Lourdes remains a powerful and tangible sign of God working in our lives. It prompts us to rethink our lives and to open ourselves in faith to the mystery of God’s love. The numerous healings reported at Lourdes are God’s special message to those susceptible to liberal and materialistic ideologies.

The miracles at Lourdes are not just cures of physical diseases and ailments. Healing a man’s heart and soul i.e. absolving him of his sins and freeing him from the power of Satan, is every bit as miraculous, even more so. Jesus asks us: “For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven’, or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?” (Mt. 9:5). Clearly, the former is more difficult, for only God can heal the human soul. Probably no place on earth has more people availing themselves of the sacrament of penance than Lourdes. Here, by the Massabielle Grotto, Christ’s all-powerful love is constantly at work. His love brings the most hardened sinners to contrition, and forgives all sins. This is the greatest of miracles. The physical cures at Lourdes are merely tangible, verifiable signs of such spiritual healings. Christ tells us: “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” he then said to the paralytic “Rise, take up your bed and go home” (Mt. 9:6).

Between 1858 and 1914, 4445 miraculous cures of physical diseases were reported at Lourdes. Such cures are registered in the Medical Bureau after the physicians have thoroughly checked all the facts, to ascertain that, from the scientific point of view, they are dealing with a true instance of inexplicable, miraculous healing. The actual number of recorded cures occurring in the 145 years since the apparitions is in the tens of thousands. Unfortunately, for various reasons, only a small number of the thousands of dossiers concerning undisputed miraculous cures ever reach the International Medical Commission, and subsequently the bishop of the diocese, in which the cured person lives. Only after this happens, can the bishop appoint a special commission studying the matter through a complicated process of investigation. The commission’s aim is to certify that a specific case represents an instance of supernatural act, in other words, that it is a miracle officially approved by the Church. So far, 65 such official statements confirming a miracle have been issued.

The events in Lourdes are an eloquent protest against those who would live as if God did not exist. They are an urgent appeal calling for the conversion of the soul, an appeal constantly made to us by Jesus, who truly “loved us to the end” (Jn. 13:1). Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel, who became a believer after going to Lourdes, observed: “Lourdes is a whole set of facts that reduces all philosophical and theoretical considerations to crumbs”. The apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, and the miracles occurring there, stand as a sign of contradiction to a concept of the world that denies a loving, personal God. Small wonder that the world’s freemasons felt threatened and began a massive propaganda attack against Lourdes. Their aim was to ridicule and discredit the apparitions by representing them as a great deception engineered by the Catholic clergy. To accomplish this goal, the most treacherous methods were used, involving the forgery of documents. Fortunately, this was exposed. The attacks by freemasonry on the apparitions in Lourdes continued until 1958.

Then the enemies of Church changed their strategy. As American writer Julien Green observed: “it was the ultimate in satanic perversity to present the mystery as something quite normal and mundane”.

As early as 1829, the Pope Pius VIII warned the faithful against the clandestine activities of freemasonry: “Their law is untruth; their God is Satan; their ritual is profanity”. This is only one out of more than 200 papal statements condemning freemasonry for its attempts at dechristianizing the world and shaping a new society, in which man lives as if there were no God, without stable and unchanging moral laws and norms. According to Masonic ideology, there is no one, universal Truth, there is no Revelation, and miracles are simply impossible. However, from time to time, the adherents of this ideology are faced with self-evident facts that demonstrate the presence and agency of supernatural powers. This is a loving God’s way of appealing to the consciences of His prodigal people, summoning them to his fatherly heart, and to love with a love that forgives all, and spreads eternal joy.

Lourdes is a gift of God to His people. It is God’s clinic of souls and bodies. If only people, seeing it, would see. If only people, hearing its message, would listen to it, and, filled with love, seek spiritual conversion in Christ the one Source of Life and Love.