We got into Lourdes around 7:30am this morning, the 9th, tired and ready to find our hotel. We figured we wouldn’t be able to check in for a while, but we were pleasantly surprised to find out that we could check in right away!
We had lunch at an adorable café on Grotto Blvd, just a few storefronts down from our hotel. After a walk through the souvenir shops, some gift and water container buying, and an ill-fated run-in with an Internet café (I spoke English, the proprietor spoke French, the computer spoke Italian, you do the math) we made our way down to the Grotto.
At the entrance to the Grotto at Lourdes there is a large stone crucifix surrounded by smaller crosses brought by pilgrimages from all over the world. There was one near the front from a parish I attended once while I was in Dublin!
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="604" caption="Crosses in front of the churches"]
[/caption]There are two large churches, one on the ground level and one on top of the that, over the grotto, and numerous smaller churches and chapels around. Most masses were offered in French, Spanish, Italian, and English, but there were small pilgrimages that spoke other languages and had masses said in that language as well.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="604" caption="The bottom level is one church and the top is another"]
[/caption]The highlight of the evening, besides filling all our bottles with the Lourdes spring water, was the candlelit Rosary and procession that happened just after dark. If I were good with numbers perhaps I could estimate how many people there were, but I’m just going to say there were A LOT of people. And they do this, from what we could gather, EVERY NIGHT. It was one of the most amazing spiritual experiences of my life. Most of it was in other languages, but I mumbled generally through the French Hail Mary’s, joined in proudly in the English ones, and sang my heart out on the “Ave Maria” at the end of each decade, because we all knew the same Latin. We weren’t actually in the procession because we missed the memo on getting the candles during the day, but at one point we made our way up the ramp to the front of the higher church were would could see out over all of the procession. It was a beautiful sight.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="453" caption="Lit Candles at Loudes"]
[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="604" caption="Candle Lit Procession from the in front of the high church"]
[/caption]We didn’t have much time in Lourdes on Friday morning, but we did make it back to the Grotto to say a few prayers, refill our water bottles, and take a walk along the river before going back to the hotel for our bags and making our way to the train station.
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