Our Lady of Lourdes

If you were unable to make it to a Grotto this past week, consider making a trip to that famous site in France, where a young, uneducated peasant confounded the learned theologians of the day. Why does Our Lady use the weak to make fools of the powerful? She appeared to an Amerindian peasant, some peasant children in Portugal, and Bernadette, who could barely pass grammar school- who would have been unable to spell the word 'immaculate'. Juan Diego was a poor nobody farmer, even more disdained in his day because of the darkness of his skin.

What does that tell us?

It's not about who we are. It's about how much we love God.

I was reading a book called the Lives of the Planets. Like many other books on astronomy and geology, the magnificent scale and scope of the universe clamors for teleological recognition of its Creator and Ruler. Consistently the authors of these books, usually atheists/materialists, speak of within what marginal improbability manifold events that shaped the solar system as we know it took place. Not only was it extremely, unfathomably unlikely that life came into existence, but it's even more improbable that an Earth came into existence to house it, and in such a manner that the life that did come into existence on it could go about observing the enormous improbability of such a fact and therefore marvel at it. And not only that--- the implausibility of each discovery that went into the humanity's comprehension of the singular implausibility of itself ever taking place or in the manner in which it did take place...

och! the mind reels...!

Basically, you'd have to be totally blind to think that it was chance. You'd have to be blind to conclude that there is not a Someone behind it all.

Having reached that conclusion, it's only a small motion further to conclude that such a Someone would want to make an introduction. Hence, (Judaeo-)Christianity.

And that's where the Marian apparitions come in: God is not only Ruler, but also Lover. All this incomprehensible majesty- supernovae, plate tectonics, the structure of an insect wing-- exists so that we can fall in love. And not just any falling in love. Loving Love.

And not just some of us. All of us! No matter what skin color or level of education we can know that we are capable of being Beloved, becoming what we are: the object of God's passionate desire. Thousands embark for Lourdes trusting that no matter what their condition, they are not only loved, but treasured all the more. These weak and deprived pilgrims have more wisdom than the rest of troubled humanity. Turn to the Font of Life! There you will find all healing, all restoration, i.e. salvation.

I was also listening to Christian radio again. And once again I wanted to scream at the musicians, "But He is here! You don't have to wait until you die to see and talk with Him! Just head for the nearest monstrance and drink deeply." Our Lady gave Bernadette a stream of water, but She undoubtedly wanted us to discover something more miraculous and readily available: the Eucharist of Her Son, in whom every trace of evil washes away.

No, we are not here by chance. The staggering improbability of our existence yields only one conclusion: we are here because we are loved. All for Love. All for Love. All for Love~

A happy thought as we look forward to Valentine's Day.