I AM an Episcopalian priest. In the practice of my ministry, I have often been encouraged and enlightened by Roman Catholic teaching and example, most recently by the astonishing activities of the late Pope Francis. As a Protestant, however, my appreciation of Roman Catholicism does not extend to a belief in the intermediary role of the Virgin Mary, nor — as a post-scriptural development — in her immaculate conception: that she was born without original sin.
On the other hand, everything about the Virgin Mary moves me: her history as recorded in scripture; her prayer, the Magnificat; her depictions in art and music and literature; so, when, on vacation in south-west France this summer, I had an opportunity to visit the shrine at Lourdes, and I grabbed it.
WE ARRIVED at the railway station mid-afternoon, and descended the hill to the town centre in the knee-buckling heat. We passed a cinema with a big poster of a pretty young woman in a kerchief advertising Bernadette, a film about the little peasant girl whose visions in 1858 of the Virgin, in which she was told “I am the Immaculate Conception”, became the basis of the sanctuary.
From then on, we encountered shops and outdoor stalls spilling over with “Bernadette” memorabilia — pins, and flags, and medallions — and a faint humming in the air grew louder: the commotion, the excitement, the promise of holiness I had expected from our arrival was coming closer.
By 5.30 p.m., we had arrived at the grounds of the Sanctuary, and joined the line proceeding through the grotto where the apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes was seen 18 times by Bernadette. At the Lady’s instruction, the girl scratched out of the stony earth the original source of the spring that, to this day, supplies the famous healing water of the shrine.
It was at this moment that I found myself effortlessly stepping out of the role of a curious visitor and assuming the character of a Catholic Christian sharing a pilgrimage (or “religious journey”) with his co-religionists. Along with many others in the line, I touched and kissed the bulging rockface once, and, when it became moist and then wet, I ran my finger along the stone and touched my lips.
The next great event of our brief visit was joining la procession aux flambeaux: the nightly procession of thousands of pilgrims, chanting and singing and carrying candles in paper hoods, which weaved to and fro in a single line from the back of the immense plaza to a flat, raised area between the steps of the towering late-19th-century basilica. The happiness of the crowd — men, women, and children — was as tangible to me as the scent of the burning candles.
THE following morning, we arrived at the baths shortly after they opened. At the line of taps next to the bathing pavilion, the water of the spring is made freely available to everyone — for drinking, and for taking away in containers. In the pavilion, it is also available for bathing.
I elected to do a “water gesture” and immerse myself in the water of the spring. In a curtained-off space inside a high-ceilinged room, five other men were seated facing each other, wearing only their underwear. I was instructed to remove my clothes and take the empty seat.
When it was my turn, I stepped through the curtain to find myself at the edge of a shallow, rectangular pool of grey stone about ten feet by five, with a statue of Mary at the far end. One of two male attendants held out a large rubber sheet, I was told to take off my underwear and the rubber sheet was fastened around me. He and the second attendant positioned me at the pool’s edge, and together they eased me down two steps into the water. Pulling me forwards, they led me to the last third of the pool, where the statue of the Virgin was now at eye level. In English, one of the attendants invited me to pray.
I was then lowered into the water up to my chin. I gasped. The temperature was that of a mountain stream — chilly, if not ice-cold.
Coming into the disrobing section from the cauldron outside, I had found it pleasantly cool, but, when I stepped back through the curtain after my cold bath, I was ready to put my clothes back on quickly. I looked around for a towel. A man sitting opposite said in an impatient voice: “Non, non,” in French, and then in English: “No towel — holy water.”
As I reached for my shirt, I realised with a shock I was already dry.
Once outside again, my body felt not only cool, but clean, although no soap had been used; and also glowing, with heatless light. I was lightheaded, and my limbs were almost nerveless, making me unsteady on my feet.
I sat down on the ground-level parapet of a flowerbed. I did not have thoughts — or, rather, I “thought” or “felt” only amazement at my blankness of mind. This joyful sense of my skin, my body, and my inner state lasted for the rest of day and for several days afterwards.
BUT did my undergoing of what I can only call “mysteries” convince me of the truth of the immaculate conception? Surprisingly, perhaps, it did not. Nevertheless, I did receive a significant religious benefit, and here is the substance of my “Lourdes testimony”: my visit confirmed to me that, against all historical evidence to the contrary, Christian believers are one. But that can be effectual for us in our lifetimes only if and when Christians let go — if, of necessity, only temporarily, then with many repetitions — of the differing doctrinal developments since the first century which characterise each division.
Instead, we must voluntarily hand ourselves over — immerse ourselves — in the healing, holy water of the defining miracle of Christianity: that God above became one with us here below, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. That mystical experience took place for me — and may take place for you — in the course of a visit/pilgrimage to Lourdes, but I don’t believe that it should, or need, be confined to that setting.
At those moments at the grotto, during the procession, after bathing in the waters of the spring, I knew the enchantment of a shared, undifferentiated faith as palpably as the clean taste of the moisture on the rock wall in the grotto, the pungent scent of the burning candles carried by the crowds in the procession, and — after my plunge in the waters of the spring — the tingle of my dried skin, my lightheadedness and nervelessness, and my breathless sense of ineffable joy.
The Revd Brock Baker is an Episcopalian priest in the diocese of Massachusetts.