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The modern tendency to enshrine the human intellect—to the exclusion of the spiritual—was well underway in mid-nineteenth century Europe. Rationalism had become entrenched among the educated elite, many of whom regarded the church and its beliefs as relics of the past. For them, religion was for the poor masses who didn’t know better.
Into this secular age, the supernatural burst in a spectacular way. Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared to a poor, illiterate fourteen-year-old peasant girl in a small French town near the Pyrenees. Even though Bernadette Soubirous was the only one to have seen the Virgin, her visions renewed the faith of the French people and of Catholics all over the world.
The events at Lourdes were a stark rebuttal to the notion that there is no reality beyond the earthly plane. When man had begun to exalt himself and not the Almighty, the Lord worked through a young girl to demonstrate that his mercy is available to all people. He chose an effective witness: Ber-nadette’s humility and utter simplicity disarmed the skeptics. At each turn, the walls of resistance and disbelief that faced the young girl crumbled.
Bernadette…
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