Homily given on 8 February at Westminster Cathedral for the Mass in Honour of Our Lady of Lourdes
On this, our Jubilee Year Lourdes Mass, in honour of our Blessed Lady of Lourdes, I welcome you all and thank especially those who have made great efforts to be here today.
As you know, the theme or motto of this Holy Year is that we are ‘Pilgrims of Hope’. Today we turn to Mary, knowing she is with us on this pilgrimage, guiding us to her beloved Son. She is a mother to us all, a mother who comforts us in distress and restores hope when we are despondent. If we open our hearts to her then she will surely guide on this journey of life.
It was pointed out to me recently that a more accurate translation of this Jubilee motto is that we are ‘Pilgrims into Hope’. In the framework of our faith, the deeper meaning of hope is that its fulfilment actually lies ahead. True hope lies in a firm and unshakeable hope for heaven. In this regard, hope is the daughter of faith and, ultimately, we set our course through life by this faith and hope.
Mary, then, is the mother of such hope, and Lourdes is a place of great hope; a hope which sustains us afresh. In Lourdes we see such goodness. There, we are touched by so much generosity. There, the reality of sickness and suffering takes on new dimensions and can, indeed, be transformed by this same hope.
Our journey, our pilgrimage through life, can be tough. Often the burdens we carry, be they physical illness, or a suffering of the heart, are not broadcast. We carry them quietly. One of the great gifts of Lourdes, under the patronage of Our Blessed Lady, is that it gives an opportunity to learn to bring those burdens into a community of practical care, of shared prayer, and of joyful love. That puts a new light on things. Here we learn a little more about what it means to ‘offer up’ our distress, sorrow, or pain.
As a youngster, I was taught to begin each day with a morning offering. At that time, I did not have in mind aching joints, weariness and sorrow. I was thinking more of a joyful offering, of the events and excitement of each day. But now that same lesson teaches me to offer up all the other things that life throws at me, but now understanding them too as gifts of God, gifts by which God fashions my heart and soul. And this we can learn in Lourdes.
Today we do well to remember Jack Traynor, a man from Liverpool, severely injured and left paralysed, who travelled to Lourdes in 1923. He returned home cured, able to walk and work again. I say this because, in recent weeks, his cure has been officially recognised as a miracle, the work of God at the intercession of our Blessed Lady. His is the first official miracle in Lourdes of someone from this country!
Also today we keep the feast of St Josephine Bakhita. It will be marked around the world, for she has become the patron saint of all those caught in slavery today, and there are many. We remember them too in our prayers.
Josephine Bakhita is a powerful example of a pilgrim making her way into hope. In her youth, in Sudan, she was taken into slavery. She suffered being bought and sold for twelve years until, having been brought to Italy, she gained freedom. She suffered so much in mind and body. She could no longer remember her name. She had over a hundred scars which had been branded into her flesh, scars that had been rubbed with salt so that they did not heal properly. When her slavery was ended, she was drawn to our faith, joined a community of nuns and lived her life with such grace and faithful service. Towards the end of her life, when asked what she would say to those who had injured and scarred her, she replied: ‘I would go down on my knees and kiss their hands because through them I have come to know and love Jesus, my Lord!’ A pilgrimage into hope indeed!
One of the loveliest things said about Lourdes is that, at the Grotto, the veil between this world and the next, between earth and heaven, is thinner, more translucent, than it usually is. There we can receive a sense that the journey to heaven is not so long; that its promise is almost within our reach. With that gift we measure our days differently. They are a time of preparation, a journey into a new and better future, a journey into the fullness of hope.
In that sense we lay down our burdens before Mary, who takes them to her Son, who, with the Father, enables us to see them as steps on our way to heaven. Here then is the source of true hope, the Christian virtue of hope. It is so much more that the belief that we can do better in confronting the problems of the world – which we must do. The virtue of hope means living this life of such uncertainly in the sure and certain hope of a destiny to come in which every hope will be fulfilled. This is the promise of Jesus, the one who freely accepted the road of suffering and who alone has defied death and restored the promise of eternal life, the life for which we have been created.
Today we come in prayer to strengthen this hope, to be together, to learn again, through the wonder of the Mass, how deeply we belong to one another. Here and in Lourdes, we affirm again our profound trust in our Heavenly Father who has called us into life, who gives us the strength to carry the crosses he places on our shoulders, not alone, but rather shoulder-to-shoulder. That is our way of pilgrimage, our journey into hope. And on this pilgrim way we rejoice in the company of Mary, with her unfailing love and encouragement.
As we move to our celebration of the Sacrament of the Sick, calling on God’s grace and mercy, we ask for the prayers of St Josephine Bakhita and of our Blessed Mother, to whom we sing, over and over again: Ave, ave, ave Maria, Mother of God and our mother also, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.