"The Baths at Lourdes"

"The Baths at Lourdes"

(Recorded at Lourdes) Being lowered into the baths at Lourdes is an act of humiliation and trust, an act of faith. Your mind wants to say, Why do this? What does this mean? What is this going to do? It seems everything in our life has to have an immediate, visible effect, or it hasn’t “worked.”

That attitude is a terrible enemy of faith because faith is not in the realm of the practical; faith means entering into the world of mystery, where deeper energies are at work, where transformation takes place even though nothing appears to change.

If we can enter into a deeper surrender in faith, like a child who can rejoice entertaining itself before its mother, then we can truly experience prayer together. We have to let go of our working ideas to play before the Lord, and in this shrine of Lourdes, to play before Mary. Only our humble, goal-less inner child can understand that.

[In fact, I was healed of seven years of severe hypoglycemia at Lourdes the day this was recorded, October 2, 1980. God is good!]

from On Pilgrimage With Father Richard Rohr