Le Cachot

When Bernadette's family became destitute, they were allowed to live in the old jail, or "Le Cachot," which had been abandoned as "unfit for human habitation."

Today Le Cachot is a museum.



Just in case you had doubts that this was the jail... witness the window case!



Inside are a few of Bernadette's personal items:



The main room of the dwelling that was unfit habitation. What's that on the left?



a close up of this appliance. what is it?



If you guessed "kitchen sink" you guessed correct. If you guessed "family toilet," you are also correct. if you guessed both, you are right.

Pilgrimage experience

This one video from inside the Basilica of Pius X at Lourdes turned out better than I thought; I should have done more, since still pictures didn't work at all. Yes, that's the Irish again...




Contrast that with the Benedictine Nuns of Ars singing Compline. Again, apologies for the horid camera work, but if you listen carefully, you can hear them! It amazes me the many ways in which God is praised by man, for that is how it should be, the creature giving thanks to the Creator.

Veni Creator Spiritus

Here's a video of the area at Lourdes were the water is available to pilgrims to drink and to fill their containers. The music is intermittent and non-stop all day (and starts around the 30 second mark in this video).



Veni Creator Spiritus, along with the Te Deum, are two of the fine selections for the ordination which took place last tonight at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. Five young men received the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Holy Orders and were marked forever as priests; Thanks be to God! pray for them and all priests!

Fr. Franisco Humberto Godinez Torres
Fr. Chase Raymond Hasenoehrl
Fr. Brian Thomas Gregory May
Fr. Germán Osorio-Hernández
Fr. José Trinidad Ramírez Pérez

52nd International Military Pilgrimage

These are a couple videos I took with my dinky electronic camera. Apologies for the poor quality in advance.

The Irish Military band came to our floor looking for Paul O'Leary, and treated us to a rousing concert in the elevator foyer!

The things you learn

At Lourdes while we were preparing for the group photo, I scored a picture of Archbishop Broglio of the Military Archdiocese:



and just shot one down the line; here's my USMC escort Lloyd...



...not realizing that I captured a picture of the statue of St. Hyacinth overlooking the rosary Basilica.



St. Hyacinth, apostle of Poland, is holding the Eucharist and a statue of our Lady which he rescued from a fire; the statue miraculously as it was huge!

A few more pictures

Lloyd Miller (USMC retired) sent me a few pictures from the Lourdes pilgrimage. That's Lloyd on the left with the Stuttgart contingent, picture taken in Nevers at the convent of St. Bernadette:




This is the "North American Lourdes Volunteers" group the first morning (without the Steubenville kids):



And this one is a copy of a print of a professional photo taken by VIRON of Lourdes; it is at the exchange of the peace at the Mass for English pilgrims at the grotto, Saturday May 22. That is my dear new friend, Sr. Catherine Trtek of Portland, Oregon.



Thanks to Anita (V-For Victory) for "photoshopping" the above picture, and this one too!

And the two shall be one flesh

My trip to Germany, Lourdes, and London started with the invitation to serve as best man at the wedding of Lt. Col. Paul O'Leary OPL and Alane Cleven. The wedding took place on Ascension Thursday in the chapel at Patch Barracks, Stuttgart Germany. I introduce to you Mr. and Mrs Paul O'Leary. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.



Fr. Stanley was the priest celebrant of the marriage;



but because he was 45 minutes late (due to being stuck in an elevator) Paul asked for 20 pushups in reparation. Apparently, even jokes are serious in the military!



"For this reason a man shall leave (his) father and (his) mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church (Eph 5:31-32)

Today is Corpus Christi; we celebrate the presence of Christ in the most Blessed Sarament of the Altar, the Eucharist. Christ has never left us, as he promised.

To borrow from St. Thomas Aquinas and Fulton Sheen, the mineral kingdom only has the attribute of "being," whereas the plant kindom adds to being the attribute of life and reproduction. The animal kingdom adds to these the attributes of motion and sense perception. In Man we find added to these the attributes of intellect, will, and reason.

The higher converts the lower into itself.

Now the plant reaches its roots into the earth and takes up minerals which it converts into living tissue, something water and minerals could never do by themselves. The animal eats the plants and converts the plant tissue into itself, no plant walks the earth in search of new feeding grounds. Man eats the animal, and converts the animal flesh into his own self; no animal has ever said "why."

Now since the eucharist is Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity, nature is not offended in that the higher still converts the lower into itself, the eucharist converts man into a part of the body of Christ.

Two thousand years ago God became incarnate in a single individual, Jesus Christ who walked among men and was rejected by the majority of men. Today and till the end of time He has chosen to be incarnated through His mystical body the Church; and in this body He continues to live out his life as chronicled in the pages of Scripture; growing in stature and wisdom, healing the sick, teaching the doubtful, scorned and rejected, and finally betrayed by men, crucified and burried, only to rise from the dead.

At the door

Sunday, May 16.

This is the front door of the Dominican Novitiate for the Province of France in Strasbourg. No one opened at my knock....



But the church door was open, so we went in



Oh yeah, this is the place!



OH YEAH, now that's a tabernacle!



Had to follow with a visit to the Cathedral. Oh my, they don't build them like this in Idaho!



BTW, that's local chapter member Paul O'Leary OPL, who is currently living in Stuttgart German, and recent partaker of the sacrament of marriage. yeah, that's a nice smile, Paul!

wandering across France

The vineyards were a reminder of work yet undone here in Idaho!



as far as the eye could see...



But after a day's drive, why not stop in Nevers, and stay the night at the convent where Bernadette spent the remainder of her life? Behind these doors she lies, incorrupt. There we held mass in her presence, a remarkable experience.



I did not take this picture, but this is what we saw. exactly.



This is the Novitiate room where Bernadette, on entering the convent, under obedience ascended the podium and narated the events at Lourdes to the sisters, and then never spoke of it again to them.



The replica grotto was a nice preview of things to come

Crypt at Ars

Daunting, but I was determined to go down to mass! This is the entrance to the crypt where St. John Vianney was initially interred.



Michael John Poirier sets up for mass; He and his family came on the bus with us back from Lourdes to Stuttgart. Michael's web site is Prayer Breaks, we were delighted to have him along.



Father sets up for mass. Ah, such a place!

Lourdes and the International Military Pilgrimage

The following is from the handout brochure:






The history of the pilgrimage to Lourdes begins with Bernadette Soubirous, the eldest of nine children born to Francois Soubirous and Louise Casterot at the Boly Mill on January 7, 1844. She lived there for 10 years with her parents; they earned a decent living as millers, but were unemployed at the time of the Apparitions. During this time, they lived in an unused prison (the Cachot) in considerable poverty.

While out to collect firewood on February 11, 1858, Bernadette, who was 14 years old, paused by the river Gave. She became conscious of a wind, but noticed that the trees were not moving. At that point she saw a lady dressed in white at an adjoining cave (the Grotto). This was the first of 18 such visions, during one of which the lady identified herself as the Virgin Mary, under the title of the Immaculate Conception. During one of the apparitions, an underground stream was pointed out to Bernadette and she uncovered it. The message which the Blessed Mother gave to Bernadette was a call to prayer, to repentance and to pilgrimage. Bernadette passed on her experiences to the Parish Priest. Although there followed many false visionaries and some hysterical outbursts from others, Bernadette always showed an impressive dignity and forbearance. She entered the Convent of the Sisters of Charity in Nevers in 1866. She had always been a sickly girl and her asthma took a tighter hold. Bernadette described herself as "getting on with her job." When asked what her job was, she replied, "Being ill." She died on April 16, 1879 at the age of 35. She was canonized on December 8, 1933, not for her visions but for her humble simplicity and religious trustfulness.

Lourdes has been a place of pilgrimage for over a hundred years. So how did the International Military Pilgrimage (IMP) come about? According to the Historical Commission of the IMP, members of the French military started going to Lourdes during WWII (1942-1944) to give thanks to the Blessed Mother for prayers answered and to pray for peace. The actual beginning of the military pilgrimage as it is known today has been attributed to a gathering in Lourdes on December 10, 1944. On this day, French and Russian soldiers (to include soldiers wounded during the war), as well as military representatives from the British, Belgian and U.S. Armies, gathered in Lourdes for a Mass in the Rosary Basilica. In 1947, a German military chaplain, who had been a prisoner of war in France since 1944, was invited to participate discretely in a military pilgrimage held in September that year. German and Belgian soldiers participated in larger numbers for the first time in 1948 and many other countries soon followed. The official International Military Pilgrimage (IMP) was born in 1958, the year of the 100th anniversary of the apparitions. In 2009 over 15,000 military and civilian personnel from 34 countries as well as a detachment of soldiers from KFOR participated in the pilgrimage. This year marks the 52d anniversary of the IMP as well as the 152d anniversary of the apparitions. The pilgrimage will be presided' over by Msgr Luc Ravel, the military bishop of France and president of the IMP, along with the military bishops and head chaplains of the various delegations. The theme of the 52d IMP is "Sign of the Cross, a Sign of Life."

Military Pilgrimage notes

From Catholic News Agency:

Vatican City, May 21, 2010 / 08:00 pm (CNA).- Lourdes, France is this weekend's destination for thousands of military personnel and their families who will participate in the 2010 International Military Pilgrimage. Since 1958, the Shrine has seen soldiers from all over the world come in peace to venerate Mary.

The tradition of the International Military Pilgrimage (IMP) to the French Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes began in 1958, after what was initially a regional pilgrimage and later national pilgrimage was made international to officially recognize the many NATO soldiers that had been arriving.

This year's 52nd pilgrimage takes place from May 21-23 and, according to organizers, will see nearly 12,000 pilgrims. An American outfit is represented in addition to 36 other delegations from as far away as Australia and Kenya and one formed of UN-mandated troops based in Kosovo.

Pilgrimage organizer and French military ordinary, Bishop Luc Ravel, spoke of the event saying that “the encounter brings with it the will of every military man of the world to work together for peace, the final good that we all seek. Also for a soldier, the use of weapons isn't the only way to promote peace between nations or within a people.”

“It's the conjugation of the force of weapons and the support of prayer that give the militaryman the dynamism and the openness to aim one day to achieve the good of peace,” he added, “without which the other 'goods' are reduced and eventually disappear.”

Major events planned for the three-day stay in the foothills of the French Alps, which will involve all military personnel, include a parade on Friday, adoration in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary on Saturday and Mass in the Basilica of St. Pius X on Sunday before the group formation and farewell on the esplanade. Many other activities are set to take place within the individual national representations and languages.

Vatican Radio reported on Friday that Italy had sent 4,000 soldiers to Lourdes for the occasion, while on Thursday L'Osservatore Romano made note of a 15-member Swiss Guard contingent. Many soldiers will be staying in tent camps in the mountains during the pilgrimage.

---

I traveled to this event with the land contingent of a group sponsored by the North American Lourdes Volunteers. We departed Panzer Barracks, Stuttgart, on May 18 and arrived late the afternoon of May 19. We stayed at the Accueil Notre-Dame...



which is directly across the Gave river from the grotto where Bernadette Soubirous was graced with several visits from Our Lady.



We went everywhere under the banner of the Chi Rho, which contained the phrase "MILITIAE DE JESU CHRISTI" - the name of a precursor organization which in 1285 became the Third Order of Preachers (Dominican Third Order).




There were nightly rosary parades with increasing numbers of pilgrims daily:



Unfortunately, my camera failed to be able to take pictures of any quality in the underground Basilica of Pius X; it was the first time I'd been to a mass with over 25,000 in attendance! quite a few moving events took place there. Highly recommend it! One was a Eucharistic procession, with these fine fellows in front of our Lord:



Unfortunately, a few days before the pilgrimage, I had fallen and stoved in my knee pretty badly, making getting around more than a little difficult. I was fortunate to have great guys of all rank push me in a wheelchair which we brought from Germany.





The wheelchair had it's advantages other than mobility, as this photo shows during mass for the English speaking forces at the grotto. BTW, that's Archbishop Broglio of the Military Archdiocese.



(not) sorry, no pictures from the baths. what an experience. Go!

Here's the whole North American Lourdes Volunteer crew (including the Steubenville kids who served us so well):



Many thanks to Marlene of North American Lourdes Volunteers and all the great folks who were on this pilgrimage, and to Maj. Paul O'Leary OPL who led the troops through the sea of people there!



It's going to take a while to process all of this...

---

check out the official Lourdes site; many fascinating things to read!

Dateline London

I've been away from the computer while traveling, but I will have quite a few pictues to post when I return home. Here's from Mass on Monday, in a little town called Ars in France.




May the Lord forgive me for taking a picture during mass but I was overwhelmed with the temptation! Not every day you get to be with St. John Marie Vianney!

Flying through

This weekend I've been treated to the presence of the strikingly colored Western Tanagers as they move through the foothills on their migration.



and in the morning I fly out, traveling to Germany for the wedding of Paul O'Leary OPL and Alane Cleven, to be held on Ascension Thursday in Stuttgart. They are also taking me to Lourdes, so I won't be returning until May 28. Hopefully, I can post some pictures during the pilgrimage trip.

Mary, Mother of God, mother of the Church, mother of all the faithful, we love you.