Feast of St. Bernadette Soubirous

Feast of St. Bernadette Soubirous

If we are not in God’s grace, may He put us there. If we are in God’s grace, may He keep us there. – Amen.

Tonight, we celebrate the life of St. Bernadette Soubirous. She is the patron Saint of the sick, the poor and those who are ridiculed for their faith.

Bernadette was born on January 7, 1844, in Lourdes, France. She was the oldest of 9 children. But the family lived in extreme poverty and because of both the inhumane conditions they lived in and lack of medical care, only 5 of those 9 children survived.

The family was so poor, they were forced to live in a single room. But this wasn’t just any room. It was so dank, so unsanitary that it was a condemned prison cell. It wasn’t even considered fit for prison-convicts! Living there was cruel and unusual punishment. But a family of 7 lived in this single cell and, we are told, they lived harmoniously. The family is remembered as being kind, polite, disciplined and loving, in spite of the inhuman conditions they were living in. Still, the poverty, lack of medical care, living in a damp, condemned prison cell would leave indelible marks of suffering on Bernadette. For one example, she fell ill with cholera as a small child and suffered severe asthma. For another, poverty forced her family to cut her education short and put her to work as a child.

On February 11, 1858, Bernadette and 2 young girls went out of the village and into the woods to collect firewood. The 2 girls walked ahead, while Bernadette stopped to take her socks and shoes off before crossing the stream. She didn’t want them to get wet. Suddenly, a wind blew and Bernadette saw something out of the corner of her eye, she turned to look… She saw a vision of the lady in white. The young girl was, at first, afraid, so she brought out her rosary. The lady in white brought out a rosary too and they began to recite together. Then the lady disappeared without ever having spoken a word to the young girl. This is how the story of St. Bernadette begins.

Bernadette would continue to have visions at the grotto, from February 11^th to March 4th. Before long, the entire population of Lourdes would follow her out into the woods, hoping see something magical, something freaky, or hoping for a miracle.

The town’s police saw these crowds as a dangerous threat, as public panic or hysteria, the next thing to a riot. So they arrested Bernadette and they interrogated her, they harassed her. Why was she going out to the woods, what was she seeing? Was she charging admission? Was she in this for any kind of fame or profit, or gain? When it became clear that the girl was innocent, the police handed her over to psychiatrists to be tested, to see if she needed to be put into the insane asylum. But she passed all their tests, she was deemed to be lucid and sober as a judge. In the end, they had to set her free.

The Church authorities, for their part had an extremely hard time. First, they wanted to know who or what Bernadette was seeing? Was this spirit damaging to the souls of the people of Lourdes?... It took a long time for the spirit to answer Bernadette, and when she did, she gave Bernadette a title, not a name. The lady in white said; “I am the Immaculate Conception.” This was a scandal when these words came out of Bernadette’s mouth! The 14 year old girl with a first grade education could not possibly know what these words meant! It meant that Heaven really was speaking to and through her. Her! An impoverished, ignorant, stinking peasant. Not to the bishops, not to the priests, not to the nuns…

Remember our reading: “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸ God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹ so that no one may boast before him.” God has long history of this, just within the New Testament alone; Jesus was a carpenter, his disciples were mostly fishermen, Mary Magdalene (a woman) was chosen to be the first evangelist of the resurrection. Even Mary, herself, sang; “My heart praises the Lord… for he has remembered me, his lowly servant.” She wasn’t just being modest – she really was socially lowly, being betrothed to a poor man.

I’d like to think that Mary chose Bernadette because she saw something of herself in the girl, because she felt she could relate with her. But Bernadette would not have been able to see or understand that kind of honor or kinship. Bernadette was once heard to exclaim; “Don’t I realize God and the Blessed Virgin chose me to carry the message because I was most ignorant? If anyone could have been found that was more ignorant than myself, she would have been chosen!”

This was pretty much the extent of Bernadette’s visions, except for one more thing; Mary told Bernadette to eat some wi1d herbs and dig in the dirt with her hands, then a spring would well up. Bernadette was obedient, she got on her hands and knees ate the wi1d grass and dug. She 1ooked crazy! On a11 fours with mud around her mouth, pawing at the ground… A 1ot of peop1e wa1ked away in disgust, having 1ost faith. But it happened. There, the healing waters of Lourdes sprang out of the ground and later, the shrine was built.

Bernadette did not see the shrine. She withdrew from society and joined a cloistered order of nuns. She spent the rest of her short life in prayer, dying at the young age of 35 of illness… When asked why she didn’t go to the shrine for healing, Bernadette simply said; “it isn’t for me.”

Who is it for? What’s it about? What are we really looking at here? What are we looking for?

If we look at this one vision, we don’t learn much, except about the Catholic doctrine of the “Immaculate Conception”. If that. It’s something that doesn’t mean much to us, it doesn’t strengthen our faith or give us anything to hang onto.

If we look at the healing waters of Lourdes, we may find the miraculous, if we believe… I will not deny the miracle. I’ve seen some pretty strange and inexplicable things. It’s important to know that God cares and reaches into our daily lives in a special way, sometimes.

If we look at how Bernadette was interrogated, harassed and ridiculed her whole life long, and yet retained both her dignity and her faith. That’s something we can hold onto, something that changes us and strengthens us. The Psa1m sings beautifu11y of Bernadette tonight; “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. … sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners will be converted to You…”

But there’s more to Lourdes than this. When we look at all of the accounts of the Marian Apparitions; Lourdes, Fatima, Medugorje, laSallette, even Norwood, Ohio and Cold Spring, Ky. We see they all have something in common. Our lady, our mother, consistently calls us to 4 things; repentance, prayer, confession and communion. She never proclaims herself but she points to Jesus through the sacraments of the Church. In this way, as a true mother, she seeks to gather us all together as a family with no one left behind.

Did I say, “no one left behind?” Yes, I did! There is one other thing that is incredib1y specia1 about the Marian shrines in this new mi11enium and here is where I find the greatest mirac1e of a11;

“The Indian Express* reports an upsurge in Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists visiting Catholic shrines dedicated to the Blessed Mother. In an unexpected twist of globalization, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and other pilgrims regularly worship at famous Roman Catholic shrines to the Virgin Mary such as Lourdes in France and Fatima in Portugal. They drink the holy water, light votive candles and pray fervently to the Madonna for help with life's hardships. Many venerate her like one of their own goddesses… Rather than turned away, the newcomers are free to join the crowds from Ireland, Italy, Spain, and other traditionally Catholic countries who flock to Europe's most popular shrines."

When I’d first reported this news to Mother Pau1a, she responded with the 2 words I choose to c1ose with; “Sa1ve Regina”!

Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If we are not in God’s grace, may he put us there. If we are in God’s grace, may he keep us there. Amen. +

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 to a middle-class family in Breslau, Germany.  His father, Karl Bonhoeffer, was a famous neurologist and psychiatrist and Dietrich was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps.

The Bonhoeffer family wasn’t known to be religious. So his family was unpleasantly surprised when Dietrich told them he planned to become a pastor. His older brother told Dietrich not to waste his life in such a "poor, feeble, boring, petty, bourgeois institution as the church", fourteen-year-old Dietrich replied, "If what you say is true, I shall reform it!"

Dietrich attended several different seminaries, in different countries. We get the impression that as a student, he was all brain and little heart, out of touch with the nature of the daily life of ordinary people, an aloof intellectual walking on imported air. When Dietrich came to the U.S., in 1930, to do some postgraduate study, he found the program and professors lacking. He said, contemptuously; “there is no theology here.”… little did he know, he was in for the surprise of his life.

While Dietrich was studying here, in New York, a friend named Frank Fisher took him to a Baptist Church in Harlem. Can you imagine? This stuck up, white, German intellectual in a black, Baptist Church with its swinging choir and out-cries of “Amen!”, “You preach it, Brother!” Talk about culture shock, it’s a wonder the man didn’t die of a heart-attack! But that’s not what happened.  Dietrich fell in love with we what used to call the Negro Spirituals of the Old American South and through these songs he was captured by the rhythm and the passion, it made him feel alive! He began to see Jesus with new eyes. Instead of seeing Jesus as a lofty idea, Dietrich found him in the faces of the singers.

The preachers of this Baptist church introduced Dietrich to the gospel of social justice. Teaching him to see things “from below” – from the point of view of the oppressed. Dietrich’s heart was broken and he was set aflame with passion, all at once. He said; this was the point at which “I turned away from ideas to reality, turned away from a love of words to a love for God and neighbor.” It was in the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem that Jesus resurrected and came fully alive in Dietrich’s heart.

Dietrich’s university days in the U.S. came to an end and he returned to Germany. His career was full of promise, but this was to change when the Nazis came to power in 1933.

Dietrich clearly saw the dangers of nationalism and the Nazi party. He spoke out against them at every opportunity, in Church, on the radio, at meetings with his colleagues. Once, his radio address was even cut off in mid-speech. At this time, Dietrich was the first voice crying for resistance to Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, and his was a lone voice with no one to back him…

In July of 1933, an unthinkable, frightening thing happened, Hitler unconstitutionally imposed church elections. Of course, the elections were rigged and Hitler installed Nazi-theologians into the positions of leadership. For some pastors and theologians, this would have been frightening enough for them to shut up, hunker down and wait till the threats had passed. But not Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he stood up in resistance to this hostile take-over of the Church and called for all pastors to refuse to conduct baptisms, weddings, funerals, etc. Dietrich said;

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”  ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

But his colleagues refused to go on strike with him.

Some of his colleagues did, however, stand with Dietrich in opposing Nazism in the form of the Confessing Church. Karl Barth, for example, drafted a declaration which made it clear that Jesus Christ, not Adolf Hitler was the head of the Church… Still the hostile Nazi take over of the Church continued. Their next move was to forbid any non-Aryan from taking parish posts. Dietrich’s heart was broken, he felt helpless and when he looked around, there was not enough help to be found.

In the autumn of 1933, Dietrich left Germany, not out of fear, but out of hope. He hoped to convince the pastors of Churches outside of Germany to join him and the Confessing Church in denouncing the Nazi party and put an end to the take-over of the Christian church and an end to the persecution of the Jews.

In 1935, however, Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, where he worked leading an underground seminary, training pastors. Still, the Nazi party knew who Dietrich was, they understood he was a threat. So, he was forbidden to speak in public, he was not permitted to publish his books and constantly had to report his whereabouts to local police.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was so alarmed by the evil of the Nazi regime that he joined the Abwehr, which was a military intelligence organization in resistance of the Nazi party. Through Abwehr, Dietrich was involved in several plots to assassinate Adolph Hitler. He did this because he believed;

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”  ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This was not a justification, Dietrich sti ll felt that murder was evil, that it was a sin, regardless of the circumstances. But he felt he was in an evil situation where there were no good answers that he had to choose between the lesser of two evils. Killing Adolph Hitler and putting an end to the carnage, or letting Hitler live and the carnage continue. Ultimately, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was willing to stand up, take responsibility before God and say; “I am a murderer.” He said; “before God I can hope only for grace.”

On April 6, 1943 Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested. He spent two years, nearly to the day, in Nazi concentration camps, where he continued to pastor and to write letters, some of which have reached us.

Dietrich once wrote; “Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.”  ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 I can see him, too, in the concentration camp; thin, cold, ravaged and taking his comfort in singing Negro spirituals like this one;

"Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus Steal away, steal away home I ain't got long to stay here

My Lord, He calls me He calls me by the thunder The trumpet sounds within-a my soul I ain't got long to stay here".

On April 9, 1945, the Nazis hung Dietrich Bonhoeffer at dawn, less than 2 weeks before soldiers from the United States liberated the camp.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer still lives, though, through the amazing writing he left us. And to give you a feel for who the man is, to make him come alive for you, I’d like to leave you with a couple of quotes.

“Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.” 

“Being a Christan is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.”   

“To deal with the word of Jesus other than by doing it is to lie to him. It is to deny the Sermon on the Mount and to say No to his word. That is why as soon as trouble begins we lose the word, and find that we have never really believed it. The word we had was not Christ's, but a word we had wrested from him and made our own by reflecting on it instead of doing it.”