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| Church or Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes |
It was about one year after we had visited the sites of the Holy Land when we decided to embark on another tour this time to the historical and religious sites in and around Europe which covered countries such as Portugal, Spain, Italy and France. As part of the tour were two main sites, one being Fatima in Portugal and Lourdes in France which I’d like to recount.
For all of those who wouldn’t be knowing, Lourdes is a small village in France where Mother Mary is thought to have made her apparition to St. Bernadette and a small spring arouse from a cave where St. Bernadette was inside which is now a grotto along with a cathedral built at the side of it. At Fatima,Mother Mary is also said to have made her apparition to Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta.
We were on our coach bus , I would presume coming from Barcelona in Spain where I could remember we had visited the stadium over there and also the official FCB Barcelona store along with doing a bit of shopping, heading to France. It was a long journey from where we had begun and occasionally, we made a few stops during the journey for food or water from the petrol pump stores on the way. After almost about two and a half hours patiently looking around as we sat in our bus waiting for Lourdes, the place we were heading to in France, we suddenly saw a signage mentioning the name ‘Nice’ located on a mountainous or hilly area which was a small village on the outskirts of France as mentioned by our guide and was some miles away from Lourdes which brought in that bit of excitement as we were keenly waiting to reach the place.
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| Statue of Our Lady of Lourdes |
We finally arrived at Lourdes and headed in the direction towards our hotel which was located on a narrow lane and at a very distant corner of the place. From there we had taken off all our baggage from the luggage compartment of the coach bus and headed to the reception where we got our room keys after which we went straight to our rooms to rest for the afternoon. We had spent a total of around 3 days in Lourdes. The very same evening we had gone to the site of ‘Our Lady of Lourdes Church’ to collect the candles to be used for the rosary procession held every evening at around 5 or 6 PM. This was one of the most fascinating aspects of this site as every evening at around that time, there would be the whole rosary recited right outside the church in the form of a circular procession and what stood out from this practice most of all was the fact that the rosary was said in multiple languages. It was first recited in Italian, then later on in French, Spanish, English and for that matter even Hindi which really filled us with amusement as we couldn’t imagine the fact that they would even be reciting it in Hindi. It was a really wonderful experience to be hearing the rosary in different languages as we went in the procession and we could also feel the true spirit of the words used in the prayers that culminate the Holy Rosary- ‘Our Father’,’Hail Mary’ and the 'Glory Be’. In the bargain both my sister and I picked up the prayers in Italian which was something great we could take away from this experience.
Once we had finished off with the rosary, all of us gathered in several lines with our candles lit up, making for a beautiful sight as the night was soon approaching and we could hear a hymn being sung in Latin or Italian I guess which sounded really great. Then we headed back off to our hotel where we rested for the night.
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| Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes |
The very next morning after getting up from our sleep and getting ourselves ready for the day we headed back to the same site where we told that there was a spring of ‘Mother Mary’ in the cave (now a grotto) and could have a dip in it to seek her blessings. We had to all wait in a queue to get ourselves dipped in the water and the moment our turns respectively would arrive, we had to take off our clothes and change into the bathrobe they offered. The moment our turns came we changed into the robes and with the help of two people who assisted us, dipped ourselves into the water. For a moment, I really felt frozen to the core as the water indeed was chilly cold having no temperature regulators, so it maintained the same temperature when it came out of the ground and I really shook as much as my father did when we had dipped ourselves in it after which we had said a few prayers directed by the two people following which we wiped ourselves and changed back to our clothes. The experience of this too was great and I really felt the spirit of Mother Mary when I had dipped myself into it.
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| Inside the Church or Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes where we had attended mass on the last day |
In the evening, we had visited the church or the cathedral as it looks like which at the time had a mass going on I presume in Italian where we would be also having our mass as well the following day which was our last and final day at Lourdes.
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Church of Our Lady of Fatima
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At Fatima too in Portugal, we had also experienced the procession at night preceded by the rosary which was said in some of the European languages after which people started gathering to follow the procession carrying the statue of Mother Mary which looked really beautiful from a far distance with a small light focused on it. It was accompanied by a set of hymns which were recited as they went round in a circle in the open area, but this time we just watched as the procession was moving about, somewhere around 9’o clock or 10 in the night and it was freezing cold, so we had worn our jackets and were holding the candles as the procession moved out and about.
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| Statue of Our Lady of Fatima at the procession |
An interesting fact about the church built at the site of the apparition is that the church houses a bullet which was shot by one of the people who attempted to assassinate Pope St.John Paul 2, but it
was said that ‘Our Lady of Fatima’ protected him as a result of which he didn’t sustain a minor injury and the bullet till date is still housed on the crown at the topmost of the church.
Finally, I would like to conclude my blog post on a remarkable note that these have been two of the most memorable places we had ever visited as part of the Europe Tour also arranged for us by Emirates Tours and it brings me great joy to recollect these memories of our travel experiences!!!
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| All of the members of the Europe Tour |
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