How often do you see something for what it really is? I'm awful at looking for things. I always seem to be searching for USB sticks, socks and other miscellaneous objects in my room. You have to persist, train your eye, or even ask for help to seek things out, and eventually you will get the reward.
The amazing thing about faith is that it is believing without seeing. All Christians should search for God, but this can be hard, considering that we can't literally see him.
But in spite of His mysterious nature, the Lord is not invisible. The hymn that we sang at the start of Coach 4's second meeting teaches us to 'open the eyes of our heart' to Him. We must want see him. We must will him to appear.
Bernadette opened her heart to God when, miraculously, Our Lady appeared to her. She saw something that other people missed. We need to try to see through the veil of the ordinary, something that Anthony taught us to do in yet another series of eye-opening exercises that forced us to think outside the box, and even bend the rules of the game to win. For example, we were asked to reach our hands as high as they could go. No-one thought to use the balcony as a way of getting higher, In order to reach our goals, we have to think and act in new ways, and break the mould.
Then we were asked to play spot the difference with each other, changing an aspect of our appearance and testing to see we could notice the alteration. Maybe we should pay more attention to our friends, especially in the run up to Lourdes, in an attempt to see God in each other.
The remainder of the meeting was spent learning about the series of Our Lady's apparitions to Bernadette. This is the most important lesson for any self-respecting Lourdes pilgrim. What can we do to be more like Bernadette? What can we do to feel Our Lady's presence at the Grotto? Though we may not see Our Lady in the flesh, there is something else we can see in Lourdes. We can look to each other, and the thousands of pilgrims who walk under the rock, drink from and bathe in the blessed spring, and continue to have faith; to believe without seeing. That is a miracle in itself.
Oliver
With the second blog post, we move on to the second apparition.
Sunday 14th February: Holy Water
Bernadette felt an inner force drawing her to the Grotto in spite of the fact that she was forbidden to go there by her parents. At her insistence, her mother allowed her; after the first decade of the Rosary, she saw the same lady appearing. She sprinkled holy water at her. The lady smiled and bent her head. When the Rosary ended she disappeared.
