Life

Nuala McCann: I've finally made it to the baths, on my third visit to Lourdes

It’s humbling to see so many people shouldering their sorrows with grace. We lit candles and added them to the thousands of burning flames. We stood at the grotto in silence with strangers from all over the world

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

The shrine to Our Lady at Lourdes – it was nearly 30 years since I had first rocked up as a teenager
The shrine to Our Lady at Lourdes – it was nearly 30 years since I had first rocked up as a teenager The shrine to Our Lady at Lourdes – it was nearly 30 years since I had first rocked up as a teenager

GOD works in mysterious ways. One weekend I’m in Knock of the dreadful drizzle watching the Pope sweep past in the popemobile, the next I’m in Lourdes.

A dear friend asked me to go en route to our traditional yoga holiday in nearby Toulouse. I don’t know what that Irish priest who calls yoga unsavoury would think.

Truth be told, it was my third time in Lourdes. Blame The Song of Bernadette, I tell my friend.

She’s too young and she’d never seen it. It was the film that launched 1,000 vocations and it was a seminal work for young Catholic girls like myself who went around dead scared for years trying to ignore a voice summoning them to a life of prayer behind the convent wall.

Visit One: The first time I went to Lourdes it was with another friend. We were 19 and mellow on Bordeaux red, the heady aroma of a Gauloise cigarette balanced between a Frenchman’s fingers and the attentions of shaggy-haired amorous backpackers who sipped Anis as if they liked it.

My father had the honour of serving Mass at the grotto in Lourdes after the Second World War. There’s an old black and white postcard he sent to my mother... so call it a pilgrimage of the heart.

Picture us in the mists of 1980, two teenagers rocking up at the grotto, hunched under the weight of giant green rucksacks. We had not yet learned to pack light and wash out our smalls.

We clambered the long and winding road to the cathedral. My friend turned to me: “When are we going to the grotto?” she asked.

“We’ve been,” I said.

“No, no, much too small; it wasn’t like that in the Song of Bernadette,” she argued.

The memory makes me smile.

Visit Two: In the 1990s, I took my mother to Lourdes because she had heard my father talk about it and wanted to visit. We rolled our eyes at the souvenir tat 3D moving images of Jesus on the Cross and mugs featuring Bernadette.

The time the tour group of little old Italian women shoved me with needle sharp elbows out of St Bernadette’s birthplace will stay with me forever. We were rescued by a Kerry priest and treated to a personalised tour of Lourdes. But I didn’t quite make the baths. It felt uncomfortable.

So that a few weeks ago, on visit three to Lourdes, I wondered whether God was on a mission.

On this visit, I upgraded the hotel and ditched the rucksack. I did not, however, wash my smalls.

My friend jumped up out of bed in the morning and said with a quick smile: “Just a quick shower... there’s the bath later.”

“But we don’t have a bath in this room,” I said. Then the euro dropped.

It was nearly 30 years since I had first rocked up as a teenager. The waiters and hotel staff had all got younger and the souvenir tat was less tatty. You could still buy a hand towel or a keyring with St Bernadette in her blue scarf emblazoned on the front.

You could also buy those plastic bottles and holy water statues of Our Lady – they all nudge each other for space in the cupboard under the sink. But when you enter the actual grotto, beyond the gates and into the green space, there is true peace.

It’s humbling to see so many people shouldering their sorrows with grace. We lit candles and added them to the thousands of burning flames. We stood at the grotto in silence with strangers from all over the world.

They’ve taken away all the crutches and sticks that used to hang from the rocks. They’ve put up huge wooden shelters where thousands of candles flicker day and night.

You don’t need any particular religion to feel the beauty and power of silence. And yes, we made it to the baths.

“Not my cup of tea,” I told my friend, but she gave me her rose quartz crystal for compassion and we joined the queue.

A row of mothers sat holding small children; love and desperate hope flickered on their faces.

One woman soothed a small boy – mother and son shared just the same colour of eyes. She had lost her hair and you could read on her face her will to live on for her child.

So we went tender-hearted and humbled into the baths, gasped in the freezing water and held those we love warm in our hearts.

Yes, I’ve been to Lourdes.