Perhaps in the course of yesterday afternoon or evening you walked on the Boulevard Pere Rene Sempe, the avenue next to the Domaine, and you saw the photographic display of the visit of Pope John Paul II to Lourdes on August 14^th-15^th of last year.  There are eighty-five enlarged photographs all along the avenue.  Many of you may have seen the Papal Mass on the Feast of the Assumption on RTE television at home.  It made a huge impression here in Lourdes, not only among the pilgrims but with the people of Lourdes itself.

What impressed them most was that he came here not so much as the Pope, which of course he was, but he came as an invalid in a wheelchair and he stayed in the hospital, the Accueil Notre Dame, with all the sick.  He was not ashamed to come in his condition and his first words were for the sick;

“Dear sick brothers and sisters, I am with you as a pilgrim alongside Our Lady, your prayers and hopes are mine. I share with you this time marked by physical suffering but nonetheless fruitful in God’s wonderful plan”.

Next came this beautiful expression of affection;

“Dear sick brothers and sisters, I would like to hold you in my arms, one after another to show my affection and to tell you how close I am to you…and to show my solidarity with you.  I do so spiritually by entrusting you to the maternal love of the Mother of God and asking her to obtain blessings and every consolation from her Son Jesus”.

When the Pope died in early April, a special Mass was said for the people of the Diocese of Tarbes and Lourdes.  They filled the Underground Basilica and the young people were present in large numbers to represent their schools and parishes. The witness and the example of Pope John Paul II probably influenced the choice of theme for this year: Come to me all you who suffer. 

Human suffering has always been a puzzle. The people of the Old Testament had a strong conviction that suffering was God’s punishment for sin. Traces of this came down to our own time.  Parents of a special child would torture themselves with questions like, “What did I do wrong, how did I sin to be given this punishment?”  The Book of Job was written to show that suffering is not God’s punishment for sin since Job was an innocent and upright man.

Suffering on a large scale, especially when innocent children suffer or when natural disasters occur or when the crime of genocide is perpetrated on a large scale, puts people’s faith sorely to the test.  How could a good God allow millions to receive such horrific treatment in the Nazi concentration camps in World War II?  How could a good God allow 250,000 people to be swept to their deaths without a moment’s notice by the tidal wave, the tsunami, on St. Stephen’s Day last? 

The answer to these questions is not easy.  One is sometimes tempted to say: Wouldn’t it be a good thing if there were no sick people in the world?  Yes.  But wouldn’t it be a bad thing if there were no nurses and doctors and carers in the world?  Would it be a good thing if there were no sick people in Lourdes?  Yes, but would it be Lourdes?  And wouldn’t the volunteers, the helpers be all out of a job?  Going around with their hands in their pockets!  It just wouldn’t be Lourdes!  If the man going from Jerusalem to Jericho had not been left dying on the roadside, there would have been no Good Samaritan!  He would have been just another no good Samaritan in the eyes of his Jewish neighbours.

The older generation here may remember a question in your Catechism class for Confirmation which went as follows;

Q.      “As every one is judged immediately after death, what need is there of a general judgement?”

A.     “That the providence of God, which often here permits the good to suffer, and the wicked to prosper, may appear just before all men”.

Your day of judgement was the day the Bishop came and you looked no further then!  But the question addressed in the Book of Job was still a live one and it remains so.

We have to admit that there is no completely satisfactory answer to the problem of suffering.  Suffering is a mystery and will always remain so.  We all naturally shrink from it, but we cannot avoid it.  It was Woody Allen who said, “I am not afraid of dying provided I am not around when it happens”.  We can all identify with him in that!

But, we all suffer in one way or another.  Physical sickness is the most obvious, but there is mental illness, depression, there is anxiety of the elderly living alone at night, there is disappointment with ones self or family, there is bereavement, loneliness, addiction to alcohol or drugs…the list goes on.

But let us come to Bernadette again for a moment.  She was a healthy child until her parents came down in the world, losing their livelihood in the Boly Mill and their house which was attached.  They were forced to live in an overcrowded hovel which was cold and damp in winter.  It was a search for firewood down in this area on February 11^th 1858 which brought Bernadette to the Grotto.  She had begun to suffer from severe asthma for a few years by this time and she would be subject to frequent attacks, some of them life-threatening, right throughout her life. 

One might have expected that having been chosen for the special privileges of Our Lady’s apparitions and having been entrusted with the message of Lourdes, and further, having personally scooped up the first fistfuls of the Lourdes spring, that she would have been granted a miracle of healing here at the Grotto? But this was not God’s plan.  Our Lady told Bernadette, “I will not make you happy in this world but in the next”.  Suffering was to be an integral part of the message of Lourdes and central to the life of the messenger.

Indeed, Mary herself, the most highly favoured, had to suffer much hardship in her own lifetime.  The sword which Simeon had foretold did pierce her soul as she stood at the foot of the Cross as her Son was dying – the scene recalled in the Gospel just now.  It is at the foot of the Cross that we come nearest to understanding the meaning of suffering.  “God did not spare his only Son but gave him up for us”.  It was through his suffering and death on the Cross that he saved us from sin and death.  He did not save us by a miracle as he certainly could have done.  One drop of his blood would have, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Adoro Te, could have saved the whole world from every crime!  But he shed it to the very last drop!

Jesus recoiled from the prospect of his Passion and Death during his agony in Gethsemane, “Father if it is possible, let the chalice pass for me”.  At that moment, He was at one with every human being, past, present and future, in their pain. He was next to the people in the gas-chamber of Auschwitz when they huddled naked together.  He was with the South East Asians, every one of the 250,000 plus as they were swept to their deaths on St. Stephen’s Day.  His fears were the human fears shared by all of us. But his resolve was unshakeable.  “Father, not my will but thine be done”. 

His death was the great act of redemption.  It needs no addition from above or below.  But He leaves his saving act open to our personal offerings.  He invites us to join our sufferings with his on the Cross. He loves to see us add ours to His for the redemption of the world.  This is what St. Paul meant by, “making up in my flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ”.  This is what Pope John Paul II meant when he described his life as “marked with physical suffering but nonetheless fruitful by God’s wonderful plan”.

When I was preparing this homily, I re-read Pope John Paul’s encyclical letter, Salvifici Doloris – on suffering.  I found, to my surprise, that it was published on February 11th 1984, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.  He was Pope six years then, and he had over twenty more left. 

I will quote one paragraph:

“A source of joy is to be found in overcoming the sense of uselessness of suffering, a feeling which is sometimes very strongly rooted in human suffering.  This feeling not only consumes the person from within but seems to make them a burden on others.  The person feels condemned to receive assistance from others and, at the same time, seems useless to themselves.  The discovery of the salvific meaning of suffering in union with Christ transforms this depressing feeling… the suffering persons become certain that they are serving Christ in saving their brothers and sisters”.

Do you identify with the feeling of uselessness?  Do you identify with the opportunity Christ opens to you when you suffer?  Pope John Paul II did not hide his physical illness from the world.  He used it creatively.  Many thought he should have retired and gone to a nursing home.  You may recall him giving his homily here in Lourdes on the Feast of the Assumption last year.  He was struggling from the start. His words were slurred, the heat was too much for him.  He stopped. “I can’t continue”, he whispered.  He was given a drink of water.  I don’t know whether it was the Lourdes water or the clapping and cheers of the young people which rallied him. But he resumed!  Did he ever preach this message more powerfully?

“To you women falls the task of being sentinels of the invisible.  I appeal urgently to you, brothers and sisters, to do everything in your power to ensure that life, each and every life, will be respected from conception to its natural end”.

The twin evils of abortion and euthanasia, so cleverly promoted by the secular world of today, were condemned in one sentence.  The defenceless child in the womb, the helpless old person in the bed, the “bed-blockers” as they are called by the health planners, enjoy an equal right to life to every other human being.

Bernadette used to say, half in jest, half in earnest, “My job is to be sick”.  You, the sick and the disabled can make the same claim.  You are helping Christ in His great act of saving the world.  You are helping the Church.  There is no greater corporation with which you could be employed!  There is no earthly employer who could ever reward you so richly…”I do not promise to make you happy in this world but in the next”.    

St. James assures us: “Blessed are those who endure suffering.  When they have proved their worth they will win that crown of life which God has promised to those who love him”.  St. Peter also assures us: “My dear people if you can have some share in the sufferings of Christ be glad because you will receive a must greater gift when his glory is revealed”. St. Paul confirms them both;

“The sufferings of this life are nothing compared to the glory which Christ has prepared for those who are faithful”.

“No cross, no crown”, as they say.  If you follow Christ’s invitation to follow Him along the road of suffering, you will be given an eternal reward.  Bernadette and Pope John Paul shared two things, a love of the Blessed Mother and a love of the Grotto here.  Pope John Paul made one request when he came here last August – that he be allowed some time on his own in the Grotto.  So it happened at 5.40 pm on August 15th.  He came here while 100,000 joined him at a distance.  He prayed and the crowd were drawn into his prayer.  There was total silence.  As for Bernadette, when she left this holy place for the last time before going to Neverre, she exclaimed, “I know that the Blessed Mother will be with me everywhere, but here in Lourdes the Grotto was my heaven”. 

I have spent the past three months with the Confirmation children.  I presented Solomon as a paragon of wisdom.  “What did Solomon rule when he was asked to judge between the two women who were fighting over a baby?” I asked the children.  A little girl got in before everyone with; “He said to put the baby up for adoption”. Lateral thinking!  But in every group one child always said, “The real mother said, don’t kill the baby but let the other woman have it”.

The Good Samaritan could also be called the real neighbour to the wounded man on the roadside.  The real neighbours to the sick here in Lourdes are the people who put the sick in and out of the voitures, who get them in and out of bed, who bring them to the Grotto, to the Baths and on little shopping trips.

It is interesting that Pope John Paul pointed out Mary’s role as carer, in  Lourdes, “What strikes us about Mary, above all, was her loving concern for her elderly cousin, Elizabeth.  Hers is a practical love, one which is not limited to words but is deeply and personally involved in giving help”.  Indeed, when Bernadette was well enough to do so she also acted as infirmarian to the sick sisters in Neverre – nobody understood sickness better than she did.  A woman for all seasons!

          “Come to me all you who suffer”

          “Come to me all who labour and are over burdened

          and I will give you rest for your souls”.