop her but were unable to do so.

14 days from the original vision, she had a life-changing experience. The vision told her “to drink of the water of the spring, to wash in it and eat the herb that grew there” as an act of penance as the water had always been muddy. The next day, the grotto’s water had been cleared and fresh water flowed. 69 unexplainable cures from the water had been verified by the Lourdes Medical Bureau.

Bernadette had asked the woman her name, but was met with a smile. She asked again, three more times, and finally the woman said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

Though many townspeople believed, it created a division in her town. Church authorities and the French government rigorously interviewed her and by 1862, confirmed she spoke the truth.

Bernadette asked the local priest to build a chapel at the site of her visions and the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is now one of the major Catholic pilgrimage sites in the world.

Following the miracles and constructions, she decided she did not like the attention she was getting and went to the hospice school run by the Sisters of Charity of Nevers. At the age of 22, she joined them and took the religious habit. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the bone in her right knee and died at the age of 35 while praying the rosary.

She is the patron saint of illness, people ridiculed for their piety, poverty, shepherds, and Lourdes, France.

Her feast day is April 16.

For God’s Glory.