Our Lady of Lourdes.Joh 2,1-11

God cannot heal a proud person…  When it comes to Lourdes, there is no need to explain much. Everyone is aware of this pilgrimage site, and even non-believers can concede, given the overwhelming evidence, that numerous miraculous healings, beyond medical explanation, have occurred there. People primarily associate this place with healing and reverence for the Virgin Mary. For it is she who first appeared to the young Bernadette Soubirous on February 11, 1858; who let a powerful healing spring gush forth; and from an unknown town under the Pyrenees, she created a place where faith and hope triumph over weakness and hopelessness. It is the Virgin Mary who, on the feast of the Annunciation of the same year, introduced herself as the “Immaculate Conception”—and thus started the construction of the magnificent basilica. But at people becoming people, above all, it is the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Healing of the Sick, through whose intercession miraculous healings have occurred and continue to occur. Knowing that Jesus, the Son of God, is the healer makes her greatness and importance undeniable. And she is the one who, as it were, mediated this healing. As if she said to her son, “Please do something for that gentleman, Mrs. XY. And Jesus will do it. This is his response to his mother’s request. The situation was similar to what happened in Cana of Galilee. This Gospel was chosen very appropriately for today’s commemoration. We know that Jesus performed the miracle of turning water into wine by His Divine power, but the one who prompted Him to do this act was His mother. The Virgin Mary. There is yet another aspect to contemplate. What existed at the very beginning was human need and lack. Illness is also a lack of health and of strength. Sometimes the illness is banal, and a few days in bed are enough for it. But there are fatal, incurable diseases, those that medicine is already running out of. Some fight such an illness; others give up and resign. Some seek all possible and impossible ways and paths to recovery; others say, “God’s will be done,” and learn to live with their illness. They accept their illness as a given condition and strive for fulfillment in their lives, despite the limitations and helplessness it brings. (Which is, by the way, the best approach to illness.) And then there are those who set off for Lourdes. They travel to Lourdes in the hope of receiving healing. What will happen? Most likely, a miracle will not happen, because an estimated several million sick people come to Lourdes, while only around seventy have been miraculously healed in the century and a half since the Virgin Mary appeared there. Okay, what’s next? It may happen that many an unhealed person becomes bitter and blames God, the Virgin Mary, and the church for praying so much, for costing him so much money, and “for nothing.” Or he may return home, still on crutches or in a wheelchair, healed, peaceful, and grateful. Because healing has occurred. Not physical, but spiritual. The body remains sick, but the soul is strengthened, often even healed. How many deep and humble confessions has Lourdes heard! How many healed souls gave thanks in the Massabiello cave!