I have been to Lourdes over 10 times, always traveling with special trains from Florence arranged for “sick people”. I was their chaplain and I treasure the memory of those days, not only for the faith of the pilgrims, but for the dedication of the youth of my village who were wheeling chairs, feeding and clining patients and praying during the night for 10 days. They were donating their money, energy, time to the sick.

This coming February marks the 150th anniversary of the apparitions at Lourdes, France, where a desperately poor, illiterate teenage girl had 18 visions of a woman in white who identified herself as “the Immaculate Conception”.

Since then, millions from around the world have flocked to the waters of a spring that the Our Lady revealed to 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous. Thousands have claimed miraculous healing there. Six million people each year visit the shrine in the Pyrenees, with 500,000 standing for hours in line to use one of its baths.

The water of Lourdes is a sign of a greater water: the water of baptism. To wash recalls the sacrament of baptism, in which our sins are washed away and we become children of God. It is because of our need to be reborn, forgiven, purified and reconciled that we come to this water. The real healing takes place in a Church, up the hills where the Sacrament of reconciliation is celebrated in hundreds of different languages. I used to spend hours in the confessional box and I am a witness of what God’s grace can do in the heart of people

John Paul II visited Lourdes in August 1983 and praised the presence of the youth at the shrine and the hidden work of  8,000 trained volunteers from throughout the world. These volunteers meet handicapped pilgrims at the train station and airport, and escort them to an accueil,( French for “hospitality Centers). One accueil alone has 900 beds, with medical equipment and the ability to cater to special diets.

The Web address of the shrine’s official site, www.lourdes-france.org,.