The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Lourdes: An Invitation to Healing

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

What do you know about Our Lady of Lourdes or St. Bernadette Soubirous? Jeff Cavins shares about the apparition and the visionary while on pilgrimage to Lourdes, France. He shares his own experience at the holy site and the beautiful things he has witnessed. Jeff also shares about the faith of those who seek healing from Jesus and those that encourage and support them. Snippet from the Show People are looking for healing…physical, emotional, and spiritual. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit https://media.ascensionpress.com/?s=&page=2&category%5B0%5D=Ascension%20Podcasts&category%5B1%5D=The%20Jeff%20Cavins%20Show for full shownotes!

Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together and living as activated disciples. This is show 382, Lord's, an invitation to healing. Welcome to the show this week, I am coming to you from Lords, France, and this is the place of of great healing for years. I want to talk a little bit about that today. We have a wonderful pilgrimage going on. We have wonderful people from all across America who are joining us in France. And we have had some very, very interesting encounters from Normandy, Therese of Lissou, many spots that celebrated John Baptiste de LaSalle, the great teacher and the one who changed Catholic education. It's just been so good.

but a couple of days in Paris. And now here we are today. We're in Lourdes, which is in the Pyrenees Mountains, kind of the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains, which are some of the highest mountains in Europe, and over 11,000 feet. But we're couched in a beautiful little village here, Lords.

If you've never been here, you really encourage you to come. It was my first time in Lourdes. I've been to Fatima, been to other places, but I've never been to Lourdes before. and I didn't know exactly what to expect. You know how it is. You see the pictures on the internet,

maybe a video on YouTube, but it never really is what you had imagined. And it's far better. When we came here, I saw something that really hit me. And I want to share that with you today. And it relates to the gospel. And people bringing the ill, those who are sick and those who are needy to Jesus.

I saw it in spades today. And I'll explain a little bit about that. But let me give you some of the background on Lourdes. You know, Lords is an example, I think. And earlier this week we talked about Teresa of the Sioux, who became a doctor of the church. She lived 24 years of age. And he's a great saint for evangelization, doctor of the church,

very small town. And she's just another girl in that town with the dog named Tom. And likewise, Bernadette Subaru was just a young lady who was visiting. by our lady at this grotto in Lourdes. And like Therese of Lissue, what started out small became actually very, very big. And so God seems to relish working through small beginnings to have a big, a big result. And boy, walking around today, you can see it. People literally from all over the world coming back here.

And by the way, this happened. And, you know, her life was from 1844 to 1879. I mean, she was only 35 years old when she died. But in that small amount of time, so much was done and a foundation laid that would later bless so many people. Now, the message of Our Lady of Lords is one that really calls for a repentance and a trust in Jesus, complete repentance, trust in Jesus. You hear some of these themes in other areas.

is around the world, like Magigori and certainly Fatima. But the call was for repentance and a trust in her son. The feast day is every year a reminder of this universal call to be close to and extend our arms and our heart to the poor and the needy. And that really is a call to action, a call to extend the grace and the healing power of Jesus to a hurting world. It kind of reminds me of Mother Teresa in the ministry that she had in India, in Calcutta, where one sister had such a big impact during her day.

Well, at the time of the apparitions, back in 1844 to 1879, that's the life of this young lady. It was the 11th of February to the 16th of July, the 11th of February to the 16th of July in the year 1850. And at the time of those apparitions, which she got 18 of those visions. They're basically the same vision 18 times. At the time of the apparitions, the grotto was outside, actually, of the town. And it was on the common ground used by the villagers. And it was used to pasture the animals and feed them. They collected their firewood and so forth.

And even a garbage dump was out there. and it had kind of a reputation for being unpleasant. Now, that would be in line with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, wouldn't it? For sure. Well, she told her sister not to tell her parents about the apparition, but she told them anyway. And her parents literally forbid her not to go to the grotto again. But Bernadette ignored their orders, and she kept going to the grotto. And as I said, from the 11th of February to the 16th of July of 1858, she saw the same vision 18 times.

and there was a lady in the vision, and the lady eventually introduced herself to Bernadette as the immaculate conception, which had been proclaimed as a dogma for the Virgin Mary by Pius the 9th, and that was in 1854, 1854, so only four years had gone by since that proclamation by Pius the ninth. And as a young girl, I would find it difficult to believe that she understood all of the theological ramifications of the immaculate conception. That is a bit of a difficult title to take apart for someone so young. But that is what our lady introduced herself as as the immaculate conception. And that would be the conception of Mary in the womb of her mother, Anna. So she was conceived without sin. She was spared of sin by the work of her son, and it was a beautiful,

beautiful work. So this convinced the local priest, when this happened, that convinced the local priest that Bernadette saw actually an authentic apparition of the Virgin Mary. And then over time, the church investigated this, and a lot of theologians, you know, went over this, and they came to lords here and finally determined this is legitimate. So during the apparition, Bernadette was given some instructions, and the instructions were from the lady, which were to prove central in the development of the sanctuary, and it's in the ceremonies that take place here at Lourdes. Bernadette was told to go and drink water from a spring, which was to appear inside the grotto.

Just a few hours ago, I was inside that grotto, and I can tell you that there was water on the rocks flowing down, and I took some of it. I put that on myself, my arms, my face, and she was told to wash herself with that water. And she was also told to go and tell the priest to build a chapel at the grotto site where people were to come in procession. Now, just about half an hour ago, Emily was involved in that procession and just came back. And there looked like several thousand people in a procession with candles and singing. There was a rosary. It was just beautiful.

Well, she ended up dying at the age of 35. That was on April 16, 1879, and the sanctuary of Lords was built. And it is literally one of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world. How many people do you think come a year here to this? What would be a guess of years? Every single year. Well, here's the answer. They have four million tourists coming here.

here every year. And my wife and I, as we were walking in front of the grotto earlier today, made mention of the diversity of people. We saw two Tibetan monks, or they were Chinese monks of some sort, and they were taking the water and dumping it on their head and wiping it down their arms and everything. And it just seemed to really attract people from all around the world. So you've got four million people coming a year. And you know you probably have seen some kind of replica of the Lord's grotto. There seems to be more than any other shrine. There are these Lourdes grottos that people build in their backyards or park or at their parish.

Well, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes was officially included in the church's liturgical calendar. And that took place in the first year in 1907. and over the years thousands of reports of healing from the spring water at lords have been made but this might surprise you it might surprise you but less than a hundred have been recognized by the church as miraculous and i believe i heard the figure earlier today 77 now that doesn't undermine all of the healings that have taken place from people who have come from around the world to lords it just says that the church in in their detailed validity you know, research has 77 of them under 100. But it appears that literally thousands of reports have

come out of people being healed. Now, to the thing that really touched me when I was walking around earlier here in front of the grotto. And we had a lovely lunch at one of the restaurants here in the small town. There were young ladies walking around and they looked like they were in some kind of nursing habit. And I wasn't an expert on Lourdes, still am not, but I figured that, okay, we got all these nurses. There must be a hospital that these people are going to, which there is, for some of the people who are very seriously ill, you know, and there's a lot of wheelchairs around here. And I thought they were nurses. Well, come to find out, they're volunteers. And there is an entire army of volunteers that are vetted, and they come here to Lourdes,

and they stay here and they're fed here and they are volunteering to help the visitors in their quest for healing and I found out that today there are 1,300 volunteers here right now while we're here 1,300 people who are here just to make the journey easier

to the water, to the grotto to experience some kind of healing. Now, people come with all kinds of needs, there's physical healing to be sure cancer broken legs and you know other kinds of diseases but there's also a brokenness of the heart for people when they come might be depression or anxiety or some kind of broken relationship and they have come here sometimes as a last resort and when they get here they might not know exactly what to do but they run into these volunteers and these volunteers will help them in any way possible. My wife and I had a discussion with a couple of young

volunteers, and they told us what they were doing. And when they left, both Emily and I agreed, wow, talk about sweet people. Talk about beautiful, leading people to healing, the healing of the Lord. And so that's what really impressed me today about Lords, is how many people are set on helping other people receive their healing by Jesus. Now, that opens up a whole line of thought here as to what we're doing in our life right now. What are you doing in your life right now as far as helping people to reach Jesus? And here, via Our Lady, Lords, and Bernadette Subaru, young girl, how many people are actively helping others right now? And think about your life for a moment.

How many people have you actively helped and made arrangements for other people to come into contact with the healing Lord? How many times did you go out of your way so that it would become easier for someone? Maybe a ride or a ticket or whatever it might be. You know, we see scooters around here. But it was very, very touching. I'm going to take a break when I come back. I want to take a look at a couple of scriptures here. and show you how lords is really an example of a very popular story in Mark's Gospel that we can

learn from. And that's where the title of today's show comes from, Lord's an invitation to healing. I could have called it a living invitation to healing, but we're going to take a look at that from Mark's Gospel. You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show. Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz. I want to let you know about an exciting announcement. could revolutionize the way you listen to the Bible in the air and the catechism in the year. Ascension has released a new Bible and Catechism app called the Ascension app. No, here's what you get. In this app, you get the entire text of the Great Adventure Bible.

Just incredible. You also get the entire text of the catechism of the Catholic Church, as long with the Catechism in your podcast and the Bible in your podcast and transcripts for each episode. If you're like, I'm tired of listening to that guy, I just want to read it. There's complete transcripts from each and every episode. One thing that makes this app incredibly unique is that it includes special features that make connections between the Bible and the catechism

so crystal clear through color-coded references and all these links. The hyperlinks are amazing. I tried it out and I'm like, oh my gosh, it kind of has changed the way I read through the catechism, kind of changed the way I read through the Bible. These features will help you navigate the Bible and catechism even more seamlessly so you can get more out of your experience.

Also, the app provides almost 1,000 answers to Bible questions. The people who listen to the Bible in the year, they wrote in with their questions. Almost a thousand answers. And those answers come in the form of audio clips, video clips, as well as resources excerpted from some of Ascension's published works. If you want to download this app for free, super simple. Just go to the app store in search for Ascension app. I am telling you, if learning about the Bible and the catechism is important to you, then this app will change your life. Welcome back. I'm coming to you from Lourdes. My wife and I are in Lourdes. France today with a number of wonderful people from the United States all around. And we've been

on pilgrimage now for, oh boy, about a week or so. And we are going to wind up our entire pilgrimage here in Lourdes. We're going to stay for a few days. People are going to have a time to pray, go to Mass, go to confession, seek that healing in their life. And before the break, I was telling you that one of the things that really impressed me was the 1,300 volunteers who are dressed as nurses in a way. And then there are other people that have their official outfit on that marks them as a volunteer, both men and women. And there's something about the place that gives you the freedom to just approach them and say, hey, I got a question, or can you help me with this? And they're everywhere. I mean, absolutely everywhere. Now, I mentioned to you before

the break that there's a story in the New Testament that reminds me of lords it's mark's gospel chapter two verses three through five now you no doubt are aware of this story and i'm going to read just a couple of verses here and then let's talk about it for a moment it says in mark chapter two and they came they being the crowd uh that crowd they came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men and when they could not get near him because of the crowd they removed the roof above him and when they had made an opening they let down the pallet on which the paralytic lay and when Jesus saw their faith he said to the paralytic my son your sins are forgiven and that is one of the most beautiful stories and let me just describe it to you Jesus is back home he's in he's in

Copernum, crowds are swelling. People are excited. They want to hear from him. They want to touch him. They heard that he's a miracle maker. And they want to get to him. And there's a group of guys that they have a paralytic man. There's a guy that brought a paralytic man. And there's four of these guys that are interested in, in this paralytic man, having a private audience with Jesus with the hopes that he's going to be healed. Well, going the conventional way, this is a no-go. It's not going to happen. They're not going to get into that front door or the windows because people are packed around the house and it looks literally impossible. Not today. It's not going to happen. And so the question is, well, then if it doesn't happen in the customary way of going through

the front door, let's think out of the house for a minute here, so to speak. What are we going to do to get Herald here to Jesus. And they had a solution. And you know what it was? It's unconventional. It might be a little messy, but we'll straighten things out. They're going to remove part of the roof. It's roof in Minnesota as opposed to rough.

It's the roof. They removed part of it so that they could lay him on a pallet and then lower that pallet, that the paralytic was on, lower it into the house where Jesus was, and hopefully lowering him right down in front of Jesus where Jesus can't miss this guy. Now, that's creative. That takes some thinking out of the house type of ingenuity. But that's what happened. And then it says when Jesus saw not the paralytic, he saw their faith, the four men,

when he saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, my son, your sins are forgiven. Now, this story reminds me of Lord's so much for a couple of reasons. One is that the work of these men was unconventional. Now, the work at Lord's is certainly unconventional. What happens here is not your run-of-the-mill everyday healing situation. This is extraordinary, extraordinary beginning, extraordinary results in people's lives. And they're finding this healing in their life, both physical and mental and all these different ways.

But it's because four men help this paralytic. And I saw today so many people that were looking for healing, but they were being assisted by friends and family and these volunteers. And so like this man, this paralytic in Mark 2 who needs the assistance and the unconventional way of receiving the healing. So we see that in lords today. And so it's the story is not just about the faith of this paralytic. It's about the faith of the people who brought the paralytic to Jesus. And so in lords, we've got the sick people and we've got the people that volunteered or brought loved ones and friends to lords for the sake of healing. And I think that that's really interesting because in the story in Mark chapter 2, Jesus isn't just focusing on the

paralytic. He's got his eyes on these four men. He's impressed. He's touched by their faith. And here at lords, I would say, that obviously our lady and Jesus are not just focused on Harold that came or Barney or Phyllis or whoever it is. They showed up today. But they are also thinking of those who are assisting, because those who are assisting have a lot of faith. They trust the Lord that he can do something miraculous here. Now, this gets back to the very beginning of Jesus' ministry and his great announcement in his hometown of Nazareth in Luke chapter 4, verses 16 through 21. Now, listen to this because this is Jesus announcing the Jubilee, the great Jubilee,

and he's going to describe some of the things that's going to happen in his kingdom. And this too reminds me of what happens at Lords here. It happens at Fatima, Our Lady of Guadalupe, I call those the three big trifecta. But listen to this. It says, and Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and he went to the synagogue as his custom was on the Sabbath day. And he stood up to read, and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. he opened the book and found the place where it was written. And here it is. The spirit of the Lord is

upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, sat down, and all the eyes of the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. So did you catch that? He's really telling you what his ministry is going to be about, which this could easily have been a description of lords. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach good news to the poor. he sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind

and to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the great jubilee when everything is given back and slaves are freed and debts canceled. Well, that's what a lot of people are doing as they have traveled here from around the world. They're looking for that healing and the eyes opened, the good news being preached and being set free in various areas of their life. And so, Lord's is an unusual but authentic and successful way of doing what these two readings are talking about. The guy who is lowered through the roof and down in front of Jesus

and Jesus' proclamation in Nazareth and Luke 4, it fits them both so well. And I think that that is a real testament to the authenticity of what is happening here in Lourdes. And certainly, all of the testimonies for the last, you know, over 100 years have been incredible. And maybe you've been touched by Lourdes. Maybe you know of someone who experienced some kind of healing or change when they went here. Well, many people are going to be taking some of this water. way this is not holy water it's not blessed this is the spring water that comes forth from the spring very refreshing very pure and this is the the spring water that people are are filling up bottles with

and washing their face their hands some are drinking and and that's what is bringing about this tremendous healing and the results and so there is a difference between holy water which is blessed and this healing water at lords well i hope you can make the journey the pilgrimage sometime you know pilgrimages are always a beautiful way to experience the lord every year emily and i lead one to israel and uh last year was canceled due to the war that broke out we're hoping again for this year we'll let you know if that happens but pilgrimages are great we got a big one coming up next year in poland and uh we're going to be we're going to be making our way to the Super Saints of John Paul the 2nd, Maximilian Colby, Edithstein, and Sister Faustina.

So I love them. It's fun to travel with friends and we meet so many new people. Well, we will lift up all of you, all of my friends who are with me here every week. It's you and the others and we'll pray for you while we're here and ask God to do a work in your life while we are here. don't lose hope always trust in the Lord remember he's still doing miracles he's still doing incredible things and we need to put our our hope and our faith in Jesus let's pray in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit amen Lord Jesus we thank you today for giving us life we thank you Lord for giving us uh giving us the good news and healing

I pray, Lord, for all of my friends listening that they would experience healing both physically and emotionally in their heart, healing in their life, that that's what you have brought to the world, this freedom. And Lord, we thank you for that. In your name, we pray. Amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Thank you.