Vigils Reading – Our Lady of Lourdes

Of the Uncured, None Despair
A Reading on the Pilgrimage Experience at Lourdes

Of the…sick and afflicted who make the pilgrimage to Lourdes every year, only a small per cent are favored by a cure. The others leave the shrine in the same physical condition in which they arrived. Many of these unfortunate people have traveled great distances, and their trips have caused them immense discomfort and, in some cases, intense physical pain. Frequently, they have made a considerable financial sacrifice in order to visit the shrine.

…Do they feel that the trip has been made in vain? Are they bitter and disillusioned? Do they feel that the Blessed Virgin has neglected them? These questions occurred to J.B. McAllister, an American writer…as he saw the rows and rows of sick people in front of the grotto…At the desk of the Hospitalité, he found a man who spoke English. To this man he put the questions that had been troubling him… “True,” said the man, “only a few are cured, but many are helped. Of the uncured, none despair…They go away filled with hope. They do not say ‘adieu’ but ‘au revoir.’”

…Such a thing seemed incredible. The man repeated the words. “None despair!…A lady had come to Lourdes several summers without being cured. Last summer during Benediction, the lady beside her was cured. That evening, a friend complained that she should have been the favored one since she came oftener. ‘No,’ she said, ‘the lady beside me was worse than I. It was quite natural that she should be cured and not I!’ The words you usually hear are ‘God’s will be done.’”

As they were talking, McAllister noticed that the man was wearing armpads and that two crutches leaned against the wall behind him…He ventured to ask the man’s story… M.H. Lemarchand, for this was the man’s name… had been crippled from birth. He longed to go to Lourdes where he hoped he might be cured, but he and his sister were orphans and could not afford to make the trip. The years flew by. World War I came along, and the pilgrimage was out of the question. Finally in 1920, he and his sister were able to go to Lourdes. The longing of a lifetime was fulfilled.

“The first thing we did on arriving…was to go to the grotto. My first impression was very deep and made up of hope and sadness. Sadness at the sight of the sufferers we passed; sadness at having kept away so long. Of hope for my cure. During twenty-four years, I had thought of Lourdes and of going there – and I was here…

“I still prayed for my cure. But on the second day at Lourdes, while I was sitting among the sick during Benediction, I began to be ashamed of myself. On my right, a blind woman sat rigid in her chair; on my left lay a consumptive. I looked around at all those sufferers, and then up to the green mountains and higher to the sky. I could see and I could move about, having the free use of my ears and tongue and arms. I had not known sickness or disease – and I was praying for my cure! I started praying for the blind woman and the consumptive. Since that moment, I have felt that I ought to think of others and not myself.”

…“Perhaps it sounds foolish,” he said, “to speak of the happiness I have found at Lourdes, I who went to Lourdes to be cured and am still a cripple. But I have found contentment, and my soul has been cured. And for more persons than anyone knows, Lourdes has done the same thing.”…At Lourdes they gain a new peace. They become resigned to their afflictions and see them as crosses which God has asked them to bear.

“Of the uncured, none despair.” All go away filled with hope, with a new feeling of strength. The trip to Lourdes is never made in vain